Square-Peg People

Winston Churchill's Black Dog (plus a giveaway)

 

Here's a little (5 minute) video in which I talk about Winston Churchill's black dog (depression) and some things I've learned about dealing with that damn dog.

Toward the end I tell you how to enter the drawing for a Square-Peg package giveaway (it's easy).

The giveaway contest ends 11:59 pm Eastern - Friday, May 17. Two names will be chosen - and the winner announced Saturday, May 18th.

Watch now!

 

 

Jessica and Lori, your names were picked from a hat (by my lovely li'l granddaughter, who's visiting this weekend). Yea Lori and Jessica! Thanks everyone who entered the contest!!

How do we accept and celebrate our uniqueness? Where do we find community?

This is what we talk about in our brand-new e-guide packages: Square-Peg Celebration & Community is an Inside Job.

Hop on over to the Shop and read more (don't forget to listen to the free MP3 samples!).

A Day of Nothing

 

 

A Day of Nothing sounds easy, right?

Well, it sounded easy to me. As easy as that Teaching Math to Elementary School Students class sounded when, as an undergrad, I learned that it would satisfy some of my required Math credits (hmmm, maybe that should've put up some red flags).

Kylie Bellard leads A Day of Nothing* monthly (if you haven't met Kylie, please come on over to her Square-Peg People Interview and say "Hi!"). I attended the April 2013 gathering.

I'm not a Type-A personality - hardly! I'm laid back, sometimes to the extreme (the word lazy was thrown at me a LOT when I was a kid). I kinda rock sitting - and doing nothing. Or so I thought.

It's amazing how much we do when we don't think we're doing much - and how much we need rest. REAL rest, mind as well as body. I say this as though it applies to you as much as it does to me because I bet it does!

It's hard to do nothing! Not that Kylie's Day of Nothing involved forcing ourselves to do nothing - it didn't! She encouraged non-doing in the gentlest way, and in whatever form we chose (less of this, more of that - whatevva).

I was surprised by the amount of planning doing nothing took - the amount of things to think about. If Kylie hadn't worked this stuff into the process I would not have thought about most of it until it was nearly up my nose (so to speak).

What about my daily self-care stuff - yoga and facial acupressure and my gratitude journal and and and??? What about the little things I do for my home-folk in a normal day? Do I do them? Do I drop them for a day? Set them up the night before? What about meals?

What about the weeds (and me with a new weed wacker)? The weeds were like a jungle outside my house. But weren't they close to the same the day before (ok, maybe a few inches shorter - but still)? And wouldn't they be pretty much the same the next day (adding in that 4 or 5 inches they'd grow through the night what with the rain we were supposed to get)?

I decided YES to my daily self-care stuff, YES to a few little things I do for my home-folk, and NO to internet, writing related to work, laundry and those weeds.

{Aside: Ok, that NO to the weeds might have been a mistake - my Nothing Day was probably the best day to whack. It's rained since then - and more is promised. So I'll probably need a 10 person crew with scythes (and maybe a helicopter) by the time I get to head out there. But I didn't know about all that - and I'm glad I didn't. Aside ended}

It's so easy to do one more thing. And one more. And even easier to think about one more thing, then another and another. Turns out that planning and expediting non-doing is a great way to become very conscious of what you do, your default settings. A way to seriously notice priorities, and (of course) mostly to relax.

Most interesting thing that happened during my Day of Doing Nothing: I went to take a nap (I've been taking naps lately as a self-care kind of thing) and realized I didn't want a nap - and further realized that the naps had been a kind of default-mode way to deal with being overwhelmed. Good to know!

I highly recommend a day of nothing - a whole day of nothing - a planned day of nothing (which I found is sooo different from just taking a day off - which is why I also recommend Kylie's A Day of Nothing*)

Doing nothing - it's not just for overachievers! Who knew?

*I'm not an affiliate, just sharing some love

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Psst, check out our two new packages (e-guide + MP3's) at the links below & you can hear a couple sample stories (MP3)!

Square-Peg Celebrtion: Stories of Acceptance & Grace

&

Community Is An Inside Job: Support & Connection From the Inside Out

Did You Know?

 

 

Did you know that Slightly-British Daughter has a blog? And that it features her gorgeous photos??

Well - she does. It's called Paper Helen, and it's chockFULL of her photographs. One of the things I love most about Slightly-Brit's photos is how (just like she does in the rest of her life), she really sees the details!

The thing about that is: when she points out the details that I miss (coz I miss the details a LOT) - she points them out with such love, such adoration, that I not only see them, but 'get' them. I fall in love with those details.

Makes me think of the great (I only had a few, but wow - what a difference those few made!) teachers I've had, whose love of what they taught/saw was contagious. Go visit her and say "Hi!" Well, I mean - if the idea appeals to you (feeling bossy - sigh).

Did you further know that Andrea Mauer invited me to do a guest post on her site while she was on vacation?

Well, she did - and since she asked me to write a post for her Daily Love Letters feature I wrote about self-love/self-care. Come visit me at Andrea's (giggling now as I get into this being bossy thing!)

And one last "Did you know?". Did you know that The Encourager went out yesterday (that's Square-Peg People's newsletter virtual tea party)? 

Well, it did! And in it there was a picture of me, GarageBand and the laundry basket that assisted me in my recording (mentioned earlier in the post Improv).

You might want to jump up there (top, right) to our Encourager sign-up button - because you don't wanna miss things like that picture ; ) <-evil, yet adorable, grin.

Self-care - with Grace and Beauty

 

 

 

The beauty I mention in the title refers to the photographs taken (at The Philadelphia Flower Show) by Slightly-British Daughter. Gazing at beauty, being surrounded by beauty, really does feel like an important part of my self-care (is that just me?).

The grace I mention in the title refers to the beautiful, self-love/self-care encouraging words in the posts I'm going to point to. Both these posts helped me with my self-care this week and I'm hoping they resonate with you as well!

 

 

In Dian Reid's post, Meditation, the Universe and Foulmouthed Feet, she tells about putting meditation back into her self-care (my words, not hers) really
S L O W L Y. 

 

While doing this she learned some pow pow powerful stuff that she shares with us (lucky us!!). And she shares in a way that I love - it's both deep and funny and so, so heart-opening.

I think (can't swear to this because I love ALL of it!) my favorite part is this:

"And then it occurred to me: maybe the Universe wants more from us than just our time. Maybe the Universe gets pissed off when we show up for dinner but don’t stay to talk. Maybe the Universe needs the connection to us just as much as we need that connection to something greater than ourselves."

FYI: we've got a Square-Peg Interview with Dian Reid (again lucky, lucky us!).

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Anna Guest-Jelley, in a post called How to Have Your Own Back, leads us through a (warrior) pose and a meditation - and tells how she came to connect with the warrior pose.

I've been incorporating this pose into my yoga practice - and particularly loved how Anna talked about using the pose for yourSelf. My favorite line:

"The Warrior 1 yoga pose is a beautiful way to merge these qualities we’ve been talking about — to align your body and, through that alignment, cultivate fierce care and love for yourself."

I love the idea of cultivating "fierce care and love for yourself"!!

~ ~ ~ 

Muah!

Our Antidote for the Holiday Blahs

 

Holiday blahs - or blues, or angst - whatever you want to call that heart-achey feeling that can creep up on us (or drown us!) during the holidays...

you know that thing, right?

On our holiday Support Stories page we've got the accumulated wisdom of a wonderful group of women who know that stories (sharing who we are and where we've been) heal hearts (or, sometimes - when things get really tough - what we all need is to have someone lovingly hold our hearts - stories can do that, too).

There's sure to be at least one of these encouraging and heart-opening stories that is just what you need to hear (or read, as the case may be)!

Please open yourself to being blessed - grab some tea (read: beverage of your choice) and sit down with one of these stories. Come back for more as needed (and please, share your story too).

Celebrate - Square-Peg Style

 

What do YOU know about celebrating?

I thought I knew plenty - I mean, it doesn't seem like the kind of topic you need extensive training to understand, right?

Something happens (could be big, could be little) - and you celebrate! There you go. Easy peasey. A kid could do it. And they DO - all the time!

Ok, what does celebrating involve? It involves celebrating (for crying out loud!): making merry, whooping it up. Easy peasey (again!). Except it wasn't for me.

I had something to celebrate, but I couldn't figure out how.

I finished a project that had been on my to-do list since God was a corporal. I felt pulled to celebrate - because there's something wonderful about finally finishing. But I also felt weird about celebrating - because the accomplishment was just one part of an on-going bigger thing.

So I wondered: Do I celebrate? Or keep pushing until the whole thing is done? And then, if I celebrate - how?? Hmmmm. Ponder. Ponder.

I made this into a big issue (in my head) - and I'm glad I did because all that pondering led me to creating a Square-Peg Celebration template (grin). Which, by the way, means I decided YES to celebrating my not-the-whole-list-but-hey-it-matters accomplishment.

Here's the Square-Peg Celebration template: Stop, Drop and Roll. (Yea, I may not have made that up - but I'm appropriating it. It works!).

What's it mean? Stop means STOP! Literally. Stop. For a minute at least. Stop the zoom, stop fussing, just stop! You can't celebrate if you don't stop to acknowledge that there's something to celebrate - celebration is not real if it's multitasked.

Once you're in Stop mode, Drop. Drop down into your body. Breathe. Breathe deeply. A couple more deep breaths. There you go! While you're home (IN, aware of, your body - your home) notice where you're tight, where you're loose, if any part of you wants to stretch or needs a little massage. Ahhhh, home sweet home!

Ok, now it's time to Roll. Roll? Yep, roll. Not literally (oh what the hell - go ahead!) - what we're aiming for is akin to what a puppy does when it smells something gross, races across the yard to it, leaps in and rolls around gleefully. Only we're not sniffing for something gross, or racing, or leaping. But still - it's like the puppy roll. Really!

What we're going to do is enjoy something fully. With puppy-passion and unguarded, heart-open exuberance.

Mindfully appreciate (roll in) something: sit with a cup of tea, stand outside and smell the fresh air, slowly munch a treat, take a nap, take a ride, light (and enjoy) a candle, read a poem, write a poem, play with markers, lie in the grass and look up at the sky. That's a Roll!

The Stop, Drop and Roll celebration I initiated to honor my small accomplishment involved (after the stopping and dropping) leaving the office and reading a chapter of a yummy book (in the middle of the day, when I'd usually push myself to do more work).

The whole Stop, Drop and Roll process doesn't need to take a long time. Part of the problem when I made celebration into a big issue in my head was thinking that it had to be large (a time and money grabber). I'm pretty sure you could do the whole thing in less than 15 minutes (psst - anyone want to test this?).

If you decide to give this a try, I'd love to hear how it goes!! And I'm curious: can you remember the shortest amount of time you've taken to really celebrate something? How about the longest??

Square-Peg Philosophy

 

I want to share something with you. This message (the one below, called Allow!) is at the core of Square-Peg People - it's vital (and self-loving) on a zillion levels.

I found it when I was dismantling the old site. And though I'm itching to revamp the message, put it into my current writing voice, I just wanna get it to you!!

So...I was thinking that maybe, as you read it, you could imagine me poking you in the ribs and pointing to something silly (like the picture above) every few sentences - that way we'd bring in more of my current style :)

P.S. The title references grief, the message is very much written to folks who are grieving, but it's a message for ALL of us. I'll even go so far as to say it's for ALL of us ALL the time - there's a lot of loss (and gain) in each day - and being gentle with ourselves (as well as being mindful about our losses) is good self-care!

ALLOW Yourself to Grieve:
honoring your personal grief journey*

*When I speak of grief/grieving I am not talking only about losing a loved one. We grieve many and varied losses in our lives and can often use the same methods to assist ourselves.

If you are grieving you've probably heard at least one of these:

"Keep busy, it'll take your mind off things."
"It's time to get on with your life!"
"He (she) is better off now."

None of these honor your particular experience or expression of loss. They are designed to get you to push your feelings away, to ignore your personal grief timetable, and to "assist" you in getting back to the way things were (to who YOU were) before your loss. But the strong, deep feelings of grief about the loss that has occurred cannot be easily (or health-fully) ignored!

Many times the people saying these things are either uncomfortable with strong emotion or don't know how to offer support to someone who is experiencing loss.

The direct opposite of these non-supportive statements, and the most important principle of self-care (particularly during times of mourning), is: ALLOW!

Allow yourself to:

• feel
• think
• socialize
• rest
• talk

AND their opposites: don't feel, don't think, don't socialize, don't rest, don't talk.

Just ALLOW! Value - honor - your unique process of feeling, thinking, and experiencing life and loss.

Grief often feels like the rug has been pulled out from under you: you lose your equilibrium, your sense of how to BE in the world. Bringing ALLOW into your self-care work can provide a bit of stabilization.

Here are some examples of incorporating the principle of ALLOW:

Allow yourself to feel. This can run from anger to sadness to numbness (a kind of not-feeling) and everything in between. Your emotions will probably fluctuate a lot.

Try to feel without judging, allowing your feelings to be whatever they are. You don't have to act on your feelings. It's helpful to remember that YOU are not your feelings. In other words, you can feel very nasty toward a person - even hateful - and that does not make you a nasty or hateful person, just a person who is having a nasty or hateful feeling.

When you want to allow yourself not to feel you can do something physical - work in the garden, or do the dishes.

Allow yourself to think about your loss - about your loved one, your future or past. Perhaps you wish to plan some type of long term memorial - a garden, a grouping of pictures, a piece of art or letter/story that describes your loved one. When this becomes too overwhelming, or you feel that you need or desire a break from thinking - move your body. Take a walk, clean or organize, do a craft. Or, "move" your mind by placing it somewhere else - read or watch TV.

Allow yourself to socialize or not depending on how you feel. People will often attempt to convince you that getting out - going to social gatherings - will help you. Only you know if this is true at each particular moment. If you feel awkward turning down a number of socializing requests, it might be helpful to remind yourself (and assure the people who are wishing to spend time with you) that you have not decided to become a hermit - you are just honoring your need for alone time now.

Allow yourself to talk about the person who died. Don't be afraid of the negative - sometimes we have a tendency to make saints out of everyone we've lost. This doesn't honor the person they really were.

When my paternal grandmother died my cousins and I sat around uncomfortably reminiscing over funny and sweet things about her. After we'd gone on with these sweet memories (and discomfort) for awhile, someone broke the tension by mentioning what a strict disciplinarian our grandmother was. We all laughed - tension and discomfort gone. It seemed that the less-than-sweet comment brought us closer and we could talk honestly; we didn't have to pretend that our grandmother was perfect.

Again, allow yourself not to talk about the person who has died when you do not wish to - even if someone else thinks it is a good idea.

More often you will probably find that people shy away from talking to you about your loss or your loved one. People can misguidedly assume that if they bring up your loss they will make you uncomfortable - as if in not mentioning your grief you will be spared feeling it. If you wish to talk about your loved one and/or your feelings of loss, honor your desire to do so.

Allow yourself to rest. Grief is hard work and you will probably need more rest than usual. You can think of rest time as refueling. Rest will mean different things to different people. For you it could be a nap, a time to sit and read or daydream. It could mean time to zone out in front of the TV, or to meditate or pray.

Also allow yourself not to rest - if you wish to keep busy, honor that.

There are many ways to nurture and support yourself during times of grief. Please know that there is NO right way to grieve. No self-care methods are better than others. Honor YOUR own ever-changing way!

Say YES!

 

 

"One way to come to say yes is to say no to everything that does not nourish and entice our secret inner life out into the world." David Whyte

 

Oh, yesssssssssss!

What We All Need

 

Even though I wrote this years ago, it's still true.

In fact, I've learned that it's true in bigger ways, and in more situations, than I ever realized before!

I titled this post What We All Need because I'm coming to realize that (well - the title says it) we ALL need this!

I'm finding that being seen and heard (which means being listened to, sat with - by someone with no agenda, no plans for my/your improvement) is IT.

It's what we all need. Vitally. Like oxygen!

Which means, of course, that we need to be that for others as well.

I wrote this in response to grief*:

A friend's young-adult daughter died in a car accident,

around the same time that one of my clients (I was a therapist at the time) was dealing with similar (to my friend's) staggering losses -

and my own grief (over loss of my son, over loss of my family's matriarch, over frightening losses in childhood...) resonated - by opening my heart wider, as grief has habit of doing - if you let it.

And I asked myself (and spirit): how can I help? what do we need when we're grieving, what did I want when I was in acute grief? what helps?

This is what I got:

 

Diamonds

I thought that my role was

        to hold up a lantern

                 in the dark,

                        subterranean

                               labrynths.

 

 

Shine you the path

        until your eyesight

                 adjusted

                        and you could take it

                               on your own.

 

 

Turns out that my role is

        to sit with you

                 naked,

                        in the cold,

                               pitch

                                                dark

                 on the rim of a yawning chasm.

 

 

And, at times, to move with you

        our foreheads glistening with fear,

                 clammy hands clasped together -

                        backs to the wall

                             groping our way,

    occasionally stubbing our toes on diamonds.

 

*Like I said above the poem, what I'm finding now is -> We ALL need this. Whether we're actively grieving, whether we're grieving huge losses or small, even if we're not grieving at all -

we all need, in any time of darkness (and we all have those!), to clasp our clammy hands together - backs to the wall - and sit with each other (we will find diamonds!).

 

p.s. Why yes, you have seen this photo before! It's one of Slightly-British Daughter's - and I adore it (and her!), so I've used it before on the blog.

Bathing Suits And Bears

 

 

Oy! It's bathing suit season again - and I have the snail mail sales flyers to prove it. Bikinis and one-pieces and skinny - ohmy!

The picture above doesn't seem connected to bathing suit season, but I think it is...

Slightly-Brit sent me this bear picture months ago - months. I laughed hard when I first saw it, and it still cracks me up. It's vintage Karen - it's so me!

And I wanted to share it with you, because I figured it'd make you laugh too. But...

I couldn't! It's too unflattering - I look ridiculous. The angle is crazy, my nose looks like a bulb, I look toothless - and hell, I'm bigger than the bear!

I don't suppose I need to explain the picture, but I feel compelled to: it was about a month before Christmas, and my mother, Slightly-Brit and I did our traditional visit to a local nursery/garden shop that tarts itself up (in a good way) for the holidays.

I was being silly (I am silly - it's a big part of my personality). There was a bear in one of the display rooms (there were actually a number of bears in different display rooms - just a regular holiday with the bears, wtf?) - and, on impulse, I stuck my wrist in its mouth and pretended it bit me.

On impulse - like the time, aeons ago, when I did a Quasimodo impression (complete with hunched back and dragging leg) in the middle of a crowded restaurant - to the horror of my friends (who thought, as I did, that I was shy - I was shy back then, but impulse seemed to occasionally trump shyness).

Only this time, with the bear, Slightly-Brit was there with a camera. So I now have visual evidence that I look ridiculous when I'm being silly...except I don't really have that evidence.

Because how we look is a matter of perspective.

When I was in high school I had a teacher who made me think. He interpreted history (and culture) in ways I'd never imagined. When he asked for responses he wanted thought-out replies, not his own thoughts spat back at him (which is what most of my teachers seemed to expect).

When he spoke (from up on the auditorium stage - his classes being enormous), I saw a middle-aged man (with a bony, not particularly handsome, face) morph into a Greek god! Every fricking time!!

More recently I sat at the feet of a short, lumpy, elderly woman who became Love in my eyes. She was soooo beautiful that I could've sat and listened to her (falling into her beauty) forever.

I don't know what my high school teacher told himself when he looked in the mirror in the mornings. I don't know if the elderly lady knows that she's beautiful.

But, to me, there's no question -  they ARE beautiful!

The truth is, for ALL of us - when we let our natural Self show - we ARE beautiful. Right now!

If you were in the restaurant when I channeled Quasimodo - or in the garden nursery when I was bitten by a bear - if you were right there - I imagine you'd have seen silliness and joy.

I think there's a good chance you would have seen my beauty - my silly beauty (and not focused on how toothless I looked). You probably would've joined in the joy, because I think that, when I'm being silly, I become Grandmother Love - or a Greek god(dess) - if you look from the right perspective.

My friend Gin White, from Subtle Harmony, shared this quote on FB the other day: "The question is not what you look at, but what you see." ~ Henry David Thoreau

What if we look for evidence of beauty in ourselves? What if we change our perspective and see with eyes of Love??

How do YOU see yourself as beautiful? I'd love to hear!

p.s. The bathing suit season thing - it connects, I swear it does - but explaining it is beyond me at the moment - sigh.

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If you'd like a (metaphorical) hand in seeing yourself from a different perspective - seeing yourself with eyes of Love - check out the Body Image/Body Love category of the blog, especially the Body-Part Wednesday posts.

Choosing Me! is another self-love tool - it's an mp3 I created about reconnecting with your body (and you can listen to a preview when you go to the link above).