Be Your Own Valentine

If I've learned one thing over the past few years, it's that we cannot control other people. This realization, though frustrating, is also freeing. Because if I can't make anyone else do anything, I better take action to make myself happy.

Last week as I entered Trader Joe's, I stopped as I often do, to admire the flowers. And then I thought, what the hell? I'll buy myself some roses. After unpacking the groceries, I remembered I have a beautiful Waterford crystal vase that belonged to my Grandmom. I trimmed the roses, washed the vase and arranged them to my liking. They have brightened my mood every time I've seen them in the past week, which is certainly worth the $4.99 I paid for them.

Do I like my husband to buy me flowers? Of course. I love flowers. I love feeling appreciated. But knowing that I don't have to wait for him to do it is liberating. I can love myself. And I must. And when I do, I don't need anyone else to show me that I'm loved, because I know that I am.

A gorgeous, funny, smart woman I know died on Friday. She was 29 years old. Her beautiful spirit shone brightly, overflowing into those blessed enough to know her. You could feel the love she had for herself. We can't control if we have a Valentine or how that Valentine behaves, but we can do something nice for ourselves this Valentine's Day. Life is too short to wait around for someone else to make you feel loved. Go ahead and treat yourself. Be your own Valentine.

Overcoming Resistance

I heard a speaker on Friday say that our internal resistance to change gets in our way more than anything else. He talked about goals and dreams and attitudes, and it was all very inspiring. But after hearing all of his great ideas about change and possibilities, I felt too overwhelmed to do anything at all. (He predicted this would happen.) 

So I drove home, ate lunch, put Daniel down for a nap and then tried to remember how I have overcome resistance in the past. My best trick is to think of the smallest possible step I can take. After a baby-induced hiatus, I wanted to get back to selling my novel. So I thought, okay, what’s the smallest possible step I can take in that direction? I decided I could just look for the list of agents I made last year. Walking up the stairs towards my office, I felt enormous resistance. Apparently, there is some biological basis for our minds wanting things to stay the same. My feet felt heavy, but I found the list. Then I looked at it, then I opened my query letter and started tinkering, and before I knew it, I had some momentum and was happily working.

The journey of a thousand miles does begin with the first step. And so often, if I can take the first step, I can take a second, third, and before I know it, I’m just walking. The speaker on Friday said you can either be in the game or at the game, and I want to be in it. As painful, scary or embarrassing as it is to try sometimes, I’d rather be wiping out in the water than sitting on the beach watching.

How do you overcome resistance?

Top 10 Posts

To celebrate making it to 100 blog posts, I present my top ten favorite posts so far.

If you have a favorite, please share it on Facebook, Twitter, etc by clicking one of the (nearly invisible) icons below. Perhaps by my 200th post, I will have figured out how to make more noticeable share buttons. A girl can dream...

Enjoy!

10.Swimming Lessons (self-explanatory title)

9. Nalu (the puppy)

8. Over the Rainbow (the baby)

7. Yoga for the Mind (poetry)

6. If You Know How to Worry (using worrying to your advantage)

5. I Wrote a Book (writing)

4. Another Little Rincon of My Heart (surf adventures)

3. My Mexico (A Mexican wedding with my son)

2. Grandmom (love, gratitude and grief)

And my all-time favorite, about my interaction with childhood crush from NKOTB:

1. Donnie Wahlberg

A Year Without Resolutions?

January 2. Time for New Year’s Resolutions, right? Maybe not. The past few years I have made very simple resolutions. One year it was to have more fun; one year to dance more; one year to become more active. As I contemplated goals and resolutions for 2012, I thought I might try something different this year, inspired by two blogs I love.

On Zen Habits, Leo writes about giving up goals. This idea makes me uneasy. Isn’t conventional wisdom that unless you have a goal, you will not achieve it? Leo claims you can achieve just as much, maybe more, without goals.

In that spirit, I thought rather than making goals for 2012, I could use a process I found on another blog I love, The Fluent Self. Havi has a practice of saying hello to each month. I used some of her prompts to say hello to the last few months of 2011, and found it so helpful, I’m doing it for 2012 too. I like it because it’s a way of having intentions about a month (or year) while staying open to what comes.

Here are some prompts to consider if you want to say hello to 2012.

How I would like to describe 2012

How I would like to remember 2012

What I am looking forward to

What I am feeling anxious about

What I would like to give 2012

What I would like to receive

And because I can't quite give up resolutions, I have still made one very simple one, which is to focus on staying in the moment more.

How do you approach a new year?

Grumpy Christmas to You

For the past few weeks, I’ve been feeling Grinchy. Scroogy. Un-Christmassy. Yes, there’s the clinical depression, which I’m pretty sure is the opposite of merry, but it’s been more than that. I’ve been reacting to this idea that because it’s Christmas, and Daniel’s First Christmas, that I should feel a certain way. And then I’ve been feeling worse, because I’m not overcome with joy and Christmas spirit.

So the other day, I acknowledged to myself that I was grumpy about Christmas, that I didn’t care, didn’t want to participate, and resented the whole thing. I talked about it with some friends, and accepted that’s where I was. I gave myself permission to be grumpy. I remembered Fr. Meehan, a very special priest who died this year, saying in a Christmas homily, “We come to Christmas as we are.” I love that idea, and I’ve held onto it for years. Because sometimes, on special days, what we feel is sad, or lonely, or depressed. And then we can feel worse because we’re not supposed to feel those things on Christmas. But sometimes we do. More and more, life seems to me full of the bittersweet. For me, acknowledging and accepting the bitter helps me to enjoy the sweet.

The lovely Claire, after listening to my holiday rant yesterday, hugged me as she left and said, “Merry Christmas,” and then corrected herself, “Or Grumpy Christmas. Whatever Christmas you want to have.” Talking with her reminded me that Christmas, like anything else, is what we make it. I can’t make myself feel joyful, but I can focus on the positive. What I really want for Christmas this year is to enjoy the real gifts of my life. To be in the present, with Daniel, seeing him kick his legs in his high chair as he eats, listening to him testing out his voice, watching him inch around the floor, warming up for crawling. He is my Christmas miracle, every day.

I hope you all enjoy the real gifts of your life this Christmas. And if you're still feeling grumpy, that's okay too.

The Best Advice

What's the best advice you've received recently? I've implemented two game changers in the past month. One is to make coffee the night before. So simple, and it makes such a positive difference in my morning.

Find the other here.

The Bright Side

Since my pregnancy, I’ve been collecting thoughts about mothering and writing. Two ideas have stayed with me as talismans, helping me in dark moments. One is a quote from Barbara Kingsolver who when asked about writer’s block said something like, “The best cure for writer’s block is having children. Because any minute I had to actually write, I would fall upon the keys like a starved dog.”1

The other idea came from Elizabeth Alexander, the poet who read at Obama’s inauguration. She said that she did some of her best writing in the sleep-deprived early years of her children’s lives; that something about the lack of sleep made her open in a new way, less obstructive to the creative force.2

These ideas give me hope, not because they are necessarily true for me, but because they reframe the writing/motherhood dilemma. Maybe the two are not in conflict after all. In fact, maybe each feeds the other. So far, my experience of parenting has gifted me with a wealth of new material. Mothering has cracked me open in many ways, and the expansion, the new depths of feeling, the survival of heretofore undreamed of challenges, it’s all rich and dense—great compost for writing.

Do you have any unexpected bright sides about parenting or other challenges?

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1 Kingsolver wrote one of my favorite books in recent memory, The Lacuna. Yes, that’s right. I’m footnoting a blog entry.

2 You can listen to the interview with Alexander here: http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2011/words-that-shimmer/