Category: courage

achievement · courage · progress

Dare Up.

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11.9.18One of the points Deepak Chopra made during today’s new meditation experience, “Energize Your Life: Secrets to a Youthful Spirit,” was about opening ourselves to receive the nourishment and energy that we need.  Opening myself to receive is a concept I’ve been on about for a little while, and the idea of “starving at the banquet of life” as its antithesis has similarly been on my mind.

While I have made strides to allow myself to admit what it is I want or desire, I know that I must open still more in order to truly hold the kind of health and abundance I want to have and hold in my life.

Opening myself to what I truly need and want requires a few uncomfortable things from me: 1) acknowledging what I want (which presumes that I have gotten quiet and honest enough to be clear about my desires), and 2) telling other people what I want.

Both of these steps require a vulnerability that feels exposing.  But it also leads me to the lyrics, “Hide it under a bushel? NO! I’m gonna let it shine.”  And you know what seems to happen when people “let it shine,” when they share vulnerably and openly who and what they are?  They inspire other people to want to do the same.

Brene Brown wrote about this idea in her book, Daring Greatly, quoting President Teddy Roosevelt’s “Man in the arena” speech.  He dramatized that the people who would criticize us for “daring greatly” are generally the ones who aren’t trying to dare greatly themselves.

So if you’re making strides to improve the quality of your life, in any arena — mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, relationally, sexually, financially, healthfully, energetically — keep daring, because there are those of us who are still in the bleacher seats, looking to you for courage, inspiration, strength, and invitation.

Dare on, Readers. Dare on.

connection · courage · loneliness

Meeting Ewoks

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10.15.18.jpgThere’s always that portion in the hero’s journey when they’re out in the wilderness — alone.  In these moments, we notice the fierce determination of our hero begins to wilt.  They become prey to creeping doubts: “Is this the right path? Should I turn back? Did I make the wrong choice?

“This is so lonely.”

It’s generally accepted plotting that at this moment a friend or guide, boon or spirit materializes to boost our hero’s flagging spirits and help her to double-down on her belief in her path toward fulfillment.

One of the fears I carry most closely is that by taking steps into the new unknown, I will be alone.  A strikingly converse idea I also hold as truth is that by not being alone (by attaching myself to other people), I will never be able to attain fulfillment.

What I give myself here is a classic Catch-22:  if I move into the wilderness of “actualization” — or whatever hippie term you want to call “growing up”! — I will be alone on the journey.  Conversely, if I align myself with a partner, I will be driven off my own course by their needs, and thereby never live the fulfillment I desire.

So now what, then??

Well: Ewoks, in a word.

What I’m looking for in this world is companions who are also dragon-riders (to mix  fictional worlds).  Judgment expert that I am, I’m desperately afraid that if I align myself with a person who I deem or fear is not a dragon rider, I can’t soar myself.  That I can only have one or the other, connection or attainment.  I cannot have both.

The great part about uncovering this is that I can see that it is just a THOUGHT.  My fears and judgments love to parade around as full-fledged reality, a grotesquerie of fright and illusion.

But what a silly thought to have, no?  That I cannot be fulfilled, for any reason whatever!, is total and utter bunk.  Conjuring up a reason that strikes at the heart of my most innate fear—being alone—I am and have been tricked into thinking that it is true, because the resonance and deep-seat of that fear is so primal.

But.  Just because I believe something does not mean it is true.

Further, just because I fear something doesn’t mean it has any substance at all.

There is such vile lusciousness in the voice of the demon that says I can have only one, love or power.  (“Choose wisely.”)  Born of my greatest fears, it knows where to strike, to needle, to whisper in the dark hours.

Luckily, I have come far enough on my hero’s journey to know that thoughts can be overcome and released.  I don’t yet know how to untangle this nest, but maybe soon, I’ll run into some Ewoks who’ll ease my troubled mind, offer comfort, and fortify my courage by their companionship.

They’ll remind me that my journey — of releasing that which does not serve me, embracing the love of those whom I do, and owning the power that I am developing — is wholly, critically, and delightfully worthy.

 

 

beginnings · courage · TEACHING

A Teacher’s Prayer.

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Lord, Universe, Please help me to remain sane and grounded, present and open, confident and competent this year.  Dear G-d, please help me to not take any person’s actions personally & allow those to injure or deflate me, and please help me to hold my empathy doors, well, as windows so that I can remain present.

Help my words be kind, honest, and necessary.  Help me to “eat the frog first” & not procrastinate, put off tasks that must be done; no rug sweeping.  But calm, diligent work so I may feel worthy and available to myself & others.

Help me to “step up and step back” with honesty and humility about what is necessary, and help me to connect more with my colleagues in & out of the school.

Please help me to take my breaks outside, away from the 4 walls, to remind me of the bigger world outside my classroom, and to listen when my body or mind says, “Get up!” from my computer or planning work.

Help me to ground at the beginning & end of my day, to slough off the student energy that isn’t mine, so I can be a whole person in the world when I leave.  And please help me to balance what I want to do & what I can do & remember not everything is imperative right now.

Help me to hear & integrate my supervisors’ feedback, and to follow up on parent requests.  Help me to hold that half-assing-it kid with love and to be guided in guiding them toward healthy effort.

Remind me to breathe.

Remind me to eat.  To pee.  To walk.  To pause.

Dear G-d, help me to remember I don’t have to be or to do it perfectly.

Amen and thank you. ❤ Molly

 

courage · growth · loss

Open Door Policy.

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Autumn colours through the doorwayFor years, I’ve been speaking to close friends about “moving to the next room.”  My trepidation about leaving behind those that won’t come with me, my stagnating and returning to the smaller room, my dickering around in the doorway hoping and cajoling those I want to come with me.  My fear that by moving into a new place I would be abandoning others, that I would be alone.

Strangely, I’m beginning to feel a bit of release from the strangle of those fears.  I acknowledge there are people I’d like to DRAG, bloody and screaming, with me—I want them to come through so badly.  Through the door, “into the next room,” which I have discovered opens into a blooming garden.  I want them to see, to see it’s not so scary.  But these are precisely the words that I myself need to hear, and believe.  That it’s not so scary out there.

And that I’m not going to feel lonely.

Because, I don’t.  I feel enlivened, actually.  Curious and slightly unsure of what will happen (strike that! — entirely unsure what will happen!), but it isn’t enough right now to turn me back to the small place.

I’ve been reflecting, too, on my recent break-up.  How when I think I’ve hit the floor of my grief, a trap door opens to slam me one floor lower.  When I consider returning to it, I slam down again onto the hard reality beneath: that I tried so f*cking hard to make it right, to make it fit.  And each time these hopes, these ruminations arise in me, I am hurled again like clay onto a wheel, slammed, remolded, returned.  “No, Molly,” it echoes.  “No.”

Ouch.

I’ve also noticed that in the last week alone, my door for new potential partners is apparently wide the f* open, because it’s letting in all kinds of wow-totally-and-completely-not-right people.  So, clearly the door is open for someone new but I could use some massive refinement of my “Law of Attraction”!

I know that the ultimate doorway here is the one into the next room, out into that garden, where I will be leaving behind the relationship that hurts so much to make right and the people who are incompatible in so very many ways.

Because what I’m coming to understand is that I must close the door behind me.  And this is something I’ve been avoiding for as many years as I’ve talked about said door.  I’ve left the door wide open so that I could come back in to the small place and see if my loved ones want to come with me.  I’ve left it open so that I could grovel and beg and tear the arm off in my pulling of them to come with me.

I’ve not wanted to leave them.  And, importantly, I’ve been afraid that without them I’ll be alone in the new place, or at least (as is on my mind!) like a new middle-schooler arriving to class and wondering who, who among you will be my friend?  Who among you will be my peer?  Or be my friend-guide just that step ahead of me, pulling me along into the new world?

As I stand on the threshold of this new place all nervous and twisty-handed, just beyond the reach of my smaller self, the bigger part of me knows I must first imperatively reach behind and pull closed the door of underbeing.

The unseen makers of the laughter that I hear and the bathing, liquid scent of magnolias in the new world before me will have to be enough of a sticking place to which I affix my courage until I find another hand to hold.

Damnit.  Deep breath.  Here goes. …

 

abundance · action · courage

Never Have I Ever…

Molly Daniels Hayes1 Comment

2.8.18 stocks

Yesterday, I bought stock.

This is what a first time should feel like!  With all the nerves and excitement and planning and pondering and reading of others’ experiences… and then, finally, the just doing it.  Omigod.  I should have smoked a cigarette afterward.

At the start of November, I looked into what kinds of low-fee brokerage houses were out there.  Even writing the words feels like marbles in my mouth.  Brokerage house.  What do I know from investments?  The lady with less than $3 in her bank account every 2 years?  The woman crawling back from chemo and its resultant absence of paycheck?  The person who ran in to a room of folks, desperate, angry, and frustrated at the slicing paycheck-to-paycheck existence I’d been living?

Well, I suppose what I do know is that I’ve stayed in that room of people, for nearly 7 years now (the length of time for all your cells to turn over) — and maybe all the braincells that had been attached to deprivation and loneliness and despair have come to the death throes of their lifespan, and I’ve begun to take action using the new cells with the new programming and the new ideology I’ve learned.

What I do know is that none of this has been as simple as a click on the laptop … and yet, in the end, it was as simple as a click on the laptop.  The final action step (or start of many): click “Buy.”

Why so many months since the opening of the account to the purchase of my 1st stock?  Oh, procrastination, avoidance, inconvenience of the way it was set up, stymied by a technical error that prevented me from moving money into it.  You know, hurdles.

But when, yesterday, I opened The New York Times and merely read the word Tesla, something within me shifted to high gear.  Google the price of a share; pull up the brokerage account; try to remember what on earth I’d chosen for my password anyway; and lo! The account could link today!  Link it; transfer it; choose it; buy it.  Done.

It’s not much; it’s one share that may tank at any point in the future.  But, for today, it feels like the most goddamned abundant thing I’ve ever done.

 

 

 

courage · love · strength · vulnerability

Going Soft.

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9 2 17 marshmallow

I was in a book study a few years back with a Man, capital M.  He was tall, burly, a hefty, baseball-cap, sports t-shirt wearing Guy.

As we went around the room sharing why we were there and what we hoped to get out of it, this Man said he was afraid this process would turn him into a marshmallow.  That at the end of this, he’d be weak and soft, that opening to his humanity would expose him irrevocably.  We nodded in shared understanding.  Opening oneself is never easy, as our ego-minds — flashing warning signs — remind us repeatedly.

By the end of the year-long group, this Man was indeed softer.  He laughed more easily, he shared more deeply, he allowed his vulnerabilities to be witnessed.  He had turned into a marshmallow.

He had also turned into an entirely stronger version of himself.  His vulnerability and humanity made him approachable, communal, and this community strengthened him further.  His supposed “weakness” was now a great strength, showing confidence, authenticity, and self-possession.

I, myself, am being called to soften, particularly in my romantic life — perhaps one of the most intimate places we are called to grow.

In his kitchen, in his arms the other morning, I said to my boyfriend, “You’re going to melt me.”

Like the Man of the book group, I am scared that my melting will expose me.  Will lay me vulnerable…  To what?!, I have to ask myself.  Oh, Love, you are so misinterpreted by me:

Love lays you open to breakage.  

Love, my fear touts, is a sedentary bull in a china shop: You’ll be picking up broken pieces sooner or later.

But, I am not a china shop and my inner world is not a precious porcelain museum.  It is a dynamic, industrious candy factory. (…Sure, why not!)  And allowing people, a person, a beloved person into that factory, well, I can only see that he will appreciate my colors and flavors, and help me see that I can do the same of myself.  And of him.

For many years, Love has been dressed (and addressed) as a risk.  But really, it’s just a curious visitor hoping for something sweet.

courage · dreams · fear · fulfillment · hope · scarcity · self-denial

Life: Whether you Like it or Not.

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For many years, I’ve considered my personal and professional
stagnation as though I were a traveler sitting at the base of a crossroad. The
sign pointing in many directions reads any manner of options, but I sit there,
gazing at the sign for eons, waiting for one of the arrows to light up, to
indicate, This, here, Molly, is the way to go. This is the path to your
destiny. This is the path to fulfillment, release, energy and passion. It may
be cloudy at parts, but we promise, this is the way toward your highest good.
Yet, signposts have an annoying way of being inanimate, and this revelation has never happened.
But as I sit today, I recognize something new. Beyond the
fork in the road, I’m beginning to see another path that I hadn’t identified
before. It’s the path of my true desires.
I have sat waiting for the gods to tell me a or b, but
secretly, I’ve always wanted c, and refused to see that as an option. “It’s
hard for your to let yourself dream,” a therapist opined recently.
And it is.
To speak aloud what you truly want is to invite criticism
and disappointment. Better to keep the dreams locked tight, even to the
detriment of myself, because it’s “easier” than going after what I really
want.
The problem with that pattern is that it means you don’t
develop a history and a catalogue of places where you have moved beyond those
doubts and spoken up, acted up, been seen. And so you continue to assume what
you really want is not something you can have.
The history of denying what I want is long. It is best to be
quiet, unheard, unseen, have few needs, because the lower you set the bar the
easier it is to meet the meagerness.
I reflected yesterday on the way to our preview night of the
play how you can always set yourself up to “succeed” when you place the bar
achingly low. When you paint over your dreams with “realistic expectations,” you’re never called to reach out of your comfort zone. You can sit on the couch
watching Netflix until the end of time, eating peanut butter out of a jar, and
quietly erode all sense of the divine spark within you.
Not that I’ve done that. (wink)
But the divine has a way of being omnipresent, no matter
what you do to ignore, dismiss, or erode its guidance and encouragement.
I haven’t a clue what experiences I’m opening up to as I watch this
third path unfurl before me. Recognizing foremost that I’ve denied myself the
ability to see what I’ve always wanted is a start. Recognizing that I’ve
refused to acknowledge that I can have what I want, that my needs don’t have to
be pauperistic, that it is safe in the reality of today to express myself is a
start.
I’ve written many times before about the emerging option of
being safe and seen. Safe doesn’t mean “not bold,” or setting the bar low,
here. It means that I am not going to be punished for wanting what I want this
lifetime.
This is a hard concept for me to integrate. But, more slowly
than I would really love, I’m accepting that the sanest, safest, and surest way toward
fulfillment is actually believing it’s available. Whenever I’m good and ready
to set down the peanut butter and walk toward it. 

career · clarity · courage · perseverance · self-abandonment · self-support · work

Ooh, Shiny!

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“Don’t forget your dreams, why you’re doing this,” she told
me on the phone.
Easy to say when you have income, I replied silently.
I’d told my friend I was on my way to an interview for a sales
position. And she reminded me where my North Star was.
But sometimes you have to steer out of the storm in order to
get back on course, right?
That said, this is the usual “Molly looking for work
pattern”: Spend a few weeks seeking the thing I actually want, see that it’s
harder than I thought, or notice that I don’t know how to go about it and give
up on it, and then go toward the easy but unfulfilling role.
This search result looks like a different sheep’s clothing, but it’s
still a wolf.
I’m trying to interrupt the usual flow of events at the point of acknowledging that “It’s too hard” really translates as “I don’t know how.”
Because from there, I can ask for more help.
That is hard, too. To ask for help when you’re not really sure
what you’re asking or who to turn to.
I feel like the simple son of the Passover Four Questions,
The one who doesn’t even know how to ask.
For the one who didn’t know how to ask, the questions and
answers were provided to him. He just had to show up, in his ignorance, and
learn.
I have been able to interrupt other patterns of behavior
mid-way, once I saw them. The flirting with the married men. Waiting until my
fridge was empty to buy groceries, and eating tuna from the can. Following
thoughts down a dark path toward isolation and despair.
This is no different. But changing, modifying all of the
above took (and takes) effort. Concerted
consciousness. Awareness of my feelings, of my triggers. All borne of scarcity
mind. There’s not enough. I can’t have any. I don’t know how to advocate
for myself.
And this — advocating for myself — was part of a very long conversation I got to have
with my mom yesterday (as I chopped and roasted vegetables, making that conscious move to feed myself well and stop eating out all the time or going slightly hungry).
The other day, after I’d boldly walked into Neiman Marcus
with no resume and no plan and ended up in an impromptu interview with the HR
director, I spent dinner with a friend. I was asking her about sales, since
that’s her vocation. I was talking about the statistic I’d heard that women
rarely negotiate their salary, and men nearly always do.
She handed me a book titled, Women Don’t Ask. And I’m devouring it. Studies that show men see
opportunities to ask where women assume circumstances are fixed. Indeed, the
cultural pressures and reinforced gendered stereotypes that keep women in
positions of not advocating for themselves are plenty virulent, too.
I said to my friend that if I got this position in sales
with Neiman Marcus, I’d hope that I don’t go all mousy-girl. That I don’t begin
to feel like an impostor, feeling I don’t belong helping women with gobs of
disposable income.
And she said something interesting: Since cancer, you haven’t been mousy-girl.
She said before then, it’s true, I can turn (in my own
interpretation) not mousy, but quiet observer. I will stand back, get the lay
of the land, and then maybe add some ideas. But for the most part, I’ll remain
fringe.
In fact, in high school, a boy once asked, “Do you ever
talk?”
You’d hardly know me by that attribute anymore! But that
part of myself exists.
Although, less so these days.
I recounted all this to my mom, my friend’s comment about my
new assertiveness, and how I’d lost that subdued, passive nature since
surviving Leukemia. I gave my mom a simple example:
That same afternoon, I’d gone to pick up some lunch at this
organic yummy place. There were two platters of smothered polenta: one had two
slices left, and looked like it had been on the warmer for a few hours. Next to
it was another that was obviously just pulled from the oven, piping hot and
bright colored.
The older woman ahead of me ordered polenta, and got a slice from that bedraggled lot. I ordered polenta after her, and I asked if I could
have a slice from the new batch.
“Sure, of course.”
The older woman waiting for her change looked at me, with a
look of, “That’s not quite fair.” But, it was. I’d asked. She hadn’t.
I am not the mousy girl I was. I am a self-advocate. Some of
it was borne of cancer and my time bargaining with nurses and doctors on what I needed (“I guess that’s okay –
no one’s ever asked before.”). I completely changed my experience to suit my desires in what one usually sees as an immovable situation.
In the present, not knowing how to proceed – how do I market myself as an
essay tutor, how can I market myself as a home organizer, all in service of the fulcrum, all to leave time available for creative and intellectual pursuits – doesn’t mean I can’t
proceed. It means I have to ask for help. I have to ask for help on how to even
form my questions.
And I have to remember that I’m no longer the woman who gets handed
old polenta. 

community · courage · fun · joy · theater

Are you coming?

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Yesterday was finally the day. I’ve been with this cast for
a month in performance now, and once, even twice, a weekend, they’ve shed their
wigs and sweat-soaked costumes and gone out to the bar.
I haven’t been. Partly because I don’t drink, partly
because it gets so late, and partly because I’ve just been kinda shy about
it. And last night, when the venue was gonna be a gay bar to dance, I decided
it was time.
Sure, it’s a Friday night, I’d worked all day, rehearsed and
performed all evening, and I had to be up this morning to sit for a portrait
artist at 10am. … but you know what? Yesterday was a good day, and I felt
invigorated.
I found out that I got cast in another production at the
theater where I’m currently running. I got the large important work project
done, with a few hiccups at the end of the day. And I finally felt like I beat
the solo song that’s been beating me all run.
It was a good day. And dancing sounded perfect. I dance like
a white girl, but I have fun doing it. Though, granted, there were other white
girls there who definitely don’t fit into that “white girls can’t dance” model!
But just the vitality and joy and jumping and ear-wide smile and circle
of friends who are together only for a brief period. It was awesome.
I used to go dancing once or twice a month. Then maybe every
other month. And now, I’m lucky to go once or twice a year. I would never
listen to the music in real life. I know maybe one of the dozen songs that gets played. But it doesn’t matter.
I toss my growing-in hair around, I bounce on the balls of
my feet, and I pump my fist in the air when it feels like time.
And it does.