We are only three months into the New Year. Despite silly statistics, it is NOT too late to reach toward and achieve your New Year’s Resolutions. You made one or perhaps ten resolutions with valid, authentic, clear intention. Now forget that you haven’t made steps toward that list of one or ten and make a step … NOW. Just one. One step.
Be gentle with yourself and respect yourself enough to honor that you made that resolution to begin with out of pure desire from your heart.
by J.G. McGlothern
I love it when film and real life marry to illustrate a beautiful truth.
In the film The Kids Are Alright, Julianne Moore’s character says in her brilliant monologue to her family after her affair is discovered…”Here’s the deal, marriage is hard.” Then tonight watching Where The Wild Things Are one of the Wild Thing’s characters, I think KW, says…something similar that makes me smile, basically, Here’s the deal…”Being a family is hard.”
But in the truth of these two lines that bring tears to my eyes, the hard part disappears and I clearly see the beauty can’t exist without the hard part. And that’s okay. It’s part of the deal.
by J.G. McGlothern
To stand naked before someone doesn’t mean you aren’t wearing any clothing. To be really seen by someone has nothing to do with the amount of clothing on your skin.
I see more of someone by looking into their eyes – the place where truth is revealed. Just in sharing a moment of pure understanding, connection, at a deeper level is far more revealing than seeing someone without their clothes.
Some would rather unveil their skin in a bikini for example than reveal a desire, thought, opinion, idea, sadness – holding it instead in the quiet corners of their soul.
To share a part of yourself, the part that matters, can be more difficult and risky for it reveals truth. And for many, exposing a truth about yourself is a far bigger proclamation than showing some skin.
The naked truth, pure honesty, can also be painful – that’s the part I think we run from, right? Because what if the thing we reveal makes others run? So instead we cover up our thoughts and desires not knowing the healing, growth and possibility that can come from stripping away the layers.
by J.G. McGlothern
So there I was with my mother the other day at The Naked Spa, really called The Olympus, standing there, well you can imagine, naked. Well, not completely. I did have a pink and white striped cloth shower cap on my head. As we all did. The other strangers in the room were naked too, just wearing shower caps as we minded our own business going from one Jacuzzi to another trying out different saunas, sampling different heat, hoping for renewal. In the soaking room there are four different tubs with varying temperatures, 60, 90, 97 and 104 degrees. You pick the temperature right for you and relax in the healing waters.
Dropping off kids at school that morning I shared with a couple of moms where I was off to next. The reactions were varied as the four different temperatures of water in the soaking room.
You are crazy. I wouldn’t go there in a million years.
Really, naked? With your mom?
Oh, I’ve been there. I love that place.
I’m jealous – enjoy.
So yes, it is a little strange on one level – but totally normal on another.
It’s just bodies. We all have them. But it is fascinating to me the comfort level differences. In general the American culture just doesn’t do a lot of public nakedness without discomfort.
At the spa no one really cares about seeing me naked, they’re there to relax, to rejuvenate, to focus on themselves.
And for me I’m focused mostly on myself. The only other naked body I pay any attention to is my mom’s. This woman who is nearing her 80’s, who just lost her husband, stands a bit timid but beautiful. I briefly catch a glimpse of her belly as she turns to her side walking away from me. This belly I once lived in, carried four children into this world, appears soft and pale, vulnerable but strong. This is probably the place she now carries her worries, her fears.
On many levels it’s just a naked body, like mine and the others walking around. But without her body, I wouldn’t be here. So for a brief moment, naked on a Tuesday, I am grateful for this body that carried me into this crazy, mixed up, precious, and oh so beautiful world, just as I am grateful for mine that carried my two children into this world. And I have one brief thought…If I live to be 80, I hope to have her same belly, soft and pale, vulnerable but strong.
by J.G. McGlothern
Roses are red, tulips are too,
How ‘bout today, do something for you.
On this day, some consider all about Hallmark, think about showing love to yourself. That’s harder than reaching out to another.
Open up your heart a bit wider by being kind and loving to yourself.
by J.G. McGlothern
For today’s blog post, please visit my website … www.mamaneedsarefill.com to read http://www.mamaneedsarefill.com/2011/02/cup-of-creation/.
I obviously have paint on my mind.
I had one goal this Tuesday in February. Honey Dew and Blue Lagoon.
I was in a fog last week, we had buried my step-dad and I was just getting my head around my loss when it occurred to me it was time to create something. Plant a garden, paint a room. Something. Focus on a project that brought me joy and created something lasting. So this morning I found a gallon of Honey Dew paint and a pint of Blue Lagoon in the garage and I set forth on the downstairs bathroom. We have lived in this house twelve years and it is the only room I have never painted. The dirty white walls were screaming for attention. Begging for new life.
Twelve hours later, I have a new room, a new spirit. Sure I haven’t showered and there is paint in my hair and the dog hasn’t been walked and I haven’t exercised but I have created something with color, attacked a project, just like my step-dad did many times, again and again. Like my brother-in-law said during the eulogy…Hal remodeled a perfectly good house. So this man knows creating. And he did it with gusto. I know he was with me today spreading color on the walls, adding life to a little room in a basement.
by J.G. McGlothern
Dropping off kids today, walking down the sidewalk away from my kids’ school, a friend came up beside me all smiles….I love Mondays, she told me. I love them, everyone back to their places and I get me time back.
Monday’s can be a good day, they don’t have to be dreaded.
by J. G. McGlothern
On a women’s retreat two years ago, a friend shared how a long time ago marriage still haunted her dreams – she hadn’t forgiven herself and her x-husband had been dead for years. It was time for a little ritual, so some room could be made for healing.
What about throwing a rock into the lake – name that rock your x-husband and all the pain that went along with your marriage, I suggested.
Her eyes got big. She went outside to find a rock. We all went down with her to the lake. Big toss. She said goodbye to the nightmares, the bad memories, the pain.
We all have our own shit we can toss into the lake; past relationships, angry words, negative experiences, real feelings – but after we toss them in a ritual act are we willing to leave them there?
A ritual act only works if you have courage to let the ugly pain go – to sink deeply to the bottom of the lake, to disappear so room can be made for more blessings to rise to the surface.
(Last year I spoke of a similar ritual using fire instead of water… https://heartwriter.wordpress.com/2010/05/17/up-in-flames-prayer-part-i/)
by J.G. McGlothern
When I lived in Japan in the early 1990’s I learned quickly about taking my shoes off at the front door. This custom made me bitter. It was inconvenient.
Instead of embracing the beauty, learning about the history of this custom, I let myself think of it as an annoyance.
After living there for many months, I was invited to go with a student and her family to the country. It was the anniversary of her uncle’s death so many gathered at her grandfather’s country home far from Tokyo. The weekend was filled with talk, food and celebration. A time for me to learn about more Japanese traditions.
After a big meal, (I ate most of it because of the language barrier and although they cook for thousands, they don’t eat as much as this American girl) we all got in cars and drove to a cemetery. I stood back from the family as they paid their respects to their uncle, who had died over ten years earlier.
Keeping to myself and observing this Japanese custom I watched as one of the relatives lit a cigarette and proceeded to stamp it out on the tombstone after tapping ashes right on top. Then another relative pulled out a can of beer and proceeded to pour the beer over the tombstone. I thought I was witnessing some ancient ritual steeped in symbolism and spirituality as I watched one woman wash the tombstone with an entire can of beer.
My student stood next to me and I asked about the significance of the beer and cigarette, ready to learn something deep and powerful.
Oh, my uncle loved to smoke and he was a big drinker, she told me. So much for deep meaning and significance.
Some rituals just are done because we think they make sense not because they have profound meaning. And right there in the Japanese sunlight, on a hillside far from everything, it made sense to a group of relatives and to a twenty something American tourist.
Although I don’t leave my shoes at the door of my own home very often, every time I vacuum I think of how sensible it would be to embark on this Japanese custom here in Seattle. And I know I definitely won’t be wasting a perfectly good beer to wash a gravestone any time soon, instead I’ll raise my glass in honor of the one who has gone before me. That is a ritual I can relate to…Kampai!
by J.G. McGlothern
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