Mindfulness

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Lessons in Love...

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Lessons in Love...

‘I am curious about your use of the word allow.’

My breath caught in my throat, tightness grabbed at my heart, and for a second the sense of vertigo was there, I was on the precipice looking down.  What had she seen, what had I shown, and why did she hone in on that phrase. 

‘I want to offer you some words… notice what happens when you hear them…. It’s OK to allow yourself to be loved.’ 

I turned in, felt the instability in my seat, felt myself twisting just a bit as I looked into that place where it felt scary. 

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Changing your reality....

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Changing your reality....

‘Well, I guess it is time to go back to reality…” Hearing those words, my heart sank, I felt sad. I heard longing, longing for a different life, longing for change, a desire longing to be met.  I heard the voice of someone who did not expect the world to be different than it appeared, and I imagined someone who felt a little powerless to make any difference.  Within me, there was a voice of rebellion to this statement, a voice that wanted to call out, to shake them out of their expectations, and it is the voice that speaks to me often.

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Memories of Africa....

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Memories of Africa....

The moon, large, yellow, rises slowly above the trees, sounds of the jungle can be heard in the early evening, strange and foreign to my ears.  Sitting on the cement flooring that marks the porch edge for the school we are building, I have a moment of clarity, my place on the earth. I see it on a globe, glowing brightly, so far away from everything I know. Rising with the moon,  an urge in my heart, to walk into the forest, disappearing from all that is known, into a place where everything familiar to me no longer exists. Into a place where everything unnecessary, unessential, is stripped away.

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Slowing down to live...

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Slowing down to live...

Looking out the window, I can see them working their way across the barren flowerbeds.  The bright orange of their breast showing me the hope of spring. Today is the first day I have seen robins in the yard.  Moving from place to place with their hopping step, pausing to peck and scratch at the surface.  They are so puffy with the feathers fluffed up against the cold wind, as if inflated just a little too much.  It is a sign of springtime, and today is the first day I have seen them.  It reminds me that I should take time to look, and see what is happening in my world, something I forget to do.

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The written word....

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The written word....

There is a certain simple pleasure to the process.  Taking time out of the day to sit down and compose my thoughts.  To prepare the space, selecting the paper, choosing a pen, and then placing the pen to the paper.  Watching the ink flow from the nib across the page as my thoughts are translated through the subtle movements of my hand into words flowing through  ink.  The sounds of the nib on the page, the slight scratch, the way the paper grabs at times against the tines of the pen. It requires a bit more concentration, I have to be mindful of my thoughts as I write so that they do not outrun the pace of my pen.  I have to hold those thoughts as I reach for a new page.  These are all the little moments that make writing by hand such a pleasure.

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Spaciousness

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Spaciousness

Fresh snow blankets the world, the wind was absent last evening as it fell, so it come straight down, settling into fluffy piles upon the surfaces.  Every branch has become a small shelf allowing the snow to rest for a while, the spruce trees with their small, tight leaves hold the snow so well among the branches, each one piled high with snow, undisturbed.  The lower branches are weighted down, touching the drifts that lay below.  In this space, there is a silence that is felt, the sounds of the world further away as these heaps of snow slow and muffle the noises of life beyond the pasture edges.  It is a silence I have felt before, in other settings, in other places, but it always brings the same sense of peace when it is here.

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What does it cost......

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What does it cost......

Lately, I have been seeing a lot of writing from  Pamela Wible MD and today I re-read her article about doctor suicides. This time in the Washington Post.  As I read through these articles, and reflect upon how medicine has changed during my lifetime, I am struck by the degree to which I have seen the humanity scrubbed out of the system.  I think about the times during my career when I thought, ‘you know, it is not worth it anymore to do this, I should just go.’ .....

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A Different Point of View this Christmas…..

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A Different Point of View this Christmas…..

And so, I find myself wondering what to write in this missive.  The year has been good, full of love and learning, growth and understanding, and yet in this moment, we are sad, we are mourning, we are dancing with grief.  It is strange how a recent event can colour the feelings that you carry for a year, how a single moment in time can mark that year in your mind, how a single event becomes the moment that may name that year.  It happens all the time… oh, that was when Sam was born, that was the year I started medical school, that was the year we got married, the year when grandmother died, these single moments are large enough in our psyche that they colour the memory of the year. 

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Good luck, bad luck...

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Good luck, bad luck...

Sometimes we are simply too close to be able to see clearly, it is as if our breath fogs the glass we want to look through, we need to get some distance. Is this a good thing or is this a bad thing? it is hard to know. As I look back on life, I look back on things that in the moment seemed terrible, but as I reflect on them from where I am now, the view is so much different. I remember clearly the scene from “the dead poet’s society” when Robin Williams asks the students to stand up on their desks to change their point of view. As I look across my life, I realize I am moving from desk to desk to desk, and looking around, and the view, is always, different.

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In this moment...

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In this moment...

It was another weekend of training in Hakomi.  We were working on figuring out our resources (those things in our lives that help us get through tough times).  It was the second day of training for this block, and my student therapist asked how things were going, “day by day, usual days, usual stuff.” “Why don’t you take me through a usual day then, how do you start seeing your patients? “. I begin to recount how I work without a nurse, and that I go up front to pick up my patients. She asked me to stop, slow down, and really focus on what I do when I prepare to get a patient, and as we work through that, I came to see what a resource I have built over the last 10 years.