Keeping the Dream

And that’s what I feel like I’ve done with my music and writing. But how do you balance the needs of those around you with the needs of your personal drive…only I’m feeling more and more like I’m barely trudging along on foot!

You know, sometimes it’s so hard to see what’s going on with your own self. I’ve been told quite a few times by quite a few people that I have wonderful insight and give advice that they have found helpful.

But sometimes, helping others isn’t helping others as much as avoiding helping yourself to accept the challenges of your own life. Because when you’re so busy tending to another person’s life, you get to not tend to yours. And as much as some of us like to complain about that, that really is the payoff.

I wonder how much of that is involved here. I know, at the very least, it does carry some weight. So what am I going to do about it?…

A friend in the business and from my past just popped into my reality a couple days ago. He wanted a lyric to a song I wrote back in 1990 as he’s wants to produce the song for a young upcoming talent he’s discovered. And it’s funny, because I was just thinking about that song…

And I could feel music inside of me and a desire to write and record again, and I wondered how I wandered so far from what I love doing. I haven’t written a song since August, and that was the first song I had written in a year.

Should I sing again…and to whom? Tonight I sang to my granddaughter, two months old. She smiled at me…stopped her fussing and smiled. And it made my heart melt and filled me with a delicious warm feeling.

I love my creativity…I just wish I felt more secure about balancing it with the rest of my life. It’s almost an all or nothing prospect for me. When that creative passion flows, it leaves little room for anything else. I could go for days without eating or sleeping…okay, maybe not that long, at least, at this stage of my life, but it would be all consuming.

At least that’s my fear…at least that’s what I’ve been told. But I’m not entirely sure that’s true. Because some people are so threatened by something they don’t understand, that the very thing that attracted them to an artist will be the very thing they become insanely jealous of. Even a little bit of time is met with resentment.

One thing I know….I wouldn’t be writing this post if I wasn’t contemplating opening those doors again.

Not because I want to. Since when do we readily want to do what’s best or good for us? No, I’m one of those stubborn people who insists on pushing myself to the limit.

But life and the body that carries this life is forcing me to reevaluate my foolishness. I’m being asked to set my priorities…a life long challenge to be sure. It’s a common theme that comes up time and time again throughout my writings.

I don’t know…I know I can’t do it all, but I still find myself wanting to do at least a good part of it!

I don’t understand people who are bored, who need to find things to do to take up their time, who will work somewhere or be involved in something just for something to do.

There is just SO much to experience and so much to create…and so many people who do not have the luxury to even comprehend what boredom and listlessness means even as a concept!

But being too busy can be like not having anything to do. They can both divert you from your true purpose.

Oh…so maybe you don’t believe in a true purpose? Well, it’s not like it’s a right or wrong answer that’s prepackaged for you like a school test. I suppose it’s anything that gives you a sense of meaning. There’s got to be more to life than just getting by or consuming everything in sight.

And it really doesn’t matter if there isn’t, as far as I’m concerned. That we, as a humanity, have needed to believe it so makes it important enough to honor.

One of the most amazing videos and personal testimonies I have ever seen.

(First posted at my healing voices forum)

Presenting Frederika Yumei Kocoronis, named after both grandmothers according to Greek tradition. I had a choice of my first name or Chinese surname, by my daughter, changing the tradition a bit. I chose my Chinese surname, as my mother carried it, both her daughters carried it as a middle name, and both my daughters carry it as a middle name. Now the name is passing to yet another generation.

She arrived Saturday morning close to 11:00 (mother and baby doing very well!) but I have been so busy caring for my grandson that I have not had a chance to post much sooner!

At the hospital, I held Ricca (for short) in one arm…what a treat that was for me! My lightest baby was 8 1/2 pounds and my last was 9 1/2 pounds! She was like holding a little doll to me!

I am in love.

It’s almost 4:00 in the morning. Just moments ago, my oldest daughter left for the hospital with her husband. She is in labor.

Earlier I was rubbing her back, her shoulders, breathing with her as the contractions came and went, closing my eyes and feeling generations of women before me and the power of this connection that will continue to reach out after me.

I sit here now and savor those moments and think about how much we have become disconnected to this great flow of life with the very technology that is supposed to increase the odds of that life. And how ironic that our technological advances can connect a world and yet disconnect us from our roots and the wisdom of our ancestors.

But in those moments, before the wires and gadgets and sterile rooms, it was as if time stopped, and within that stillness, I felt a sense of primal connection. It was rich and deep and if it had a smell, it would be of dark, fertile soil.

And I wonder, if somehow we have not created a cage of safety for ourselves like birds that have all the food they want to eat and no worries about predators, but no room to fly and no sky to reach.

But now, in these early predawn hours, my thoughts turn to my daughter and the baby who will soon be here. I see an endless horizon of possibilities and wonder. And I see a bond that spans through the generations. I know that the connection is still there and always will be.

We need only accept its eternal invitation to be aware.

Woke up early this morning. This is not unusual, but I did something I haven’t done in a long time. I started my day with prayer.

My spirituality is so important to me, and yet, somehow I find that I have let my conscious practice of it slip away. I would get up, do some quick “clearing of the mind” morning pages, and then maybe be silent for a minute of two, before rushing off to meet the day.

And though I’d stop to think every now and then about my connection with Spirit throughout the day, it was always on the fly.

So this morning I landed. I took the time to just stop and give myself the space to really go within, to let myself stop and enter the silence and feel the presence of God.

I need that. The pressure and stress has really seemed to be rising, and I feel very hard pressed to meet all my obligations or to be there for the people who seem to need me.

But I am learning. I’m learning to carve space out for me. I’m learning to let go. I’m learning to trust in the process to a much deeper degree.

It’s funny, but in the midst of a very stressful last week, I received an email out of the blue from someone from the other side of this country, who spoke words of encouragement to me and just happened to be someone who has made it her life’s work to advocate in the very area I was struggling with. A total stranger, a gift of insight and support.

This morning slowed me down enough to ponder the wonder of this synchronicity and allowed me to relish this feeling of being loved.

Quiet moments can do that. But you have to let yourself have them. They are not forced upon you, for even if you are bedridden, you can still race miles away from where you are.

Quiet moments are a state of mind. When your environment matches up with your quiet state of mind, so much the better. That’s why I like early morning hours, but you can carry that state around with you.

That’s the challenge, I think. Even more than what’s on your plate, the challenge is what’s in your head. Thoughts of peace, feelings of trust or chaos?

This morning, I choose peace.

That’s what an enabler does. She robs another person of the right to be accountable. She thinks she’s protecting the person she loves, but what’s she’s doing is a kind of abuse. It’s not just an aiding and abetting of a crime or an addiction. It’s a theft of another person’s actualization into adulthood.

Enabling can be a very controlling thing. On the one hand we can tell ourselves we’re helping someone, but what we are doing is keeping them dependent upon us as we enable them to continue in whatever hurtful behavior they are engaging in, by continuously cleaning up after them.

I am guilty of this. It seems to be a big part of my identity. I call it being an “advocate”, and I am…but I don’t know when to stop, and then advocating for someone becomes something else.

Advocacy that usurps accountability is not advocacy. It’s enabling. It’s a cover up. And sometimes it’s an effort to keep someone weak.

Parents have to watch out for this. And people involved with others who have addictions, whether drug, alcohol, obsessive spending or whatever forms the compulsion to avoid the real self takes, need to take a good look at not only their intentions but the deeper and actual impact of “helping”.

“Accountability theft” is a serious thing. It not only robs the person of the chance to take control of their own lives, it drains the life out of yours.

[I actually wrote this a few months ago, but wanted more time to pass between this actual event and the publishing of it. This situation affected a number of people and I wanted to honor their space with the distance of time. But it was a very important moment for me and I want to share it.]

I can’t begin to explain this, except that I witnessed something that was hurtful - very, very hurtful. I experienced some of it, myself, but most of it I saw happen to other people.

There were many reasons to keep quiet. One was the fear of reprisal, but I spoke up. It was not easy. I languished over some of it and after I had spoken, I had to go back and add a thing or two I had forgotten. I hated that the most.

But I knew I had to do the right thing. I knew I had the capacity and the skill to speak out, not only for myself, but for others, and that I could articulate and keep focused on the issue that so easily kept wanting to get sidetracked away.

It was abusive. I could not back away.

I was afraid and I was very sure of the rightness of what I was going to do. So I spoke. And I was heard. Other voices, also, were heard, but I know I made a difference.

And this made a difference in me, because for the first time I spoke up against something I saw as extremely abusive, I pointed out the duplicity, I clarified the abuse so that others could see, and I did it from a centered and clean space. I was not out to hurt anybody. I was out to stop the continued hurting of other people and myself.

For the first time in my life, I didn’t just take it or helpless flail against an injustice that continued virtually unheeded by my objections. For the first time, I was not only believed among friends who whispered among ourselves.

I stepped out into the sun and spoke what was in me, my awareness, my knowledge, my perception.

I did it.

Some things were triggered - namely the fear of reprisal for myself and for another. You know, the warning that if you tell you’ll be sorry or someone you love will.

And that threat stays with you forever if you first heard this threat as a child.

But it doesn’t keep you down. Because I felt it, and I told anyway.

Not as a child would, but as an adult would. And the two of us, who I was and who I am, celebrate.