The True Cost of Intimacy

I loved these little guys on a recent trip to the Lavender Festival in Cherry Valley. It seems much simpler for them to be intimate than it is for our species. Could it be that they don't have the same egos we do? Hmmmm ... 

One of the things that never ceases to amaze me is how lonely we all are.

We are on our devices. On social media. On our phones, iPads. Some people even have landlines, I’ve heard.

It seems that we are all in these situations of trying desperately to connect with others. To know we matter. To be seen.

And yet the more we try, the lonelier we feel.

Some of us just give up. We throw our hands in the air and say, “Screw it. I can’t do it anymore.”

We take refuge in substitutes for real connection.

Shopping.

Chocolate.

Sex.

Books.

Exotic vacations.

We post images on social media of our idealized self-image (you know, the ones taken at the best angle and in the best light so that your newly found wrinkles don’t show and your second chin is well camouflaged?). We talk to our partners about the historic political speech on the television rather than how hurt we feel that we aren’t truly seen by them anymore. We play nice at work even though we see people doing things that violate our standards of ethics, decency and dignity. We ignore it when a loved one comments about another woman’s looks and feel ashamed at our own lack of courage to say no to the objectification of women of any size, age, race or color.

Yes, in so many ways, we sacrifice our desire for true, authentic connection and settle for the saccharine after-taste left by these transactional interactions, masking as relationships.

Recently, a beloved client of mine, blew me away when she was faced with such a situation. I was so deeply humbled to be a witness to a sacred act of courage she shared with me.

Rather than keeping quiet and accepting the status quo, lashing out in attack or running to substitutes of connection, she did something most of us rarely do unless we are extremely spiritually fit.

She made a million dollar gamble. And paid a heavy price of letting go of her ego, the part that always wants to protect and defend against the things like love and connection we know we crave the most. 

And with a knot in her stomach and faith in her heart she performed the single most important act one can ever do to create a meaningful and authentic relationship with another human being: she took a risk and spoke her truth.

Not the truth he might have wanted to hear.

Not the truth that it would have been easy to share.

Not the truth that would have kept her tightly-managed self-image intact.

But the truth that came from the depths of her soul. That most vulnerable and sacred part of herself as a spiritual being was shared with another person: her truth.

And by taking that risk, not only did a remarkably positive thing happen in the dynamic of her relationship with her partner, but something different happened deep inside of her.

Building a massively fulfilling life isn’t about what other people do or how they respond. It’s about how we show up, honor and live our own values. By speaking up in service of her authentic values, she created an enormous boost to her own self-esteem. And from that place of truly authentic power, anything that comes to us from the outside – affection, approval, validation, love – is simply a bonus. It’s nice to have, but isn’t what makes all the difference.

It’s choosing the road less travelled which does.

The Things That Matter

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter."

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Recently headlines filled with violence have made many around the world feel hopeless and helpless. That the pain and suffering in the world has reached proportions far beyond business as usual. 

While there are no easy solutions to complex social, economic, historical, political and racial problems, there is absolutely, positively something that each of us can do starting right now about the things that matter. 

This week, I had the great privilege of asking my mentor New York Times best-selling author Marianne Williamson about what exactly we can do during these challenging times, 

The answer, in the video below, may surprise you (especially if you are stuck in your own life and having a hard time achieving your personal goals).

If this message resonates with you, or not, I'd love to hear from you. 

What, if anything, do you need to grieve to help move your life, and the world, ahead on the right track?

Let me know in the comments below. 

How to Reboot

If you're a regular reader to the blog, you'll be happy to know you have asked (for video), and I have listened.

My first attempt at sharing with you on video is about one of my favorite topics: rebooting. 

Maybe you are tired, worn out, and parts of your life aren't working as well as you'd like.

Could be your career. Or your relationship. Maybe even your health.

Perhaps its time for a reboot. It's easier than you think and here's how.

If you like this video, please feel free to share it. Help a friend reboot today, too. 

The Wisdom of Retreat

The view from our little retreat overlooking Central Park. 

On the streets of New York City yesterday, I was astonished to find that the people around me were very, very different from when I used to visit in my 20s.

The people were calmer, nicer, much friendlier.

They weren’t rushing around as nearly as much as I had remembered them from the days when I would leave work at the World Bank in Washington and come to stay for a few days of socializing, partying and burning the candle at both ends.

Had New York really changed that much?

Maybe the city that never sleeps is a bit different these days – after all, the whole country is different, too.

But what I know is profoundly different is my experience of it and the mind I am bringing to it.

Whereas in the past I ran around and wanted to suck the marrow out of every moment in the Big Apple by doing it all, this trip is remarkably different.

Chinese and Indian philosophy are replete with the complementary wisdom of the energy of going out and forward into the world, and the deep need to retreat and withdraw. In Western culture, we are obsessed with the former, the yang energy of the world.

We worship the sun, energy, movement and going for it. We are all about doing. Americans are prone to this more than perhaps any other culture, and New Yorkers (of which I am one by birth and claim proudly) could be collectively called the poster-child for yang energy.

The mantra of yang is simple:

Go.

Go.

Go.

Do.

Do.

Do.

More.

More.

More.

But alongside that powerful yang energy (the kind you might find in a strenuous yoga posture like a sun salutation, for example), balance and harmony also require the other side. The darker, more still, more internalized side of life.

The yin quality of life. The being which balances and tempers the doing.

I have been humbled by the opportunity to explore this yin side by actively cultivating an intention to retreat on this trip in what could seem to be the most unlikely of spaces.

Rather than racing from the shops on Fifth Avenue to bars, I am savoring the chance to really appreciate the beauty of nature overlooking Central Park from my window as I write this. Instead of feeling the compulsive need to see and do it all right now, I am indulging in the sweet luxury of coaching my amazingly courageous clients and exploring the joys of mediation with them. In place of waking up with a hangover from spending a night out with a dear old friend I hadn’t seen in years, I linger on the tender memory of ducking out of the rain into St. Patrick’s Cathedral for a few moments to sit, pray, love in community.

As someone who has always loved to travel, I am experiencing the world in a far deeper way by intentionally cultivating opportunities for retreat.

Like many of my clients, I used to seek escape from life by acting out compulsively – eating, shopping, drinking, traveling, always running to the next thing under the imperious tyranny of His Majesty, King FOMO (Fear of Missing Out).

I am so excited to have learned a much, much better way to cultivate those opportunities for retreat (rather than escape) and to be able to share them.

There are so many ways to retreat, both at home and when travelling. It doesn’t have to be complicated.

You can curl up with a good book and rest for an hour when you come home from work rather than getting on the computer. You can do one yoga posture. You can meditate (try some here if you are looking to start or boost your practice). You can plan to join me in Greece this September for two powerful retreat opportunities that will give you a chance to reboot, recharge and reconnect, on an Aegean island and in a secluded olive grove. You can turn off your computer or your mobile right now, get out your journal and a pen, and write a few lines of poetry or doodle.

The wisdom of retreat is available to each of us in every moment. It’s our chance to get nourished and rest, before our lives break down and we are forced to by our health and other markers of how in alignment we may be living with our values.

And when we do retreat wisely, we go back into the world with something to give it. We fill up our cups, that we may have something with which to nourish others.

The Circle of Life

It's the Circle of Life

And it moves us all

Through despair and hope

Through faith and love

Till we find our place

On the path unwinding

In the Circle

The Circle of Life

Tim Rice and Elton John

Like all young in the animal kingdom, I adored my mother when I was a small child. 

I was absolutely convinced that she was the best mom, the one who smelled the sweetest, the one whose arms were the most gentle, the one whose hands could stroke any pain or sorrow out of my curly brown hair simply by touching it.

Everything in my biology told me that this person was the key to my survival and, as such, she was the most important thing in my life. From an evolutionary perspective, the mother-child bonding occurred perfectly and without a hitch.

And in harmony with nature’s perfectly timed clockwork, whether lion cubs, puppies or kittens or baby ducks, eventually it came time for this new member of the tribe to look around and see the rest of the world. Very quickly, I especially noticed the other baby animals and their mothers, and that is probably when the fall from the pedestal began.

Indeed, for the next several decades of my life, I could only see how the other mothers nurtured their young, what they gave to them and what I wasn’t getting. It was especially prevalent with my aunt and cousins: she seemed to be the perfect mother, suckling her young in a way that made me wistful.

My mother’s way of raising me was, to put it mildly, far more unconventional. Because of her formative years and growing up, she was much more of the “let-her-figure-it-out-on-her-own” school. After all, she had done it and it had helped her survive as a young cub.

I was the kid who would be picked up hours after school had ended with a sheepish look on my face, the one who had to figure out how to make friends without a mom at home who knew my classmates’ names, the one who had to go outside of the small cocoon of the nuclear family to get basic needs met from a very, very young age. One of my other aunts tells the story of how, at the age of four, I would climb up on the kitchen cabinets to get cereal to make my own breakfast. She was appalled and judged my mother fiercely for that, as did I.

But the circle of life gives us opportunities to go back to the beginning and see things with a fresh perspective.

Nearly six years ago, when I was living in Europe, my mother was diagnosed with stage IV metastatic breast cancer. From that very first phone call, I knew it was terminal and that there was no time to waste. Nature compelled me to return to my roots, to go back to the den and to see and accept this fierce lion as she truly was, not as I would have had her.

Two weeks ago today, my beautiful, fierce mother passed away after a long and valiant journey, not just through cancer, but through the pain and tragedy of her own years as a small, vulnerable cub with no one to consistently protect and nurture her in her formative post-war years in Greece.

We were given the opportunity, each in her own way, to let go of the mother and daughter that we had each wanted, and to fully, completely and whole-heartedly accept the other woman as a force of nature unto her own self.

Let’s face it, for all the times I judged and criticized her for not being Betty Crocker, I’m sure I wasn’t Daughter of the Year at all times.

As I sit in the grief and loss of this time, it is so clear that my mother was not only my greatest teacher in the Buddhist sense, but also did exactly what nature had compelled her to do: to create a young one strong and capable enough of fending for herself in the jungle.

It’s no accident – if you believe in that sort of thing – that we are both Leos, too. She didn’t do this by coddling me and making it easy and I can assure you there were many, many times I desperately wanted that. She did it by recognizing the truth of my spirit, honoring her own style of mothering and letting go of what the PTA ladies thought. Of the many, many gifts my mother gave me during her time here, the desire to seek and know my own truth and live it to the best of my ability was certainly one of the greatest.

The circle of life with my mother came full-circle in the days, months and years that I cared for her during her journey with cancer. When she passed, the only thing that remained was love, gratitude and forgiveness.

So many men and women I know stay perennially stuck in what they didn’t get and deserved as a child, what they were robbed of, how it is a wonderful excuse for not thriving today. I know it well because I, too, did it for a very, very long time. Indeed, I had to then, as it was an integral part of the slow, complicated process of healing and growing up. And I am so grateful for the teachers, counselors, coaches, friends and others who validated my experience and feelings while I went through it.

But while a child can be victim, as an adult, make no mistake about it: we are volunteers if we accept and embrace the burden of the victim story.

The men and women I know who thrive in this world are those who carefully, gently and methodically – and with the help of loving, compassionate witnesses – go through the stories of the past, grieve their losses, keep the stuff that continues to serve and empower them, and let go of what doesn’t.

My mother did a great, great thing by opening up to healing and forgiveness with me, too. She didn’t have to, but she chose to. And once more I adore my mother Lioness.  

We have once again come full circle.