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My Daughter Asleep by David Whyte

6/19/2016

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Happy Father's Day! I hope you enjoy this poem by one of my favorite poets, David Whyte. I think this speaks so beautifully of the true nature of a father--loving presence, courage, acceptance, and vulnerability.

MY DAUGHTER ASLEEP
Carrying a child,
I carry a bundle of sleeping
future appearances.
I carry
my daughter adrift
on my shoulder,
dreaming her slender
dreams
and
I carry her
beneath
the window,
watching
her moon lit
palm
open
and close
like a tiny
folded
map,
each line
a path that leads
where I can't go,
so that I read her palm
not knowing
what I read
and
walk with her
in moon light
on the landing,
not knowing
with whom I walk,
making
invisible prayers
to go on
with her
where I can't
go,
conversing
with so many
unknowns
that must know her
more intimately
than I do.
And so to these
unspoken shadows
and this broad night
I make
a quiet
request
to the
great parental
darkness
to hold her
when I cannot,
to comfort her
when I am gone,
to help her learn
to love
the unknown
for itself,
to take it
gladly
like
a lantern
for the way
before her,
to help her see
where ordinary
light will not help her,
where happiness has fled,
where faith
cannot reach.
My prayer tonight
for the great
and hidden symmetries
of life
to reward this
faith I have
and twin 
her passages
of loneliness
with friendship,
her exiles
with home coming,
her first awkward
steps with
promised onward leaps.
May she find
in all this,
day or night,
the beautiful
centrality
of pure opposites,
may she discover
before she grows
old,
not to choose
so easily
between past
and present,
may she find
in
one or the other
her gifts
acknowledged.
And so
as I helped
to name her
I help to name
these
powers,
I bring
to life
what is needed,
I invoke
the help she'll
want
following
those moonlit lines
into a future
uncradled
by me but
parented
by all
I call.
As she grows
away
from me,
may these life lines
grow with her,
keep her safe,
so
with my open palm
whose lines
have run before her
to make a safer way,
I hold her smooth cheek
and bless her
this night
and beyond it
and for every unknown
night to come.
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Quiet Moments

5/28/2016

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The Summer Day
by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean the one who is
eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth
instead of up and down -
who is gazing around with her
enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms
and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall into the grass,
how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed,
how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
​

Mary Oliver is an amazing observer and a master of quiet moments. We all need this kind of experience! I was talking with someone recently about spending what I think must have been hours watching clouds when I was a kid. Nothing else to do, no reason to get anywhere or hurry. 

How can we help today's children to have that quiet time?
  • Look at nature with your child, enjoying how a tree or flower looks, taking time to watch a butterfly or notice the plants in your garden.
  • Use each of your senses mindfully and invite your child to share the experience with you.
  • Offer unstructured time, whole days without any parent-organized plans, or spacious afternoons or mornings.
  • Share formal quiet times like a shared mindful breath at the start of dinner, sitting quietly together and getting settled before you begin to eat.
  • Offer your child a backrub or footrub as they get ready to fall asleep.
  • Replace naps (when your child outgrows them) with 'quiet time,' a half-hour or hour of time they're in their room doing quiet things, maybe drawing, reading, or just hanging out alone (without any electronic devices).
  • Help your child to notice how good it feels to stretch, to do yoga, or just to walk.
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Children Have Their Own Path and Purpose

5/16/2016

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At the center of conscious parenting is the understanding that children have their own purpose, path, and choices to make. They don't come to us so we can train or teach them to be something. Our work as parents is much more subtle and responsive! 

My favorite expression of this approach to children is Sweet Honey in the Rock's song 'On Children' based on a chapter of Kahlil Gibran's inspiring book, The Prophet. Please, join me by starting the week reading this beautiful essay and listening to Sweet Honey in the Rock's interpretation!


From The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran:

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, "Speak to us of Children." 
And he said: 
Your children are not your children. 
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. 
They come through you but not from you, 
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. 
You may give them your love but not your thoughts. 
For they have their own thoughts. 
You may house their bodies but not their souls, 
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. 
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. 
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. 
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. 
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. 
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness; 

For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

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Day 3: A Week of Self-Care

5/11/2016

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Today, if you've been following my posts so far this week, maybe you are already thinking about things you love about yourself? Write a list of 5 wonderful things about YOU.

Is it getting easier? Or harder? Do you ever notice something positive about yourself in the midst of your day? Or when you're falling asleep at night? If so, keep going! If not, keep going!! :)

And are you aware of your needs already today? Can you feel that you deserve to meet those needs? Keep on finding ways to take good care of yourself!

If You Would Grow - Shine the Light Of Loving Self-Care On Yourself

​
If you would grow to your best self
Be patient, not demanding
Accepting, not condemning
Nurturing, not withholding
Self-marveling, not belittling
Gently guiding, not pushing and punishing
For you are more sensitive than you know
Mankind is as tough as war yet delicate as flowers
We can endure agonies but we open fully only to warmth and light
And our need to grow Is as fragile as a fragrance dispersed by storms of will
To return only when those storm are still
So, accept, respect, and attend your sensitivity
A flower cannot be opened with a hammer.


-Daniel F. Mead

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Start Close In by David Whyte

4/22/2016

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START CLOSE IN
​by David Whyte

Start close in,
don't take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don't want to take.

Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own
way of starting
the conversation.

Start with your own
question,
give up on other
people's questions,
don't let them
smother something
simple.

To find
another's voice,
follow
your own voice,
wait until
that voice
becomes a 
private ear
listening
to another.

Start right now
take a small step
you can call your own
don't follow
someone else's 
heroics, be humble
and focused,
start close in,
don't mistake
that other
for your own.

Start close in,
don't take
the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don't want to take.


What's the first step for you as a parent? The one you don't want to take? The humble, non-heroic one? The conversation that it's time to start?
Take that step today.
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Making Peace with Ourselves

4/16/2016

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Peace is This Moment Without Judgment
by Dorothy Hunt


Do you think peace requires an end to war?
Or tigers eating only vegetables?
Does peace require an absence from
your boss, your spouse, yourself? …
Do you think peace will come some other place than here?
Some other time than Now?
In some other heart than yours? 

Peace is this moment without judgment.
That is all. This moment in the Heart-space
where everything that is is welcome.
Peace is this moment without thinking
that it should be some other way,
that you should feel some other thing,

that your life should unfold according to your plans. 

Peace is this moment without judgment,
this moment in the heart-space where

everything that is is welcome. 

Today I enjoyed a day-long retreat, 'Making Friends with Yourself' with some beautiful people. Deep mindfulness practices help us to do that, make friends with ourselves. We remember that calm, clear place where our true self lives. We make peace with our whole selves, including the harder parts.
​
Picture
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    About Gloria:

    I'm a person on a messy journey--healing, learning, discovering and rediscovering. Sharing, writing, talking, and teaching help me to understand myself and the world more clearly. I hope it can help make your journey a easier, too.

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Gloria Shepard, M. Ed.

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“The best way to take care of the future is to take care of the present moment.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh

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