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Sometimes it seems I live my life at airports and in airplanes.  I travel most weeks for work so I spend a lot of time preparing to travel, waiting in lines, and dashing through the sky in a small metal tube.  Oddly enough, I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about all the things that could go wrong.  I don’t worry about the plane crashing, I don’t worry about the inevitable delays, I don’t worry about the screaming babies, and I don’t worry about being scrunched in a tiny seat.

I don’t worry about any of these things because I know that there is very little or nothing that I can do about any of those things.  I can make sure my carryons don’t have anything that’s disallowed, I can leave early to avoid traffic, and I can double check to make sure I have my passport.  I know in the core of my being that I cannot control the TSA people, the weather, or any of the million other factors that go into making sure I get from Point A to Point B.  And because I know I can’t do anything about it, I don’t worry.

What I’m realizing is that I need to take that radical lesson in accept it and translate it to the rest of my life where I’m under some sort of delusion that I can control people and circumstances.  I can’t control when my company pays me my travel reimbursements, but I spend hours worrying about when I’ll get the money.  I can’t control the fact that a company I’m working with changes course every week.  And I can’t control the fact that the guy I love is currently unavailable.  None of those things are within my purview to change.  In reality, all I can do is accept those facts and move on with my life.

I’m not positive how I’ll do that, but I do know that when I am in a position of trust and acceptance, life flows more smoothly and I waste less energy worrying and more time being in a zen space.  I’m reminded of a time I ended up stuck at the Atlanta Airport for 8 hours and rather than bemoan my fate, I chose to view it as time spent in a beautiful art museum and I wandered all the terminals looking at the art on display.  I found a book and spent time reading and I spent time just being.  It was a true lesson in letting go and just being.

When I’m in that Zen place, I’m better able to cope with problems as well as I’m creative and think in terms of solutions instead of obstacles.  I’m also better able to accept that it isn’t personal.  When my flights get delayed, I realize that the airlines aren’t out to get Raine Shakti, but that things happened beyond anyone’s control.

My challenge to myself right now is to say the serenity prayer every day and actively work on accepting the things I cannot change.

I grew up in a family where secrets were currency and you never shared your feelings for fear of being shamed.  In fact, when I told my mother I had problems with alcohol, her reaction was, “I didn’t raise a drunken slut who tries to kill herself.”  The only true part of that statement was that I drank, the rest was purely her reaction.  Growing up in that kind of environment means that any deep dark secrets you’re keeping get stuffed down into your soul where they can eat away at your happiness and your sanity.

When I grew up and started to learn about other religions, I was fascinated by the concept of Catholic concept of confession.  It seemed so freeing and liberating that you could go and tell someone your secret shames in private and instead of castigating you, they would offer you a path to repentance and redemption.

When I started studying shamanism, I was shocked to learn that confession didn’t originate with Catholicism, but had been practiced in indigenous cultures for centuries.  Although all traditions are slightly different, they all share some similarities with the Inuit shamanic practices.  When Inuit hunters are unable to find enough game to feed their families, they believe this lack is caused by the Sea Goddess Sedna being displeased with them and withholding game.  When this happens, the village shaman journeys to visit Sedna, the sea goddess, and asks for her help.  When he returns, he tells the village people that some of them have broken taboos and they must confess.  As the villagers confess their transgressions to their peers, it builds a sense of community and Sedna is appeased.

I must confess (pun intended) that I am not a fan of group confession because I would never like to be in a position where everyone knows my secrets.  However, I also realize that everyone knowing my secrets also means they cannot be used as ammunition because everyone knows them.    And in today’s modern world, some of us use the Internet as a great big public confessional where we share our secrets with whoever happens to happen across our blog.

I’ve never visited a confessional because I’m not Catholic and I believe that my doing so would be inappropriate, but I’ve sought out friends and therapists in hopes of having the same cathartic experience. My first experiences with confession were with friends that I took hostage and dumped on.  Although I might have felt some release at sharing my deepest and darkest secrets, I realize that as I’ve matured it wasn’t fair to my friends to share those secrets just so that I might find peace.  Using my friends as therapists damaged our relationships and while I’ve been able to mend some relationships by healing and growing, other relationships have been lost by my inappropriate confessions.  I’ve had better luck sharing with therapists, but sometimes therapists excuse my bad behavior and tell me that it’s okay instead of holding me accountable and helping me to find better ways to cope.

My next attempt at obtaining redemption was journaling.  I used my journal to record all my sins and regressions, real as well as imagined.  Unfortunately, writing down all my sins allowed me to dwell on them and use them to beat myself up.  When I wrote pages and pages about what an awful person I was, I found myself believing it and it caused my self esteem to plummet even further.

It was when I entered Al-Anon and truly worked the 12 steps that I found my path to repentance and redemption.  Steps four through nine are all about confession and redemption:

1. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.  This step is all about getting honest with ourselves. It is about listing the things we’ve done that have hurt other people, our resentments that our hurting ourselves, and our fears that are holding us back.
2. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.   This was one of the hardest steps I’ve ever done because I had to lay my soul bear to my higher power and to another human being.  Fortunately, I had a sponsor at the time who listened and was very nonjudgemental.
3. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.  It is one thing to know what our shortcomings are, but it is another to be ready to have those shortcomings removed.  It took a lot of prayer for me to get to the point I was ready to give up my temper, my sloppiness, and my other shortcomings.
4. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.   By the time I got to this step, I was completely ready and asking was easy because I had prayed to be ready.

1. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. Making this list was difficult because I wanted to put the entire world on the list, but my sponsor and I talked and I learned to focus on the people I had truly and actively harmed and not the people who disliked my decisions.  For instance, I made the decision to distance myself from my mother because she is bad for my mental health.  She didn’t go on the list because I did not actively harm her.

1. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.   This step was the most freeing of them all because this is where I confessed my shortcomings to the people I had harmed and asked for their forgiveness.  I also had to take positive and concrete action to change my behavior as amends are working to make things right and not just mouthing an apology.

I realize that not everyone is in a 12 step program or needs to be in a 12 step program, but the same concepts used above can be used by anyone to work through shortcomings or “sins” that are holding us back.  One of the most valuable things I learned from going through this exercise was that I am human and that most of my “sins” such as being short with people, being self absorbed, etc. were human traits and that possessing them didn’t make me a monster.

Growing up the prayers we said were the kind found in prayer books and the Bible.  I learned to recite the Lord’s prayer at church and learned that horrible prayer about dying in my sleep from my parents.  At the time, I thought that the only way to pray was to get down on your knees and recite words you’d learned from people older and wiser than yourself.

Continue reading Writing My Prayers

As I wrote out the Serenity Prayer this morning, the word Accept jumped off the page like a beacon and I knew that I had work to do around accepting the things I could not change.  As the word flashed in neon across my consciousness, it brought back a lesson that my most awesome acupuncturist had tried to impart when I was moaning about something that my ex had done. Continue reading Acceptance

This has been one of the most stressful weeks of my life.  I travel every week and get reimbursed by company for the travel dollars.  Usually the turnaround is less than two weeks, but due to a variety of complications it’s been over four weeks since I’ve gotten reimbursed.  With no reimbursements coming in and needing to travel in order to keep my job, I’ve been spending bill money to pay for travel.  Every day I check my funds and try to figure out when those reimbursements will be coming in.  They were supposed to have arrived this week, but no such luck.

I’ve been living in a swirly state where I’ve forgotten to breathe, obsessed about money, and let myself become disconnected from the God and Goddess.  Instead of doing what I know works and turning it over to them because there is nothing I could actually do about it, I’ve let anxiety eat me up.  I’ve created zillions of scenarios of how I will pay my bills, but mostly I’ve just let myself be eaten up by stress.

My guides had been whispering all week that it would be fine, I wasn’t going to starve, my bills would be paid, etc, but I chose to live in chaos and drama instead of making time for peace.  I finally broke down last night when nothing else was working and actually prayed and asked for help.  I lit a candle and laid it all out to my gods and thanked them for all the help they’ve given me and prayed for guidance and support.

There was still no direct deposit this morning, but I decided that in the interest of my sanity I would take out a high interest loan to bridge the time until my reimbursements come in.  It is not a perfect solution and I’m not happy about paying the interest, but I will make sure to get reimbursed for the interest as it is not my fault that I had to take out these loans.

When I got home from running, I made time to sit in sacred space and just breathe.  I let it all out and as I rhythmically breathed in and out, I felt reconnected and I felt the stress drain out of my body.  I realized that if I had just taken the time to pray and to breathe earlier in the week, I could have saved myself a whole lot of stress.

They say that you should mediate for 30 minutes a day, except when you are busy (or stressed) and then it should be an hour.  From personal experience, I know that when I get busy or stressed, prayer and meditation are often the things that get left by the wayside, even though they are the things that can help us gracefully navigate the stress.

Next time I’m feeling eaten up with stress, I’m going to remind myself to take time to pray and mediate and reconnect, because when I’m connected to spirit, life truly does flow much easier.

Growing up Christian, I found the concept of reciting prayers from memory illogical because wouldn’t God just think I was unoriginal and mouthing words someone else had said?  However, when I was in college and fell into the bottle of alcoholism, I discovered that reciting prayers by rote might not have any impact on God, but that such prayers could become a mantra that could fill my soul with peace.

On the surface, the Serenity Prayer is just a a few words and takes less than a minute to recite, but it is powerful recovery tool that is said around the world in recovery meetings.  I learned the power of the Serenity Prayer for the first time when I was in college and stepped into a dark and dingy basement full of recovering alcoholics.  They welcomed me with love and open arms and pulled me into their circle of recovery.  Holding hands with those people who were so different than myself and hearing the Serenity Prayer recited by that motley group of people  filled me with hope.

In those early days of recovery, the simple words of the Serenity Prayer (God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference) became my lifeline.  I recited those words when I wanted a drink, when I slipped and had a drink, when I was bored, and every time life seemed overwhelming.  Those powerful words written by Reinhold Niebuhr back in the 1930s, calmed me down and brought me peace every time I uttered them

I found comfort, peace, and healing in those simple words and even today when life gets a little overwhelming I stop and say a version of the Serenity Prayer.  It never fails to fill my heart with hope and a reminder that I am not alone.  Every time I say those words, I conjure memories of the kind people who fill recovery meetings and provide experience, strength, and hope to their peers.

The version of the Serenity Prayer I’m currently saying is adapted from the long version and it fits where I’m at right now in my life.

God and Goddess,

Grant me gratitude for all that I have

Grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change

Grant me courage to change the things I can

And grant me the wisdom to know the difference

Grant me patience to accept the changes that take time

Grant me compassion and grace for those with different struggles

And the strength to get up and try again, one day at a time

Blessed Be

In subsequent blog posts, I’ll share with you the importance of each of the qualities I pray for and how they’ve made a difference in my life.

For the longest time I had zero self confidence.  I viewed myself as fat, dumpy, not very attractive, and not a leader.  I knew I was smart, but I always viewed my smarts as kind of behind the scenes smarts.  I viewed myself as someone who could crunch the numbers and research the facts, but my role was to do that work, then turn it over to a “front man” who would make the presentation.  I had zero confidence in my ability to persuade people.

My lack of self confidence was fed by my ex-husband who was threatened by my abilities and took every opportunity to cut me down both public and privately.  He told me my degree was worthless, he told me I should get a “real job” instead of an office job.  He criticized my clothes, my attitude, and everything about me.  My poor little inner child believed all of his lies and abuse until I was metaphorically crying in the corner, ashamed of everything about me.  When people would compliment me, I would downplay it and assume they were just being kind.

In retrospect, all the facts pointed to the fact that I was a competent, creative, and intelligent person.  I continually got raises and promotions, I won an oratory award in college, I was selected to create and manage a new program at my company, but none of these facts mattered in light of the constant criticism form my then husband and the fact that I was taught growing up that women were not supposed to be strong, confident, and better than men in any way.  I’m realizing now that only criticism of my ex’s hat had any validity was his criticism of my sense of style because I dressed to fade into the background. I didn’t want to be noticed.

My confidence has steadily grown over the past five years as I’ve surrounded myself with people who believe in me and who support me.  I realized I’d changed when a director in my company came up to me and asked for my help managing a difficult situation.  Instead of looking around to see what competent and intelligent leader she was talking to, I realized that she was talking to me and I realized that her view of me as a strong and competent leader matched my own view of who I was.  It was pretty amazing to realize that I finally realized my own self worth and reconciled my inner and outer images.

I also realized that as my self confidence has grown, I’ve started developing a better sense of style.  When I first got divorced, I dressed up all the time.  I wore 4 inch heels because they gave me confidence and I started acquiring a jewelry collection, but I felt like a little kid playing dress up.  Over the years my sense of style has evolved and I don’t always wear 4 inch heels, but when I go to work I dress up and don’t dress to fade into the background.  I realized how much my style had evolved when we brought a new person onboard and she dressed like I used to dress.  Drab colors, flat shoes, and no jewelry.  It made me realize that the confidence I’ve acquired isn’t just about my skills, it is about who I am.  I no longer need to fade into the background and even though my weight still refuses to budge, I dress in clothes that flatter my body and are attractive.  And it feels good.

The last few months have been a time of coming into the light for me and in many ways I finally realized how far I had come last night.  I moved to Cleveland last October, one of the first big decisions I’d ever made all by myself.  And I bought a house, which is a huge process in and of itself.  Moving and buying a house did wonders for my confidence as I finally started feeling as if I was a real grownup.

In a weird twist of fate, I ended up having eight weeks at home (with pay) to spend assessing my life, journaling, learning tarot, meditating, and doing a whole lot of healing and growing.  This time mirrored the almost six weeks I had off after my marriage fell apart.  I’m realizing that the six weeks I was off back in 2010 was when I went into the darkness to heal and to grow and the past eight weeks were about coming back into the light healthy, healed, and ready to move on with life.

The contrast between these two periods of my life is  like night and day:

• Peace–In 2010, my life was upended and I was incapable of being at peace with myself or anyone else.  I spent a lot of time crying, blaming God, and scheming as to how I was going to fix the situation.  My solutions ranged from killing myself, killing him, running off to live in the middle of nowhere, and a lot of other insanity.  This year, I was at peace with where I am in life.  I’m comfortable in my own skin and even though there are things I would change about myself and my life, I’m in a really good place.
• Productive–That period of my life was incredibly unproductive.  There were days where I wouldn’t have gotten out of bed if I hadn’t had a dog to take care of.  In contrast, I’ve spent my time off this year putting together my patio furniture, planting, cleaning house, and writing.  I wrote and launched Boudica Rising:  23 Days to Reclaiming Your Inner Warrior, got my Website up and running, and I’ve spent a lot of time hanging out with my kids and building our relationship.
• Hope–I had no hope during that period of life. I  could not conceive of a world full of love and laughter as all I could see was the darkness.  I’m full of hope now as I’ve realized that life is full of ups and downs, but that there are a lot of good things coming my way.
• Laughter–I sobbed so much back then that I’m pretty sure that the Lake Michigan got a little bit deeper.  My life is full of love and laughter now and so much joy.  Part of the reason I’m laughing so much is that I’ve realized that so much of what I took so seriously back then isn’t that serious at all.
• Self Acceptance–I hated myself in 2010.  I was sure that if I could just change, I could fix my marriage.  If I was slimmer, smarter, funnier, etc. things would be better.  In retrospect, I realize that the issues in my marriage weren’t caused by my weaknesses, but by my strengths.  My ex-husband was incapable of being with a strong woman. He could not handle that I made more money than him, that I was a better writer, a better parent, and better in so many ways.  His response was to try to tear me down and make me less than.  I’ve learned since then to embrace my strengths and that if someone cannot accept me for myself, that is there loss and not mine.

It was about half way through my eight weeks at home when I really realized that it was time to come into the light.  I was in cave and didn’t feel the usual comfort, instead I felt like it was time to push through the darkness and come into the light.  Since then, I’ve realized more and more than I am healed and that while I will always continue to grow, my broken heart is ready to love again.  That was driven home by the fact that I ended up in Springfield, IL this week where my ex and I had our first date and it didn’t even bother me.

The final clue that I was healed was when I had a reading last night and the reader tried to tell me that I needed to heal my fear and anxiety and I needed to continue to dig deep and heal and it would be at least 9 months before I was ready for love.  The amazing thing was that instead of letting this depress me, I called bullshit.  Everyone has healing and growth to do, but I am ready for love and I’m ready to move on.  She said I was full of fear and anxiety and while I acknowledge those moments, I’m also better equipped to set aside those fears and the anxious moments and they’re no longer debilitating, they are just a part of life.

Moving into the light feels empowering and right, but it doesn’t feel better or worse than being in the dark.  The darkness is a place of growth and healing and I know there are days when I will retreat to the darkness, but for now I’m stretching toward the light and enjoying the sunshine on my shoulders.

I love contractual boundaries.  I’m a consultant and for some of my projects, primarily the fixed bid projects, we outline very specific deliverables in the contract.  We specify what the deliverables are, approximately when they are due, and what the client has to do to facilitate their delivery.  When the client asks for something that is not on that deliverable list, I can choose to provide it (and sometimes I will if it is small and will facilitate getting the other deliverables) or not.  If I choose not to provide it, I am empowered to say, “I’m sorry, but that’s not in our agreed upon scope of work.”  Once those words come out of my mouth, the client really has no wiggle room because they agreed to the contract including the specific deliverables.  If it turns out that I can’t deliver something on time because the client missed a deadline, I can point to the contract and say, “You were supposed to do this and because you didn’t, I wasn’t able to complete my work.  Please let me know when you’ll be able to complete your task and I’ll provide you with an updated timeline.”

Unfortunately, in our personal lives we vary rarely have such clear cut boundaries and expectations.  However, learning to enforce contractual boundaries has helped me to set and maintain better boundaries in my personal life.  It has helped me to set boundaries by thinking about human interactions in terms of boundaries before things get sticky.  For instance, I live with my adult children and I own both the cars that they drive.  I don’t want to be paying for gas for them to be gadding all over the country so when I agreed to let them drive the cars and pay for insurance, I set expectations about who would pay for the gas.  My son drives one of my cars to work almost every day  of the week so I told him that he was responsible for buying gas (with his own money and not my credit card).  I did add that if I ended up doing a lot of running when I was home, I would refill the tank.  My daughter is home most days and doesn’t do a lot of running.  However, she is going back to school in the fall and looking for a job.  The expectation for her is start paying for gas once she gets a job.

There have been a few times when my son hasn’t filled the tank, but overall he’s maintained his end of the deal.  And when the tank hasn’t been filled, I’ve maintained by boundary by not rescuing him and filling it.  He wants to get to work, he fills the tank.  In the past, I would have just assumed that since he’s driving he’d know he needed to pay for gas and we both would have ended up frustrated when the tank was empty or when he used my credit card to buy gas and I yelled at him.  By setting this expectation up front, the guidelines were clear cut and easier to maintain.

I’ve gotten better at maintaining boundaries as well because having to enforce them at work has helped me find my voice.  Since I’m more anxious about the repercussions from my boss of not enforcing them than the client’s reaction, I’ve had to find that courage to say, “I can’t do this because it’s not what we agreed to.”  Practicing enforcing these contractual boundaries has made it less scary to enforce personal boundaries.  I’ve realized that although people may be unhappy and upset, chances are they aren’t going to hate me.  Once they take a step back and realize, “Oh, that is what we agreed to…” we can have a realistic discussion about it.  It’s still uncomfortable sometimes to stand up for myself, but just like anything else it gets easier with practice.

We are a country at war.  Not with ISIS, terrorists, or other outside threats.  No, we are a country at war with ourselves.  We have police officers shooting innocent black men and women for what reason I don’t know.  Did they really perceive a threat?  Are they racists?  The reasons escape me, but then again the reasons for senseless killing always escape me because I work hard to believe the best of other people.

Continue reading Warriors of Peace