Healthy expectations

I recently became involved with a non-profit called Healthy Visions, which is a local organization dedicated to guiding people toward making better choices and cultivating stronger relationships. The mission reminds me of a class called Intimate Relationships that I took in college, where the professor shared the following reading with us. I have used it ever since as a sort of "criteria" for finding the perfect partner for me... I hope you find it as powerful as I do. For more information on Healthy Visions, visit their website at www.healthyvisions.org

The Invitation

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you’re telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. I want to know if you can be faithful and therefore be trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty every day, and if you can source your life from God’s presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done for the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you are, how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself, and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

Oriah Mountain Dreamer, An Indian Elder

Urban farm

I had the good fortune of participating in the kick-off of the OTR Urban Farm on Saturday, which is the result of a fantastic partnership between several worthy organizations (see below for more details). The farm is located on a vacant lot on Walnut Street in the heart of the historic Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. We broke ground on construction of several raised vegetable beds made from recycled wooden pallets, as well as built a couple brick beds from bricks cleaned up from the property. Most of the materials we will use are recycled/reused, including a green house to be constructed out of 2 liter Coke bottles! 

Mayor Mark Mallory was a featured guest for the ground-breaking, much to the delight of the neighborhood residents and children in attendance. I approached a shy teen who was trying to take a photo of the Mayor from a distance with her phone saying, "Do you want your picture with the Mayor?" She demurred, but I offered again and she accepted. The Mayor was more than happy to pose with anyone! It was pretty cool. And the best part is that the garden promises to bring together the local community in a healthy, productive, sustainable project.

The experience really drove home one of my favorite quotes: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead

Healthy food, community cooperation, green initiatives… the list of positives about this project is extensive! But the highlight of it all for me was working with the huge labor force of children, ranging in age from about 3-15. The kids were hard-working, cooperative, excited, funny, and made my day… we constructed a 3-layer rectangular brick vegetable bed in about 30 minutes and there was tons of energy left over to do more! It was rewarding and fulfilling to be there, in the heart of one of the worst-reputed neighborhoods in the city, and find enthusiasm, energy, good behavior, and a desire to help and make a difference. I can't wait to go back and get to know these precious children better and help them to realize the impact they can have through continued involvement in bettering their community.

I'm attaching a couple pictures from the event:

*The farm, which will produce fresh vegetables out of a vacant lot on Walnut Street in Over-the-Rhine, is a partnership between the Mayor's Young Professional Kitchen Cabinet (YPKC), the local Service Employees International Union (SEIU 1), UC's College of Architecture, the OTR Community Council and the City of Cincinnati Urban Farm pilot program.

Myth-buster: tour of the recycling plant

It is not a myth – the compacting waste-collection trucks you see collecting recyclable materials from the green curbside bins around the city of Cincinnati are not just going to a secret entrance and emptying into the landfill. Rumpke actually has a separate Material Recovery Facility that sorts and processes recyclables and then sells them to various end-users. And I had the distinct honor of having a personal tour along with fellow members of my Health & Environment Committee, Sheila North and Joel Kubala. To further dispel the myth, I will share our adventure here.

When we arrived at the MRF (pronounced almost affectionately, “murph”), we had a quick intro to the facility by our tour guide, Ann Gray. She explained the "single-stream process" used at the facility, where items do not have to be sorted at the curb. The machinery used to sort the items are a work of genius! We soon donned our safety glasses, helmets and reflective vests for a look with our own eyes.

As you walk into the processing area, you are greeted by a mountain of recyclable goods on what is called the Tipping Floor. (yes, it was smelly) A front-loader is constantly pushing the goods into a higher and higher pile. 

The materials are loaded onto a conveyor belt, where they are conveyed up to a Disc Screener. The metal discs are rotating counter clockwise at a high rate of speed and the spaces between the discs allow containers such as glass, plastic jugs, cans and bottles to fall through, while the paper rides on top of the discs. There are fans blowing below to keep the paper going up the disc incline deck. I was unable to get a photo of this, but it was really neat to see. A screener below separates broken glass and whole containers from newspapers. The paper, whole containers and broken mixed glass are the conveyed to separate holding areas from there.

Items making it beyond this sorting point are finally subjected to human interaction, where several individuals monitor the conveyor belt and remove any remaining recyclable material. The rest is conveyed off to trash. As you can see, sometimes people get a little confused about what can be recycled... Biodegradable does not = recyclable in all cases! Ew!

As the items, through a great feat of engineering, are sorted and conveyed to their separate holding areas, they enter various packing equipment. For example, cardboard goes down a big chute where it is compressed and wired into bales for shipping to the end-buyer. The packaged bales are pushed out like pasta coming out the pasta machine, and you hear the rhythmic “thunk….. thunk…..” of the compressor as it does its job.

I was particularly fascinated with the newspaper process, as the turn-around time is just 2 days. As the newspapers find their way to the pile in the corner, they are loaded into semis, covered with a tarp, and transported to a paper plant in Franklin, Ohio, where they are made into paperboard. 

As we walked through the facility, we encountered bales and bales of recyclable materials, just waiting to be hauled off to their new life. 

They looked a little like contemporary art, inspiring me to get a little artistic with the photos. The aluminum can cubes were pretty cool – they all go to Anheuser-Busch, which is the largest recycler of aluminum. 

Heck, Rumpke even recycles their old bins!

Anyway, I would recommend a visit to any recycling facility that you are aware of, if you are interested in seeing what REALLY happens to all that stuff you put in your bin. It gives a sense of awe, in that there really isn’t any magic to it, just a little creative thinking and ingenuity.

One final point I’d like to make: I’ve heard several people validate their resistance to paying for recycling pick-up based on the fact that it is a for-profit business and the recycling facilities actually sell the goods to end-users. While this is true, when I asked about the profitability of the operation, I was told that over all the years they’ve been in business, they’re just breaking even. Some years they operate at a profit – this year they are at a major loss. This is because there is no market for some of the materials they collect. 

You know those green and yellow fund-raising dumpsters you see in school and church parking lots, where you can put your office paper and junk mail? Rumpke was paying $.61 per pound for that paper last June. Now they are only paying $.05 per pound. And while this is troubling, I’d rather have that paper bundled up and ready to be made into new paper when the market returns, rather than filling up the landfill. Did you know that 60% of the local landfill, Mt. Rumpke, could have been recycled?!? Ouch… Please reconsider your position on five extra bucks per month to sustain our earth as we know it today and add recycling to your family's waste-removal budget.

And always remember to reduce waste, reuse items and recycle those that you can’t!

 

Cincinnati = progressive and cutting edge

My committee for the Mayor’s Young Professional Kitchen Cabinet had the pleasure of hosting a guest at our meeting tonight – Brewster Rhoads, who is Governor Strickland’s representative for the Southwestern Ohio region. What a ball of energy! Brewster wowed us with countless reasons that we should all be bragging about how progressive and cutting edge our city is and I’d like to share a few of them right here.

 

Did you know that by the end of 2010, the percentage of power used in the city of Cincinnati that is generated from renewable energy will be the highest of any metropolitan area in the US? The future ‘front porch’ of our city, the ever-anticipated Banks project, will be majorly powered by solar power. Wonder why suddenly The Banks is receiving a big chunk of the economic stimulus money? No, not to build more parking garages. It’s to make it a truly green development. Shovel-ready, renewable energy projects – we got one! Yea Earth!

 

“What?” you say, “Cincinnati?!? Green and progressive?!? No way, I still remember going Christmas shopping at Pogue’s with my mother and spending the whole day downtown. It was a special event. There were department stores with deluxe window dressings and the streets were bustling. But not anymore. This city is dead. It will never be like that again.” Wellll, take another look my friend. Just as the decline of this once great city took many years, it will take more than just 3 years to get it back. But we are moving in the right direction, without a doubt. And a huge part of the renaissance that continues to pick up speed in the Queen City is our role in the state of Ohio’s vision to be the Silicon Valley for renewable and progressive energy. It is mandated that by 2025, 25% of the energy sold in the state of Ohio must have been generated from a renewable source. And half of that energy (so 12.5% overall) must have been generated IN Ohio. But how do we accomplish such an aggressive (but oh-so Earth friendly) goal? Brewster has a plan.

 

Ohio is the capital of auto parts manufacturing. No other state supplies (or supplied, as the case may be) the auto factories as heavily as Ohio. “Oh crap,” you say, “and just LOOK at the auto industry! We’re doomed!!!”

 

Now let’s look at the glass half full. The empty auto parts manufacturing facilities come along with a highly skilled workforce that is currently serving your fries at Burger King. And 12.5% of the energy consumed in our state must come from renewable sources in 15 years… which means lots of windmills and solar panels.

 

Have you seen the monstrous windmill in Cleveland on the shores of Lake Erie? We’re going to be seeing a lot more of these in the coming years. And we have to get the parts from somewhere. These towers are chock full of finely machined parts and gears. Not to mention the 300 foot towers they are mounted atop. Do you think it makes sense to ship these towers from China? Of course not. European companies that have already developed some of the technology are actively shopping for US sites to manufacture their products. And guess where they’re doing a lot of the looking? Yes, ma’am. It’s round on the ends and high in the middle…

 

And what about all this education spending we’re hearing about? Did you know that when public schools in Ohio build new or improved schools that they must be LEED silver certified in order to receive state funding? In the next three years, Cincinnati Public Schools will have 12 LEED silver schools – more than any other district IN THE COUNTRY. Not highest percentage, highest number of schools. I love it!

 

A few other cool tidbits: Cincinnati is the only city in the state of Ohio that offers a 15 year tax abatement to property owners that build their new building LEED certified. Talk about incentive to go green.

 

And remember all the press about the Emerald Ash Borer invading the area, effectively wiping out ash trees in our neighborhoods? Well, the powers that be in the city have worked out a great plan to resolve this issue. As the Parks district is going around and cutting down the dead and dying trees and replacing them with new, they are sending them to a mill in Chillicothe. The mill is processing the trees into lumber and returning them to a women and minority owned business in Wyoming (the city on the west side of I-75, not the old West), where they are made into furniture, flooring and wall paneling for the new schools. And all for the same price of pressed board furniture from China. Yea Earth!

 

So before you start poo-pooing our wonderful, diverse, progressive and growing city, think on some of these points. They are improvements and they continue each and every day due to the energy and dedication of citizens who care enough to make it happen rather than sit at home and commiserate about back in the good ol’ days of McAlpin’s and Crosley Field. I’ve no doubt those were good times, but I’ve also no doubt we’ll get back there again and very soon! Yea Cincinnati!

 

…stay tuned for a blog entry about my trip to the Materials Recovery Facility a couple weeks ago, complete with photo documentation…

A different perspective on the state of the world today

Remember back in the day, waaaay back in the 80’s and before? When you went shopping for something special like a piece of furniture, a new dress, a home decorative item and didn’t usually find it on your first trip? You sometimes spent weeks, and depending on what you were looking for, maybe even months scouring Kmart, the mall (notice I didn’t say malls), Sears catalog, perhaps a couple local boutiques, until you finally found what you had in mind. No Bed, Bath & Beyond, no Crate & Barrel, no IKEA, no Express or Ann Taylor or Talbot’s within a 20 minute drive or a click away on your laptop.

Maybe my memory is a little off having grown up in a town that STILL doesn’t have a full-blown Gap, but I was reminded of these days while walking downtown Cincinnati tonight and noticing the different merchants that have shops down here. Rather than get in my car and drive to the wine store and pizza place (now you know what I’m having for dinner tonight!), I decided to take a walk and get these things from my neighborhood. As I was passing an antique Persian rug dealer, I caught myself thinking, “Cool! I never knew I could get an antique Persian rug within a mile of my place!” Mental note for when I have an extra five or six grand I think would be best spent on something people walk on and my cats sleep on…

Later in my walk, pizza in hand, wine in my backpack, I passed a deluxe fabric shop and thought, “Really? You mean if I had the means and desire to re-cover my Value City Furniture couch, I could just walk down the street and pick out a pattern?” And I realized I could probably survive living downtown Cincinnati without a car if I really had to, although the variety of choices would be severely limited. Kind of like back when I was a kid and sometimes had to settle for what was available at The Little Red Shoe House because there simply weren’t any other stores in Traverse City that carried narrow shoes for toothpick skinny 9-year olds! And that got me started on the train of thought… maybe that’s where we are heading now with the contraction of our economy.

The S&P 500 index, which is in my opinion the best measure of the stock market in general, closed today at levels we haven’t seen since October, 1996. What were you doing 12 ½ years ago? What was life like? Egads, how things have changed for me! I was a brainy freshman at the fine institution that paid for my education, Western Michigan University, struggling to ace my honors Chemistry class, teaching my pre-calc teacher how to teach trigonometry, and skating by in my engineering drafting class since I couldn’t have cared less how to draft for engineers. I spent Tuesday and Thursday evenings rehearsing with the vocal jazz group I was lucky to audition into (which helps explain why I DON’T know that Seinfeld episode that every situation reminds you of), I didn’t have a car (my ’87 Ford Tempo, ‘Shirley Tempo,’ was being subjected to the whims of my still-lead-footed little brother back home), and shelling out $1.99 for an order of breadsticks at the Little Caesar’s in our Student Union was a true splurge. My, my, my what a difference 12 ½ years makes!

It’s hard to ignore the constant barrage of bad news right now. The Big D word is being thrown around more and more. No, not that D, this post is about the economy, not relationships! And we’re all beginning to wonder if Grandpa didn’t really have a point when he did the mental calculation of what a $175 pair of jeans would have cost back in the ‘40’s after the Great Depression. (for the record, that was $175 well-spent for what it does to my backside – MUCH better-spent than the fees I paid to PNC Bank for ONE record-keeping error!!!)

I find myself mourning the loss of stores like Linens’n Things and Circuit City. I mean, where am I supposed to go when Bed, Bath & Beyond, Target, Meijer and IKEA don’t have the perfect soap dispenser for my bathroom redecoration? Where do I turn for the latest flat-panel LCD tv when I don’t like the prices at Best Buy, Walmart or hh gregg?

So perhaps we’ve all become pretty spoiled over the past 20 or so years. Or maybe the past 50 or so years. I mean heck, as Americans we’ve been spoiled pretty much since the conclusion of the Revolutionary War when we gained the freedom to govern ourselves! Perhaps it is time to get back to basics.

There has been a nice undercurrent of thinkers and seekers lately pointing out that true happiness is probably not contingent on the size of your SUV (insert mental image of 105-pound soccer mom trying to back up her Excursion, almost needing a phone book to see out the rear-view), the square-footage of your home (how often are all four of those bathrooms REALLY in use anyway?), or the designer label on the sole of your shoes (while I can’t say from experience, don’t those Jimmy Choos do a number on your poor little piggies?). Deep down, we all know this. I mean, I confess to living in an apartment that is at least twice as spacious as I really need, and I DO own a pair of $175 jeans (did I mention how great my butt looks in them though?), but when I really sit down and think about my priorities and what I could and could not live without, I realize it’s probably not all bad in the long run.

Before you call me a Socialist, remember that I make my living by assisting individuals with maximizing their wealth by investing in the stock market. I’m not saying that we should all feel guilty for extracting pleasure from the material things in life. And I’m certainly not saying that consumerism is or should be dead! How will the stock price of Coach ever recover if the market for ridiculously expensive handbags bites the dust for good? 

I suppose I’m just recognizing that there is a balance and that our society as a whole was probably leaning a little too far to the ‘gimme-gimme’ side of the scale. It might not be the blackest day in American history when an average citizen strikes out to buy a new lamp for the living room and doesn’t find it on the first trip!

Happy Lent!

Now, I have no intention of making this blog a forum for religion or anything related to it, but I do have to share the homily that was given at Ash Wednesday Mass by Father Eric Knapp at St. Francis-Xavier church this week. I will state that if you and I have ever discussed religion, you will know that my opinion about religion is that it is simply a channel for people to express their faith (or lack thereof). I draw a distinct line between religion and faith. God doesn’t care so much about religion, I don’t think. What I think really matters is faith. Believing in something. Acknowledging a spiritual side to your soul. Living your life in a way that is fulfilling to you, leaving a positive mark on the world, treating others as you would like to be treated. I happen to choose to practice Catholicism as one way to express my faith, although I do not buy into the belief that it is the only true religion or that Catholics have it all figured out. Isn’t that the beauty of mystery?

 

But anyway, I digress. Father Knapp started his homily on Wednesday by saying quite joyfully, “Happy Lent!” When he was met with a thousand blank stares from the packed pews, he repeated himself a little louder, “Happy Lent!” The congregation responded with a semi-enthused, “Happy Lent.”

 

We’re all thinking to ourselves, “Happy Lent?? Is this guy nuts? I’m gearing myself up to abstain from red wine and chocolate for the next 6 weeks. There is nothing happy about that!”

 

Ah, but in a time of depressing headlines and gray sky weather, Father Knapp had a different idea – a message of hope and joy. He reminded us that the season of Lent (the 46 days leading up to Easter) is a time of preparation. We ought to be joyfully preparing to celebrate Easter, not by giving up things that we love and enjoy (like red wine and chocolate, thank you very much), but rather by trying to rid our lives of things that don’t actually enrich our lives. Not depriving ourselves of things that make us happy, but doing away with things that may even take away from true happiness. For me, that would be cussing. (I know my Dad loves it when I drop the accidental f-bomb in his presence, so he will be happy to hear of my Lenten “sacrifice.”)

 

I have been musing on this message for a couple days now, and thought that perhaps it would be one worth sharing since it isn’t exactly a religion thing, but more about how we live our lives day-to-day. “Giving up” a habit or practice or thought-process that may be toxic to the joy in our lives is a great theme. Not just for Lent and those that observe it, but for all of us! So perhaps as we all anxiously await spring and the end of dismal, cold days, it is a good time to “spring clean” our lives of the things that take away from hope and joy and make room for the good things. Like red wine and chocolate…

 

Happy Lent!

 

Liz Gilbert, Feb. 18, 2009

I’m sorry that it has taken me so long to publish this, but I wanted it to be perfect. Last Wednesday, February 18, 2009, I had the distinct pleasure of hearing Elizabeth Gilbert – author, seeker and wise woman extraordinaire – speak at the Smart Talk Conversation Series at the Aronoff Center in Cincinnati. And let me tell you, she was fantastic. Everything I had hoped she would be. Wise, thought-provoking, funny, cute, entertaining, etc. I can’t stop talking about her talk!

 

The conversation began with Liz modestly explaining that the success of Eat, Pray, Love was entirely unexpected and disproportionate to the popularity of her previous writings. Before, she sold 7 copies of each book – she’s pretty certain to all her mom’s friends. And suddenly the story of getting her life turned around sells 7 MILLION?!? She refers to it as a parade outside her window, and as she’s inside doing laundry or the dishes, she’ll look out and say, “Is that really still going on?”

 

Her book seemed to strike a deep chord with millions of women, for a variety of reasons. But she is concerned that they think she now has it all figured out, kind of like a Sudoku puzzle – she’s finally put all the numbers in the right squares and voila, she can sit back and just enjoy life without a care for the next 30 years.

 

But she doesn’t have it all figured out. She just made a dramatic effort to change her life. And changing your life is difficult, expensive, frustrating and extremely irritating to those around you. Her acknowledgement of this (especially the expensive part!) was extremely comforting to me!! But she worries about a dangerous trend of authors and media giving a quick fix for lives, kind of like flipping a switch. People who are searching for something find these resources, embrace them, and experience a temporary euphoria that inevitably leads to a deeper crash.

 

Modern society offers women so many choices these days that it can almost generate a crippling neurosis. She defines neurosis as a situation where “we don’t want what we want,” or where symbolic satisfactions cannot fulfill real needs. (like thinking we want a brand new Mercedes but what we really want is admiration and acceptance) We are very vulnerable to feeling this way because of the confusing array of options for how we can live our lives. More choices are not necessarily good as we end up second-guessing ourselves due to fear of NOT making the other choice. Just when we arrive at a decision for our lives, we see someone doing it another way and can’t help but wonder…should I have done it that way???

 

Part of the issue is that there is no longer a standard for the “ideal woman.” You know the old standard: grow up to be a great cook, wife, mother and housekeeper. Because we now have so many other possibilities for our lives, we are often crippled by the options.

 

She described a column that Martha Beck wrote in O Magazine about 4 kinds of women: Woman #1 chose to be a stay at home mom. But she is conflicted about whether she should have had a career. Woman #2 chose not to have children and have a solid career but she is conflicted that perhaps she should have had children. Woman #3 is doing both, but is conflicted that neither her career or her kids will live up to their full potential because of her lack of undivided attention. And Woman #4 she calls a Mystic. The Mystic can be any of the previous 3 women, except that she has found her inner core voice and believes in the path she has chosen.

 

We are all kind of called upon to be Mystics these days as it is very challenging to live with all these choices. (Note: I tried to find this article on oprah.com, looking at each issue back to 2002, but did not find it…)

 

Her commentary on marriage and the high rate of divorce these days was particularly interesting. She articulates that as early as 100 years ago, marriage as an institution was much more a means of preserving a community and not so much about love and companionship. People entered into marriage out of utility with low expectations for love, so marriages lasted longer because they fulfilled other needs in the community. Now that marriage is more based on companionate love, there are bound to be more divorces because when you get the heart involved, the marriage becomes intrinsically fragile. Referencing her own first and second marriages, she states that the big difference is that when she entered into the second, she knew she was gambling.

 

Her follow-up book to Eat, Pray, Love is a study of marriage called, Matrimonium. As she was writing the book, she was feeling burdened by a tremendous sense of obligation to her readers. It had to live up to Eat, Pray, Love! Upon finishing the book, she took it to Kinko’s, had it copied and bound, opened it up and realized it was all wrong. All 500 pages of it. But the book was due – she had already been paid for it! She wasn’t sure what to do, until one night she had a dream where she was begging her publishers for her life. She woke up sobbing. And if there is one thing she has learned, it is that, “If you wake up sobbing, this is a message.”

 

She ended up asking her publishers for more time to consider the book, and they granted it. This decision was based on a Brazilian saying, “Listen to the whispers or soon you will be listening to the screams.”

 

As women, we often have a conflict between what our heart is telling us and what our head is telling us to do. But we really should not listen to either. Our heads are confused, full of too many ideas. Our hearts are too soft – they really just want to give and receive love and can lead us down the wrong path. What we need to listen to is our gut – our bodies. When we are making the wrong decision, the body knows and it expresses itself through pain – the whispers to start, then the crippling illness when it becomes a scream.

 

Think of it this way: our bodies have had millions of years of evolution to develop. Our heads, or our psyche, have really only been in use for thousands of years. Our “software” is much less developed than our bodies. When a femur bone is broken, our body heals it in weeks or months. But we have still not found a sure and quick way to heal a broken heart.

 

So if our gut doesn’t feel right, we need to listen. As an aside, my mom actually used this quite a bit when my brother and I were teenagers. More often than not, when I was preparing to try and get away with something, she would pull out the old, “This doesn’t feel right in my gut,” and nip my plans in the bud. For example, as a sophomore in high school, my friends and I decided that it was time for us to try drinking. We made plans on where, got someone to find us some wine, and were all ready to go. As I was preparing to head out, my mom said to me, “I get the feeling that tonight is a significant night in your social life, but it just doesn’t feel right to me in my gut. Please remember the consequences of getting caught doing something illegal.” Do you think I even came within 50 feet of alcohol that night?!? How could I argue with that?

 

But the lesson here is that when our body is sending us a message, we need to listen. Sometimes, “I don’t know,” is a perfectly legitimate answer. So Liz decided to shelve the book for six months and just live life. She rode her bike, ate ice cream, started a garden, and swam in the Delaware River. (I want this life!!) She also started a daily ritual she calls a “silence bath.” Her philosophy is if we can find 10 minutes a day to shower, we can find 10 minutes a day to sit in silence. She takes her silence bath by taking her cat into her bedroom, laying down, closing her eyes and just listening for 10 minutes. (she joked that some might call this a nap!) But it works for her.

 

Eventually she set a date for herself and tried writing again on October 1. This time, rather than forcing it, she just started on a line and let it go on a path. She finished the book a couple weeks ago and it is perfect! (Now WHEN does it come out?!?)

 

The point of the story though, is that by listening to her gut she was able to avoid a full-blown crisis and rather just had a nice, efficient, week-long mini-crisis that was a very non-forcing and gentle process.

 

All of this is a reminder that as women we have to remember that this is an unprecedented time to be a woman. And “to thine own self be gentle.”

 

A comment on this, if I may, is that I couldn’t agree more with the notion that we have more choices than we can grasp. I’ve always felt like there is no better time to be a woman because not only can we pretty much do ANYTHING we want, but there are countless initiatives in place that encourage and enable this! But it can be crippling to try and find the right path without a lot of self-awareness and giving ourselves permission to change our mind and say, “I don’t know.”

 

After the formal speech was over, there was a question and answer session with questions from the audience. A couple quotes that I found to be full of wisdom are below:

 

“To compose our character is our sole life’s responsibility.” – Montagne

 

“I do not want to be the poster child for everyone to get divorced and go to India. Geography does not give the answers. Sitting in India doesn’t enlighten one anymore than sitting in your garage makes you a car.”

 

In regards to taking the journey of your lifetime, whether it be a cruise around the world, an African safari, or just a month-long road trip, her advice is to set a date, even if it is in 20 years. Having that date will make it happen.

 

When asked who she would like to have dinner with if she could pick anyone, her answer is Pemo Chodran, a Canadian woman who is the first Tibetan monk from North America. She has written several influential books, including, Start From Where You Are and When Things Fall Apart.

 

And finally, when asked her thoughts on choosing to be childless, her final comment on that was, “Being childless isn’t selfish. Being selfish makes you selfish.” I can think of a hundred words to put in place of ‘childless’ and have that quote be true!

 

In all, the night was uplifting, fulfilling and I think we all left feeling a little more empowered. I know that I had a couple “aha!” moments through the night. I’ll keep my eye out for the new book and will send a message when I find that it is being published!

 

Now, to thine ownself be gentle…

 

Kelley