The Hugging Tree Giveaway!

Hi Friends!  Today I have a special gift to share.  As many of you know, I am a champion for the expansion of Mary Gordon's international program Roots of Empathy.  It is a program that brings babies and their parents into school classrooms to teach the language of feelings and empathy for all.  Because I love this program and would be thrilled to see it come to my community, I'm reaching out, writing letters, emails, talking to people, and praying.  As it sometimes happens when I'm inspired by something good, it manifests into a creative project.  The Hugging Trees are new items I'm showcasing this week in the shop, with 100% of the profits to benefit the expansion of ROE.  Today, I'd like to share a Hugging Tree with one of you!

The Hugging Tree

New for 2013! It's The Hugging Tree! 

*****Special Announcement: Starting this month, 100% of the profits from the sale of The Hugging Tree will be donated to the expansion of Roots of Empathy in the United States. Roots of Empathy is an award winning international program which teaches the literacy of emotion and empathy through nine classroom visits by a new parent and a baby. Creator Mary Gordon believes that babies are the best teachers of empathy because they have not yet learned to hide their emotions. By involving children in the unfolding story of the parent-child relationship, Roots of Empathy is engaging students in a world of social and emotional learning

Mary writes: "Roots of Empathy places babies in the role of teachers because babies love without borders or definition."

"This program puts relationships at the center of what creates a civil society, whether that society is a small classroom, the whole school, the community, the country, or our ever shrinking globe."

******In every instance of child abuse and neglect, empathy is the missing element.

*******Studies have proven a 50% reduction of aggression in the classroom. It is changing the world, child by child.


About The Hugging Tree:

Made with all new materials and filled with soft poly fill, this item simply feels good to hug when you're having a rough day. 

* The Hugging Tree helps with posture; the canopy and trunk support the shoulders and spine while seated upright.

* Excellent for relaxing yoga meditations

* Fits well with woodland or nature themed decor

* Supportive to the neck and head while reclining; excellent reading pillow for home, office or classroom.

* Teddy bears love to sit under it.

* Custom colors available, please convo with requests Patterns may vary depending upon availability. 

About the giveaway:

In the comments, please share a true story about a time when someone's compassionate kindness healed a hurt inside.  I will choose the winner using a random number generator.  Please notify me of your Hugging Tree color choice and include how you would like to be contacted if you are the winner.  I will not publish personal information or email addresses.   

Love,

Jenny

The Tangle

Because this blog is not anonymous, there's a wide, deep river of life and dialogue that is happening under the surface of these weekly reflections. There are characters and conflicts, long discussions, life lessons and grief.  There are moments of loving kindness, freedom and joy, gobs of daily, boring routine, relationships that wax and wane in their intensity.

There are anecdotes and situations that arise with no apparent meaning, which call us to question and wait in a state of unknowing. 

And I leave those interesting bits out for the sake of privacy.

Yet still I am compelled to write through the complicated issues. To capture in some inadequate manner the emotional truth of events that bind us like the jumbled string of Charlie Brown's kite.  

So far, this is a season full of sunshine and children swimming, a season of discovering new running routes and blissful bike rides on the shaded greenway, a season of  playing music and creativity, a season of fireflies and feeding carrots to the horses that live on our street, a season of back yard campfires and nights spent reading Great Expectations aloud before bedtime.  It is a season of swinging in suspended chairs and hammocks under a canopy of dogwood trees.  With all this beauty, there's another, darker shadow.  A  tangle in my heart.  The kind of tangle that appears when someone we love, who lives far away, is experiencing cancer.  

This tangle also includes the knots of life-long relationships. The patient and the family surrounding this patient   are a mass of complicated knots.  I have learned, through painful interaction, that my role is extremely limited.  This is a drama from which I must observe from the shadows of the curtains offstage.

This is a tangle which will unravel without much interaction from me, except to observe and breathe silently along.

Today I pray for healing and the shrinking of tumors between people that no one can see on a scan.

There's also this complicated knot of feeling beautifully, vibrantly alive in contrast to another person's illness.  Have you ever felt guilty about simply being healthy when someone else is suffering?  I used to feel this way when my father was fighting the cancer in his chest.

I felt guilty to be alive and well.

My dad said, "My demise is coming."  He said he wasn't afraid to die.

But I am.  And I was afraid of that moment when I would have to say goodbye to him.  It was terrible.  It was fully of messy, salty tears mixed with choking sobs and snot and guilt.  Other people were in the room, so embarrassed by my pain that they left.  I don't know if he could hear or understand me, so bloated was his face, his mouth slack jawed and open, sucking air.

It was a time when I walked around wearing a cloak of helplessness, chain mail heavy.  I didn't know if I would ever be able to take off that cloak.

Some days, I still wear it.

Elliot's DIY Hammock Project

It's almost time to close our windows and turn on the air conditioning.  In fact, yesterday would have been a good day to do that.  Instead, we found some shade and set up a pretend campsite with Elliot's first summer project: a DIY hammock.

We had the hammock frame from a purchase I made after graduating from college.  Seriously, after all that writing of academic jargon, I just wanted to lay down under a tree and sleep for a few years.  Unfortunately, the rope hammock I bought with the frame did not last, and since that time we even lost the metal hooks to attach a new hammock.  That frame has been sitting awkwardly beside the garage for years.  While searching for a fun summer project, Elliot found this easy, economical version of a hammock.  He even got to work in his dad's shop creating new metal hooks. (He used two metal paint can openers which he bent into U shapes using a mounted vice grip and a hammer.  Now he wants to learn blacksmithing!)  Empowering Elliot to create independently is the most rewarding aspect of home education and parenting.

Next, we gathered the left over rope that Richard used for my swinging chair and an old twin sheet.

By making a gathered loop at each end of the sheet, securing the loop with a rope and several knots, we then fed a longer length of rope through the loops at the ends of the sheet and attached them to Elliot's hand made hooks.  I secured the ropes to the frame for added security.  Here is the link to the wonderful instructions that inspired us:

http://outsidemom.com/2011/05/make-your-own-hammock/

Happy summer!

Melt the Fear

As our lovely, fragrant, tender month of May falls closer to June, a sense of freedom is in our hearts and on our minds.  We are letting go and slipping into a more relaxed way of living.  If I could go back in time and talk to myself, I would train myself to stop engaging with life like a bull, crashing into problems head-on, with force, determination and exertion.  I would tell myself to relax and breathe more.

I would teach myself to find that lovely balance between work and play, and then keep on that path.  I would remind myself that it's good to be a hard working person, but that excesses in work lead to excesses in laziness and periods of apathy.

This morning I'm a little bereft, having just finished a deliciously satisfying memoir that I planned to read pool-side this summer.  It never made it into to the bag of towels and swim goggles. As soon as it was available at the library, I chomped it up in the course of three days.  If you like stories of struggle that empower and inspire the survivor in you, you'll love Cheryl Strayed and her story of hiking the Pacific Coast Trail.  Wild is a tale that grips. Even if you're not a hiker or a back country enthusiast, the story of her solo journey is intensely powerful.  Most importantly, what Strayed has to say about fear on the trail and how she handled it is something I need to learn.

I have an embarrassing problem.  After our experience on the Appalachian Trail, I have not gone back to the wilderness.  Sure, I've been on an abundance of local hikes in our well traveled woods, stepping around poisonous snakes and facing loose and aggressive dogs, but I still have yet to put on my big pack and return to the glorious mountains.  This is a serious disappointment to my husband, who loved our AT trip so much that even after travelling the world,  he counts our experience in Shenandoah as his number one favorite experience away from home. 

Instead of getting right back on the trail and facing my fear of being mauled or having to perform first aid on a mauled husband, I came home, sat comfortably at my computer screen for several years, gained ten pounds, and savored the bliss and comfort of home and society.  Since that experience, I don't take living in our home and community for granted.  I appreciate the sound of traffic.  I appreciate businesses and schools and churches and neighbors and the sight of people everywhere.  The seventeen bears on the trail and the repeated rush of adrenaline and panic that made me choke, but which I worked through, were life changing.  Of course I've learned, from everyone who hasn't had my particular experience, how utterly foolish it was of me to be afraid of the gentle black bears.  Most people speak of them as if they are large kittens, and compare them to their much more aggressive cousins, the Grizzlies.

I know that in order to grow beyond this limiting fear, I need to get back on the trail.  I live in a place where the mountains are a few hours from home.  We could be taking weekend trips and exploring this beautiful land often.  In fact, we have just reserved a delightfully quaint and charming cabin near Asheville and are planning a hike in the fall.  We are looking forward to the sweeping views atop the balds and the way it feels to spend entire days outdoors.  Elliot and Ozzie will be with us this time.  I have to face my problem.  There's not going to be any way to avoid my fear.

Some people say that instead of fear, I should just have faith.

Which I do, of course.  Which is what got me through the first time around.

But this time, instead of charging into my problem head-on, like a bull,  I want to first develop trust and understanding in the process that can bring a person out of fear and into liberated success.  The preparations I need to do all relate to the psychological aspects of trail energy. I need to learn how to anticipate and work though the intensity of my feelings in the wilderness.  Among the life of the wild, my aliveness feels amplified ten fold.  My senses are heightened to an extent that I literally vibrate inside. I want to just keep walking and feel gentle and light and free inside, minus adrenaline rushes.  Maybe that will not happen for me.  Maybe it's not supposed to feel like waking in the park.  Maybe that would be missing the entire point of the adventure.

I'm nearly reaching the end of my fitness goal, and as I work to shed the last few pounds, another goal rises to the surface.  I need to melt fear like pounds.

***P.S.  French Horn practice is going well!  I was able to reconnect with my high school band teacher, who is delighted to know I am still playing music:)

Ignorance is not bliss

Here's a shocking confession:

I have been comfortably ignorant for all of my life.  And here's another truth: being ignorant, while adding a false sense of security, never brought about a sensation of bliss.  For me, bliss always arrives in the split second after a mind-opening, soul-expanding discovery.

I'm talking about the kind of discovery that brings you from a limited, "I can't do this" perspective, to the growing awareness that you can. You might not be a virtuoso or a prodigy, but the moment you arrive at the overlook on the mountain and see with your own eyes that you can do it, it also means you can go on to do something even more exciting. It is totally possible to start a chain reaction of doing things you thought you couldn't, and thus expand the satisfaction and enjoyment of your life.   You don't have to be a professional or an expert to have bliss.  You just have to decide that it's okay to be ignorant at first.

The embarrassing fact of my existence is that I limit myself.  I restrict my own potential.  I wrap the bonds of ignorance around my wrists and cover my eyes in secret shame because I am afraid to admit that I am ignorant.  I don't like the feeling of asking for help or asking questions.  It's uncomfortable to walk blindly into any situation and reveal the depth of my non-understanding.  I've lamely attempted to cover up my ignorance since I was a child in school.  Part of my identity was tethered to this idea that I was "smart." Someone forgot to mention that the "smart" kids are the ones that ask the most questions.

Seeking often requires letting things rest for a while until the ripples of water you create with questions vanish and the surface becomes clear.  Yesterday I let things rest and tried to be comfortable admitting my own ignorance.  It's not shameful to sit in a dark room.  In one way we are all ignorant:  none of us can say what will happen tomorrow.

I'm not a fan of the "for dummies" series, because it reinforces a negative stigma about not knowing some basic knowledge in a particular field.

So, if you're wondering how it happened that I was suddenly stopped in my tracks by this recent epiphany, it all has to do with tooting my own horn.

Yesterday I realized that there were some barriers to my decision to join the Greensboro Concert Band.  The first barrier was that I didn't know how to get the second valve lever to loosen, so that I could play a smooth scale.  In the past, I would have had to drive downtown to find a music store, take it in for a repair and wait for the bill.  Now, with the totally accessible and non intimidating teachers on youtube, I watched a demonstration and successfully repaired and conditioned my instrument!  That victory led me to ask another question:  how would I approach this new decision to devote six months of daily practice?

I decided to proceed as a person waking up from a coma:  as a new baby learning to walk again.

What I received was a discovery and a memory:  the discovery, which bought bliss, was that I still have muscle memory and can match notes with guided instruction.  The second was a memory from the fall of 1989, when I was preparing for college.  In all of the junk I packed for the dorm room, I unhappily left my horn behind because I was afraid to appear ignorant to the college music department.  I was afraid that I had only been pretending to play along from 5th grade to my senior year, despite the fact that I earned an outstanding I rating in a competition.  Despite the fact that I also learned to play other brass instruments like the coronet and the trumpet.  Despite the fact that repeatedly I experienced huge thrills performing in concerts with our band.  Playing in these concerts were something extremely special in my young life and I took them for granted.

I took it all for granted and did not comprehend the positive energy that arrives in your soul when you are a practicing musician. As a teen, the thrill of playing took a back seat to social acceptance.  I was teased for being in band, and publicly razzed on the bus if I brought my horn home to practice.  It was large, I bumped people in the knees on the way out, and I looked funny carrying so much.  I allowed kids on the bus to limit my enjoyment and success.  So I didn't practice nearly as much as the flute section, who could fit their instruments in a backpack.  I didn't bother to take the sheet music home and practice with my mouthpiece, not realizing that I could creatively solve my personal problems.

I also didn't feel brave enough to explain to my band teacher, who was totally kindhearted and understanding, what I didn't know about certain pieces or about scales.  I never felt bold enough to explain the situation that had me sitting with a large brass instrument in the back of the room, hoping to hit a couple of notes now and then so it would appear that I was playing right along.

He must have known. I knew that underneath those generous grades on my report card, he was happy that I just kept showing up year after year.  I was learning a little just by being a part of the group and I was well behaved.  So, A for Jenny, every single time.  Even though Jenny didn't pass the written final.

So there I was, in 1989, going off to a university famous for a party atmosphere, wanting desperately to feel "smart" and "cool" and not anything like a band geek.

When I got to college and heard the band during football games, felt the rush of their enthusiasm, I was overcome with surges of regret. I stood like a hopeless outsider wanting to go in.  Fear of being ignorant kept me out.  There was no bliss in going off to the drunken section of the stands, where all the non musicians sat lamely with their cups of froth.  Ignorance is not bliss.

The point of this reflection?  Be like a baby.

Be unknowing.

Then ask a question.  Bliss will follow.

A Heart Wind in Spring

Spring brings me to the banquet, calling me to embrace the fullness of life. The happiness jar is filling up fast!

Last week, we hosted a party where children ran through the house playing hide-and-seek with flushed cheeks.  Their laughter and squeals surrounded the adults in waves of happy nostalgia for our own childhoods.  Although the gentle spring rain kept us indoors, we celebrated the house feeling full; of thumpity foot traffic on the stairway, of giggling whispers and surprised shouts, of bonding and caring between families sharing parenting and family life.

Days after the party, we were still celebrating.   Elliot has been learning that while he wishes he had a brother, pangs of loneliness can be dissolved by reaching out and making plans.  He learned that his close friend Jack also wishes he had a brother.  Jack was able to spend the night after the party.  On mother's day, while his mom had to work (hospice nurses are needed no matter the holiday), Jack and Elliot spent time being brother-friends at the lake shore.

Almost anything can be healed and recovered through friendship.


On my journey to help Roots of Empathy come to North Carolina, I'm discovering more about myself than I am about the politics of forming committees and raising funds...two tasks which for which I am inexperienced and resistant to take on.  Yet the benefits of the attempt have already widened my perspective and helped me to "feel" my way through life in a more attentive way.

The work of my heart always seems to manifest into something through my hands.  It has come to my attention that I enjoy business in this simple form: exchanging a handmade good for the benefit of another something good.  So after the party, I returned to my creative space and this is what came out:

 These are something I'm naming "The Hugging Trees."  The green heart on each trunk symbolizes the green blanket in a Roots of Empathy classroom, where a small baby becomes a teacher of empathy and love.

When I am working on creating these trees, I feel a deep sense of meaning.  I feel kind and soft inside.  The sky feels more open and accepting when I walk outdoors.  It's a new experience to be relaxed and gentle with myself.  It is enough just to be who I am,  to take long ride bikes with Elliot, to read stories aloud, to wander and discover the unexpected.  Just yesterday as we were wandering through Downtown, I discovered a concert band that anyone can join.  Here is a wonderful opportunity to reclaim something I truly love!  Playing my French Horn in a band!

What is this air I'm breathing lately?

A heart wind in spring.

Happy Mother's Day!

As a baby, Emily was truly joyful, affectionate, and easy to please.  The same is true today.

At age two, she had already experienced something traumatic.  When she was 18 months old, she had a febrile seizure that sent her to the hospital in the back of an ambulance.  I thought she had died in my arms.  My mother performed cpr while I watched in fear for my child.  She stopped breathing and later went into a deep sleep.  Her time in the hospital was very difficult, as we were separated from one another by a crib with tall bars.  

Thankfully, she went on with a healthy childhood and never experienced another seizure.  She found bliss everywhere, but especially loved visits to her grandparents home.

From age nine til now, Emily endures long car rides (over 14 hours) to see either me or her dad.  Still, she smiles.

There is a ten year difference between the arrival of my children.  Elliot coming into our lives was like starting all over from scratch.  He changed all of our lives.  He amplifies joy.

And he has a sweet tooth like you wouldn't believe.  

Elliot kept us all busy with his playful exploration of his world.  He loved to dance and still does.

Despite a ten year age difference, they love one another so much.  In my eyes, they are more alike than different.

On this mother's day, I'm thinking of my children, my mom and the memory of my grandmothers.  I'm thinking of my friends who inspire me with their stories of mothering. But I'm also thinking of two friends who have tried for years to have a baby.  Ironically, these friends are two of the most loving, kind, nurturing, gentle people I've ever known.  When I think of their struggle to become parents, I see my children as miracles.  As masterpieces of God's love.  And I am humbled.  

Happy Mother's day to all on this special day.  Happy Mother's Day to the childless givers who nurture and enrich their communities.  Happy Mother's Day to the ones who by the example of just being themselves, promote peace and kindness.  Happy Mother's Day to those who are having a rough time in their relationship with their moms, or who have had to grieve the loss of their mom.  My father lost his mother at age thirteen.  This day was bound in sadness for him for many many years.  He was born on Mother's Day and tried to keep that pocket of sadness hidden while we sang to him and ate cake.

Maybe for some, Mother's Day is hard because you are separated by hundreds or thousands of miles.

The reality of being a mom means that you eventually have to let go.  While there is a certain freedom in that, it can be the most difficult challenge of an adult life.  In some ways, I never let go.  I never let go of the love that I have for both of my children.  In Mary Gordon's words, "the relationship between a parent and a child is the most important relationship under the stars."