Welcome to the 2nd gift in Resiliency Workshop

No. 2.  Stay Full
Running on empty? Stay full to do what is yours to do today ...that's enough.

This chapter is about filling up with what soothes, and what matters... all within sight of the stresses of the frontlines.  

This second gift in the Resiliency Workshop is about finding ourselves depleted and immediately setting about replenishing and nourishing ourselves. Beginning again... in this moment, which is where we will find (and have always found...) our power to be and do what needs doing.


What can you let in that soothes you... right now?

This is the relevant question to being resilient on the frontlines of love.  I have noticed that my comforts are likely to be small, humble, but at hand.

Do you know what works for you?  Let's find out and use it to fill up.

1.

Video: What you can expect

Hello again,
SWEET SMALL STEPS are powerful, no matter what stressors you find.

 Incrementally, you will return to your center... when you stay full. 

And that, my friend, makes for a better day.

Rev. Em

2.

Listen to the Audible audio of the chapter...

Gift No. 2 - Stay Full
Running on empty? Stay full to do what is yours to do today. That's enough.

3.

Process:  Make a Wholeness Happy List. 

Make the list...
for your eyes only
Start with what you are grateful for & work outward. Put on this list whatever fills you up. It could be an activity like a hot bath, or a thing…  like the color orange, or puppies, where just the idea

This Micro Video
will walk you through this gift.

of it will lighten and cheer you.  Keep it in your wallet and refer to it daily. It’s a silent, superpower of wholeness.

Make a list as a tool of sustainability. It is effective... and affecting.


The things on it might be silly... or small... or tender.  

They might be an image, a sound, a memory, a poem? You are the judge here.  Don't allow anyone else to have an opinion.  This is for you-not them.

   • Put on the list the small things that please you... just when thinking about them.
   • Consider images, colors, sounds, poems, kindnesses & landscapes.
   • It could be an activity like a hot bath, or a thing… like the color orange, or puppies,
     where just the idea of it will lighten and cheer you. 
 


Start with what your heart is grateful for and work outward.

Put on it whatever fills you up.

Keep it in your wallet and refer to it daily.
Journal about this on the PDF pages provided below or in the journal of your choice.

4.

Questions to write about... because your experience matters.
Write in a journal you already have or make this DIY resiliency journal  to consider your experiences more thoroughly.

You probably have everything you need to make it:  a printer, a 3 hole punch and a loose leaf binder... Download the PDF pages at right:
Picture
Click to download PDFs of journal pages for this chapter.
  1. What does staying full mean to you? How would your day be different if you felt well-resourced, loved, able and confident (i.e. full)?
  2. What fills you up? What can you easily let in to nourish you? (That's the key: make it easy...)
  3. What are you currently doing to take care of yourself that's working? What is not working well?  How and in what ways? What would make that care more effective & sustainable?
  4. How much energy/time/creativity do you devote to filling yourself up each week? 
  5. What is one thing you can concretely do this week to re-source yourself? 
  6. What resistance, beliefs, or fears arise when you allow yourself to listen?  What is the quality of your inner voice? Do you remember hearing it before in your life?  What did it say?
  7. What habits get in the way of you feeling ‘not enough’?  What would it be like to not have them?

5.

Stay Full - GIFT No. 2
Read Along with the audio

I was not raised to wait around for someone else to do things for me.


I was assured they wouldn’t. My mother, Betty, was an action hero in her prime—always in motion and seeking more or better. In terms of husbands, more was better. She had five (but responsibly, not all at one time).

EATING OUT WITHOUT ME
“I always made more money than any of them.” As a CPA,
Betty relentlessly kept score, but it was also about companionship. Husbands were a lifeline and referred power (that’s why she liked attorneys). They were apparently easier to find than real opportu‐ nities in the accounting profession during the post-war decades. To Betty’s restive credit, she embodied consideration and civility in all the divorces and endings—at least, the four for which I was present. It was a good lesson. Betty stayed friends with her exes until their deaths; she unhappily outlived them all.
Picture Gift No. 1 is from both the books: Begin Again as well as the Field Guide. Available for purchase from Amazon, Apple and IngramSpark.

FIVE YEARS INTO MY CAREGIVING WITH SIX MORE TO GO, MY MOTHER began leveraging her dementia to continue to see those husbands.

All of them were dead in my time—but not in hers. In her time traveling, she could still have dinner with them—all of them.

“JOHN W. CAME BY YESTERDAY,” SHE TOLD ME ONE DAY WHEN I visited her in assisted living. “We went to lunch.”

AS USUAL, I PLAYED ALONG. IT SEEMED IRRELEVANT TO A FINE moment, to share that he had been dead for sixteen years. “Oh. Where did you go?” I asked, hoping for a clue as to when she was remembering. Usually it was a favorite hangout. It gave me her geopositional and temporal coordinates. On occasion, I might momentarily join her there, adding bits from my own recollection of the place. ”Did you have that amazing marinated wild-caught salmon?”

OR SOMETIMES, AS HER ILLNESS PROGRESSED IN HOSPICE, SHE WOULD be unreachable. “You don’t know the restaurant.” On these occa‐ sions, she explained in a tone that was one part apologetic, the other part sadness. “It’s a new place, you haven’t been to it yet.” She was beginning to leave me behind. Our time of sharing was ending; uncertainty was expanding. Death was nearing.

IN HOSPICE, I KIDDED HER ABOUT THE HUSBANDS THAT SHE COULD not clearly remember. “You never got it right. You married them as trophy husbands but they thought it was the other way around.”

SHE LAUGHED. I DID TOO. IT FELT SO SATISFYING TO BE WITH HER there with the hospice staff as witness to the joy of letting the nattering “not enoughs” go. All that mattered was our deep- hearted, grateful little chuckle together. Oddly, in letting our ‘not enoughs’ go, I could fill up. In that moment, I felt no fear. I was full.

                                                                                             • • •

Stay Full


WHEN I AM EMPTY, EVEN SMALL STUFF IS AN OBSTACLE.
Like whitewater rafting, with enough water, the raft will find its way around the rocks, but when the river is low with ‘boney water’, as the river guides say, even a small boulder will block you.

IN THIS CAREGIVING VENTURE, DON’T MAKE THE ROOKIE (entrepreneurial) mistake of paying yourself last and allowing your tank to run dry. (I, myself, being an unfortunate example of this...in several businesses.) It is dodgy management.

THIS MIDDLE-GROUND OF CARING IS A FULCRUM WHERE YOU CAN leverage worlds. Caring for yourself equally with the other is not an original thought, but an ancient and golden-rule balance. We make it orig‐ inal, each time we practice. Love your beloved as yourself. (It works for your neighbor, too.)

AS A CAREGIVER, STAYING FULL IS ESSENTIAL, BUT REALLY, WHEN IS it not?
I must stay able: loved up, prayed up, rested up, and supported in whatever way I can let in. That’s the trick: what can you easily let in that nourishes you? Perhaps it’s poetry, music, gardening, walking yourself (or the dog), playing the piano (or with the kids). A cup of tea? A good book? A bodice buster? What makes me happy? What fills me? I keep a list in my wallet and feel improved just by thinking about it, because caregiving cannot be about doing more to fix our loved ones. If it is, we are lost. I can never do enough to stop death.
​
YOUR SWEET PEOPLE MAY OR MAY NOT DIE TODAY--BUT IF YOU STAY full, they'll see that you will be okay. It will let them move on in peace, and that is a gift to everyone in attendance.

STAY FULL TO DO WHAT IS YOURS TO DO TODAY...THAT’S ENOUGH. That’s a good day.

                                                                                  • • •
Grace & Stay Full
Below is a sound meditation.  "Stay Full" is still my practice.