Welcome to the FIRST gift in Resiliency Workshop
No. 1. Wait Here
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No. 1 Wait Here
This first micro-video is a welcome & to also explain the flow and the process for what you can expect. |
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There is great power in a small respite of stillness...
We, human beings, might stumble from the stress, even when a higher, lighter, and easier path is available, which we failed to see because we needed a bit more clarity.
This first gift is about beginning again... right here, in this moment, to find your inner point of stillness. It is a powerful and grounded place to find your next right move – no matter the challenges in front of you.
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Intro to Wait Here: micro-videos
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Hello,
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I am & have walked this walk...
We are all in process as human beings; we are all learning. I approach this workshop as your informed companion and coach for resiliency on the frontlines of love. Email me with your thoughts and questions, please:
[email protected].
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What to do:
This micro-video will explain this chapter |
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Pause to see a better way forward.
The Frontlines has a lot to teach us... and caregiving is and will always be that. It is neither fun nor easy, however, when our own strength is depleted, we can see a surprising path to something higher & better, as I did when caregiving my own mother.
Richard Rohr has something interesting to say here:
"Until you bottom out, and come to the limits of your own fuel supply, there is no reason for you to switch to a higher octane of fuel... You will not learn to actively draw upon a Larger Source until your usual resources are depleted and revealed as wanting. In fact, you will not even know there is a Larger Source until your own sources and resources fail you.
Until and unless there is a person, situation, event, idea, conflict, or relationship that you cannot 'manage," you will never find the True Manager. So, God makes sure that several things will come your way that you cannot manage on your own."
- Richard Rohr, Breathing Underwater - Spirituality and the Twelve Steps.
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Listen to the Audible Audio Chapter...
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Gift No. 1 - Wait Here
Sometimes all you can do is take off your cape and wait for it to change…
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Process: 2 Minutes of Stillness. |
The practice of pausing is courageous in surprising ways.
When we gather ourselves to NOW, we grow a little more clarity for our next right move, which is a huge return on an investment of a couple of minutes...
Wait here helps us gather all the parts of us, body, mind and spirit, to now, to our breath. If we can do this, we find a clarity and coherence... in the middle of it all.
Trauma research teaches us our bodies are the last to release. They hold us, and tend to digest, process and arrive incrementally to change. They move more slowly than we might be capable of shifting mentally or spiritually. Little, by little we may notice. With compassion, we can allow all the places within us to soften. With compassion we can stop lingering on a past resentment, or worrying about a future one that has not yet come.
It is a patient process, but, hey, it's our body... we aren't going anywhere without it (her, him...)
PROCESS: TWO MINUTES OF SILENCE: The following process offers insight into the whole of us... as well as a bit more harmony among our parts.
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Sit comfortably & Breathe
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Now focus on your hands:
- Open them to receive. Move them gently, touching each finger to the thumb. What are the sensations? Next, focus on your feet, feel them on the floor, relax any tension and gently wiggle your toes. What are the sensations?
- Continue the scan of your body – top to toe... Inquiring, checking in, assuring all the parts of yourself that they are loved and you are safe in this moment. Encourage any part of you to let go of any discovered tension.
- What do you notice about this process?
Breathe Consciously & Repeat to Yourself:
"Be Present. Wait Here."
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This micro-video will walk you through the process
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Journal on the PROCESS pages of the PDF provided below or in the journal of your choice.
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Questions to write about ...because your experience matters. |
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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: |
Click to download PDFs of journal pages for this chapter.
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- When you "don't know", how do you respond?
Do you take action out of your discomfort, freeze with indecision or sit with it and consider options? What tactics, strategies & ways of being do you lean into? - How do you wait?
Impatiently or in the present-tense? Are you worried about what will happen, or hope to happen? Or sad about what happened long ago but it is still unresolved in you? Describe examples. How can you pay more attention to what is right now? - Would it change your stress levels and actions, if you were to pause and be fully present to what is right now… and in front of you? What resistance comes up for you? What freedom is possible or new resources might be at hand?
- What inner resource(s) support your ability to wait here & be present & open to opportunities available?
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Wait Here - GIFT No. 1
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The cold ceramic floor was sucking out her warmth as we waited for the San Francisco EMTs. I touched Betty to reassure her—or me; she was icy. Her head gash would need stitches and the doctors would later find a cracked vertebra. None of it stopped her from joking about how cute the paramedics were when they did arrive. |
FIVE YEARS INTO CAREGIVING WITH SIX TO GO...
“I think he’s the cutest. Doesn’t he look like Glen?” Or it could be H.R. or Keith or anyone on the list of my exes. It was a familiar dance. Betty was entertaining again; she was holding court. I was her captive entourage and the firefighter-paramedics were the attentive audience. She was doing a pretty good job of holding on to some dignity as well as holding off the next phase. She and I were on the same ship sailing in denial: she was not yet my child and I was not yet her parent.
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HUMOR WAS EVEN MORE UNEXPECTED IN THE EMERGENCY ROOM. Her healthcare workers were perplexed, then charmed by it (especially, if they saw me modeling laughter). Or they might miss the joke entirely and report me to the authorities. “My daughter beats me.” Betty had said this in response to the ER staff’s private questions about the source of her many bruises from nocturnal falls. When I asked her the same thing about the new bruise du jour, she’d say, “How would I know?” It was as if I had asked about a dent in the bumper of some rental car parked on the street. Maybe she was in shock or perhaps it was her natural wit, but she thought this account was very funny.
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Gift No. 1 is from both the books: Begin Again as well as the Field Guide. Available for purchase from Amazon, Apple and IngramSpark.
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THE SUBSEQUENT ELDER ABUSE REPORT ON ME ESCALATED TO POLICE involvement by the time I heard about it. The hospital social worker had already vouched for me. It took a personal interven‐ tion on my behalf from our long-time internist to finally get me off the arrest list. My mother‘s humor was a moment of the ‘old’ Betty who raised me. Gratefully, her too-sharp edges that tenderized my underbelly as an adolescent were gone. Her wit lasted until the ending days.
WHAT COULD I DO? A LOT OF IT WAS FUNNY IF NOT POINTED at you.
IN CAREGIVING, EXHAUSTION SLOWED ME DOWN. I BECAME CURIOUS enough to wonder how I was going to survive this. I made a decision to claim back some of my life—the self-sustaining part of it but I never caught up with that longing, not really. I could see glimpses of a more renewable life ahead—just out of focus.
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AT THAT POINT, I COULD NOT IMAGINE THAT WAIT HERE MIGHT BE my next best move.
Wait Here - GIFT No. 1
As fear became my compass, I could not see a path to better options. When my world was crashing in, husband gone, brother dead, my mother in another serial EMT crisis, it looked like I was competently dealing as an adult, but the truth was more like ducking for (nuclear) cover under my desk. Moving forward blindly, I stumbled into the black hole of caregiving, which sucks everything nearby into its life-and-death necessities. Its gravity trumped it all—or it did for me. I lived in the future, believing it would be better…then. I would make a coming-from-behind-victory as a software mogul to be financially secure, find a better man who would really see me, find replacement family to belong to, etc. In the effort of the middle days, I looked forward to the ending days, as some vague afterlife—after Betty.
I am remembering back to those moments when I managed to get a present-tense view of things. Somewhere in the anguished muck of Betty’s dying, we told the truth. These were moments when the past and future bracketed me. Driven by overload, or wisdom to now and to here, I found myself and options. Those, unfortunately rare, moments were hyper-real and a true compass to growing a new life.
I need to wait like a cat hunts…or a seed waits out winter…or a Buddha with equanimity, or in a more Judeo-Christian framing, it is about waiting on the Lord.
But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint. --Isaiah 40:31, ESV
My misstep, when caregiving, was how I waited. I pined for a different future like a kid thinks about holiday gifts in October…focused on what was lacking. Waiting like it is already Christmas morning improves outcomes.All the presents are right her and ready for me to notice and unwrap them.My questions are about how I am going to play with them rather than, do I have enough?
Even if we must wait—it is better to Wait Here and now…awake to the resources within reach.
In tango, it is all about being present to the next step. The leader moves, the follower shadows and makes a responsive step. It is a collaboration. It is attentive waiting. The follower then pauses with complete attention for the next indication from her leader. Sometimes in tango these pauses in the motion are the most delicious part of the dance. The extended daguerreotype holds the tension in the stillness and calls to the next step. Residing in the present tense is like this: “Wait, here.”
Don’t just do something, sit there.”—Thich Nhat Hanh
You do not need to leave your room.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
Do not even listen, simply wait.
Do not even wait, be quiet still and solitary.
The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice,
And it will roll in ecstasy at your feet. —Franz Kafka, The Zurau Aphorisms
Wait Here might be your next best move—an important internal shift facilitated by stillness. Living in the future stopped me from seeing what was right in front of me—real choices not just more-of-the-same anxious looping. Wait Here.
Stop struggling. Have a quantum of faith, Wait Here for the goodness to catch up
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Stop struggling. Have a quantum of faith, Wait Here for the goodness to catch up
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WAIT HERE... Just for a Moment
A 15 Minute Sound meditation about the power in pausing.
Find More Sound Meditations at YouTube/@shelter-in-grace
A 15 Minute Sound meditation about the power in pausing.
Find More Sound Meditations at YouTube/@shelter-in-grace
Sustainable Caregiving in sweet small steps...and two books:
"I read it all night. It was funny and useful." - A.W.
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TWO BOOKs AND AUDIBLE Recordings:
BEGIN AGAIN has the first 8 gifts... The Field Guide has ALL the gifts...
Both are about caregiving as a circle of care & that includes you.
© COPYRIGHT 2017-2023 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
PRIVACY POLICY
BEGIN AGAIN has the first 8 gifts... The Field Guide has ALL the gifts...
Both are about caregiving as a circle of care & that includes you.
© COPYRIGHT 2017-2023 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
PRIVACY POLICY