Limits

I have not forgotten that I'm only 10% to my goal of 100 actions. This week I needed to attend to my own life with more energy and take a break from the noise.

This is not the last week I'll have like that. It makes me a better person. I'll be back. Just wait.

Bat Mitzvah Redo 2016

12 is a terrible age to have a bat mitzvah. I don't know if it's true for others, but when I was that age I felt like my skin didn't fit, I was uncomfortable in front of a group and I didn't have the slightest idea who I even was or how I fit into Judaism.

But now I'm an adult, and I feel so much better about myself, about being Jewish, about everything. Over the years I've followed my own path experimenting with becoming more and more committed, first through gravitating to very observant communities, and later by holding onto my observance but simultaneously discovering progressive and sometimes egalitarian communities in which I could actively become much more of a participant.

So a few years ago as I began to learn how to lein and lead services in my partnership minyan, Minyan Tiferet, I had the idea that maybe I would try again and have a bat mitzvah-type celebration. Doing this would give me an opportunity to actively and maturely demonstrate my relationship to Judaism and to the community by doing the sorts of rituals that are normally done in a bar or bat mitzvah service.

So around October of last year I finally began learning to lein this past week's parsha Be'ha'ah'lotkha.
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Quick Kondo update

Looks like when I'm all done with the books (still not there yet) I'll be for sure saying goodbye to more than 200 books. Maybe around 300.

That's a lot of weight to be lifted and space to be discovered.

Continuing Kondo

By Kondo, I mean of course Marie Kondo's plan for my house to feel magical.

Purging enormous piles of books today.

One of the trickier areas... I have lots of textbooks from teaching. I look at them and see the enormous wealth of knowledge contained, many of which might be very useful. The fact is, though, that I never open them. It's not doing any good on the shelf, and the idea of me re-reading them is unrealistic. Bye books.

Too Scattered

My last post was about my love of writing and how much I am getting into it.

I've kind of fallen off the wagon again. I am just so overwhelmed with so many things I want to do and on top of that am so surrounded by STUFF that I can't clear my head.

So now I have just finished reading that book that everyone is reading too, The Life-Changing Art Of Tidying Up. Ideally I suppose I would have just read it and then waited to get started on her process when I have more time. However, I don't think I'll ever have more time. Further, I can't concentrate right now because of how much there is all around me.

Part of what I mean by this is not just my usual daily clutter. A few weeks ago U. installed lovely new petite corner shelves to take the place of some bulky ones we'd had in the living room. So all the books came out. Those books are now piled on my office floor along with others I've been rounding up for this "pick out only the books that really spark joy" session that will start as soon as I've finished the clothing round that Kondo recommends starting with.

Last week I tackled my closet and dresser for three hours. Those two locations are now the calmest in our private living space. I still have a pile of scarves and shoes to get through... if I can just get the time.

Writing Fire

I did it. I spent almost every day of November writing for at least 15 minutes every day. The one day I missed, I made up the next day with double time.

Most of what I wrote was towards the goal of revising the novel I drafted in 2013 during Camp Nanowrimo. I had taken a year off from that process during 2014-2015 and have been gung-ho to return since my WAC (writersandcritters) writers' retreat in spring of 2015.

So I was feeling great at the end of November, proud of my stick-to-it-ness and thinking if I kept up the pace I could get through the entire draft again by summer.

Then the first Saturday night of December I sat down at my desk and I felt my heart start to race and my stomach to clench. This was ridiculous. To finish a novel with any quality at all at 15 minutes a day? For one thing, I also need to parent, stick to my goals of regular yoga and meditation, other short writing projects that I feel driven to write, another project due in July (to be discussed later - related to my 40th birthday), a healthy amount of exercise and, uh cleaning and, oh wait, yeah, I also teach 30 hours a week not mentioning prep. time, tutoring and my additional role this year as a mentor for new teachers in my grade.

Even 15 minutes every day is too stressful.

To do it with depth is ridiculous.

So I tried a new take. First of all, I took a break from the novel. WAC expects me to submit two writing samples and four critiques of other people's samples every month. However, they take two weeks off at the end of December. So with the freedom of nothing due, I sat down last Friday and wrote... just wrote, by hand, in a notebook that no one will see but me. I write by hand rarely because it's less efficient when I'm ready to submit something, but now I had fallen out of love with writing and I needed to get back in. To love a person it really helps to actually be in the same room with them and not remove yourself with a screen.

(I'm not even going into what I've learned as a special education teacher about the different neurological process of forming letters and words by hand instead of by typing.)

That Shabbat instead of reading a novel I flipped through Writing Down The Bones by Natalie Goldberg for the first time in years, and began rereading cover to cover from my favorite writing book, Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott.

I wrote again Saturday night, and then again Sunday morning, finishing one draft that I hope to look at and maybe revise, but maybe I won't as I don't know yet what's there.

A writer friend said we are defined by the things we do every day... so to say you are a writer you must write every day. However, I'm a teacher too, and don't show up to work on weekends. I certainly don't want to be the kind of person who romantically claims to be a... a writer... and never writes anything, but even when I can't write, I know that ultimately I will have to write. I just have to. So even if I quit for days, weeks, even months at a time, I will come back to it.

I will not necessarily come back to other things I've thought I was: bicyclist, basket maker, musician. I like to bike and make baskets and play music, but they are not in my blood. I only dabble. I don't ask or need them to be part of my identity.

So right now I'm trying to compartmentalize my week a bit. Instead of spending a little of every day on all of the things I love, I'm trying to group some things and weekday activities and some as weekend. It's not as easy as it sounds. My physical and mental health depend on daily yoga and meditation, and the weekend gets very full with everything else that can't happen during the work week, like laundry. However, I think I really can spend some more real time on writing on the weekend, at least for now. Some other things will suffer, no doubt, but right now this isn't negotiable. I have to do this. If I can pour my writing more into Friday through Sunday, I think I can do it better. If some of it is for show and some of it is not, I'm entering writing headspace again. If I can maybe jot down something during the week that writer's see, then I'm tapping it too.

One final note, halfway through my writing this blog post I had to take a break to go to a friends' birthday party. Someone at the party remarked that she used to have hobbies but just haven't time in this stage in her life.

I started to feel a little guilty, that I can do this and she "can't." And I'm not judging anyone else's choices, but I just need to be clear. Writers have to write, however they do it, even if it means having a messier house or leaving parties earlier or getting up extra early or even only devoting certain weeks of the year to their craft. We just have to. How other desperate writers make this happen is their business.

This is how I'm handling it right now.

Autumn Mindfulness

I wrote in Summer Mindfulness about a class I took this summer on mindfulness for educators. I also wrote about my struggles incorporating mindfulness into the classroom. Here's an update as the year progresses.

As someone with my own life-saving, pain-easing, anxiety-reducing, compassion-and-calm-producing yoga and meditation practice, I have always wanted to bring my practice to others, especially children, but often get waylaid. When I taught in a large elementary school classroom I used to try a little yoga or breathing with my students now and then, but when the schedule was frantic and I didn't see others reinforcing this work, I usually gave up pretty quickly. My best, most committed year, was the one in which I created Moment That Matters. It was a moment set aside in the day that could be used for any number of things. Sometimes I taught a yoga pose or led a short self-talk moment -- "I can do this!" -- or even just a class phone call home to a child who was sick. That year I had an assistant who loved I was doing this. That was a great reinforcement, even still I eventually started glossing through the time quickly or skipped the Moment altogether.

This year, partly inspired by the mindfulness class and partly by new circumstances, I'm determined to try yet again. As I have for the past three years, I am teaching in a resource room setting rather than a large classroom. My office/classroom used to be joined with someone else's. It was a very comfortable room and I loved the time I spent collaborating with the teacher who shared the room. However, there was a lot of movement in and out of the room either by her students or other teachers coming to get books that were stored there. So I suppose I must have lost confidence in the importance of that little bit of peace I was trying to bring into my students' academic day.

This year my office/classroom was moved. My old space was needed for first grade and my new one is actually joined to one of the Second Grade classes I serve. However,  it's a space I never initially would have chosen. Some years ago it was the back of the gym. Later a wall was built to incorporate it as a storage area into a classroom. Now the storage has been removed from the area and it is my office. There is no window or regular air circulation, so I've brought into the space everything I can to make it comfortable. (Mind you, interior decorating has never been a strength of mine.)

As you enter, you pass through a magical curtain instead of a door. It feels as though you are entering a sacred or secret space. My principal choose a calming blue paint that now covers two of the four walls. I have an air purifier which both clears the air and provides white noise to block out the sound from the adjoining classroom. Finally I have put to use an aromatherapy diffuser that I've had for years but never really did much good in larger spaces. I have a collection of oils that my students help me choose from for the room. Every now and then students in the adjoining classroom say, "I'm getting hungry for cookies. Where is that peppermint smell coming from?!"

For each of my daily 6 classes, the first thing I list on the board's agenda is "chime." The children are reminded by a poster I have on the wall, "When you hear the chime, show you are ready by sitting tall and breathing slow, quiet and relaxing breaths." Even the students who giggle over his follow the directions and will remind me if somehow I skip that step.

Partly inspired by a meeting I had with a psychologist of one of my more anxious students, I also add in some self-talk. So I might say, "Today while I ring the chime, think to yourself, 'I've got this!'" Other phrases I might use are, "My brain is so good at learning," and for one of my more distracted groups, "I am ready to learn something new."

Last week we had a lockdown drill. The 20 kids who use the room that adjoins mine came into the space with me and my two more anxious students. Since we knew to expect this drill, we worked together first to move the tables and chairs out of the way. (This gave ownership of the room and the situation to those students.) Then when the class came in I asked the class teachers if I might use the time to read quietly to the students. Right away out came Mindful Monkey, Happy Panda. The children were silent and absorbed it all.

Even when the drill was over they were happy to sit to the end of the book and followed my lead when I closed my eyes at the end and said, "Right now I'm kneeling on this hard floor, I'm sweating because it's so crowded in here and it's pretty uncomfortable, but I'm also breathing gently and telling myself that in this moment, I'm really OK."

I got a note from the parent of one of those anxious children noted above. The child came home and quoted to the mother from the book about how to stay in the present moment. Her mother has been trying to teach her this skill and was grateful I reinforced it.

I've got this.

Remission Anniversary #12

This is me during the Providence Bridge Pedal of 2003. I cried when I discovered I wasn't strong enough do the longer route that I wanted to take towards the Sellwood Bridge and had to remind myself how wonderful it was that I could do it at all. Both truths were real. I wasn't strong enough to make it to Sellwood AND I did the Providence Bridge Pedal even while undergoing chemo.

This first paragraph is what I will post on Facebook today:

Today marks my 12th year free from cancer. I celebrate today not only to be cancer-free, but also to have experienced cancer. I'm grateful that the lymphoma was eradicated from my body, but am also grateful for the deep teachings it brought me about my own strength and about surrender. While I no longer think daily of my status as a survivor, I do daily face the question of what I'm able to do and what my limitations are. Every day we are all given an infinite number of opportunities to be thankful and the choice to be compassionate towards ourselves. I think the gift of cancer has somehow helped me look at this a little more seriously than if I hadn't had it.

This second paragraph is just for the blog:

I write this now knowing that yesterday a colleague's mother died from the same disease. I was uncertain at first how to handle that. Should I celebrate in the way that I'd planned, bringing a platter of food to school to celebrate? Would doing so be callous, I celebrate life while someone else mourns? It reminds me of when I first learned that I would survive my cancer, but felt so sorry, and some guilt, that my sister-in-law, Denise, did not.

As I turn off the deliberate thinking and go deep with this, I realize that the deep spiritual work is just in holding all of this truths together. I lived.  Another died. There is suffering. There is beauty. There is.

Routines

There are a lot of landmarks looming for me right now. Next June I turn 40. I'm just about to start teaching for my 11th year at the same school which means I've lived here for 10 years, taught here for 10 years and now gone camping for the 10th year in a row.

I remember how I felt at the end of my annual camping trip after the very first year. Pure terror filled me as I'd had a rough beginning at the new job and have always tended to be anxious. I felt nauseous and doomed. Teaching has always been anxiety-producing. At other times in my career it has manifested as keeping candles oriented in a particular way during yoga to help me see how close to Shabbat I was. At other times I remember being afraid to get out of bed until I could just remember the face of a child from my class instead of feeling I was drowning in the sea of things I needed to do and could not seem to do well enough.

It has been a habit for me to cling desperately to things that make me feel safe... visits home to Portland, hoarding of special items I'd buy there, weekends, precious moments in nature.

I've been through the cycle so many times now, it's no longer a big deal. When I went on my souvenir hunts this summer, I still loaded up, but not as much, and wondered what things at home I could get rid of at the same time.

How is this possible?

For one, I've become a better teacher.

For another, I have an easier position now than I used to.

Refuge seems to always be accessible now even if it takes a deliberate breath or step away from a difficult situation, but I've so many times gone through days that just weren't as bad as I thought, that I feel fine more often now.

As I began to reflect on this I wondered if age has brought a dulling of my feelings. I'm feeling less anxious. Does that mean less happy too? Now... it just means feeling a little lighter. Happiness is less desperate, but it's certainly there.

Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't mind if I were still camping right now. However, when I show up on Tuesday next week, it will feel familiar and I don't have to think a lot about it right now.

Missing writing

I admit it. I'm jealous. A friend from my writer's group, Writer Granny posted a few days ago that she hit blog post number 1,521 after having started her blog in 2009. This blog that you're looking at was started in November of 2004 and this post is number 912.


The result? I'm writing a blog post that doesn't say a whole lot of anything.

A few hours ago we took a break from some household chores and watched Spellbound, a documentary about 8 kids competing for the world championship in a spelling bee. Talk about over-achievement! My takeaway (especially after my last post): When you set goals that are really really high, there will always be a little disappointment, even if you really do the very best you can. To be in the moment without qualifiers, without "but" or "if only," but just to be and do what's possible with a little bit of discipline, that's my new goal. It's not easy to keep a goal like that under pressure. However, it's a goal that I can be proud of achieving again and again in small victories.



So why I'm writing this blog post. Well, yeah, I wish I had more blog posts. Am I aiming for 1,521? No, not right now. I do think I'd like to post a little more often though, and then maybe I'll throw a party when I discover I've actually reached 1000.

Another small victory.

Summer Mindfulness

Summer is a complicated time for me. I'm fully aware of how fortunate I am to be part of the working population who has the summer "off" and as a result has a very different life during that time.

My summers are not, however, smooth sailing. My workaholism, ambition and strong belief in the importance of professional development prevent me from just vacationing. I've been putting in hours studying for my special education endorsement program as well as accomplishing things that I'm unable to do during the school year.

The onset of every summer is emotionally jarring for me. There's an enormous leap from putting in long and stressful hours, investing my work into children, worrying that my work over the year wasn't enough, waving them off and then having only my own child left to care for. To put in so much energy for other beings and then just have them disappear after maybe giving me a goodbye and thank you card is uncomfortable. It shakes up my sense of self-worth and industry. Then I face unstructured days and lists upon lists of expectations for myself, goals, to do lists.

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Welcome, 2015!

So it's the secular New Year, a time when lots of people make resolutions. I don't have any new resolutions to share right now. Rather, I find myself checking in with my intentions as of Rosh Hashanah/2014-2015 school year.

This year has been designated as a scaling-back year. The biggest part of that was taking a hiatus from my writing group and, hence, my novel as well. I've done very little volunteering and am taking stock of some questions about my work.

Instead, what I find is I'm settling into inhabiting my life. This has become a major phrase for me. It means
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Art

I came to the alarming conclusion recently that not all people think of art in the same way that I do. I don't just mean a single work of art and that two people shouldn't have diverse reactions to it. I mean that I have discovered not all people see art in the same life-defining soul-wrenching way.

I'm going to talk primarily about movies here. Yes, movies are an art form. A few months ago U went out with some friends to see a movie that I'm not going to name for reasons which I will explain below. In any case, he went with these friends to this movie, all of them thinking they were going to an action movie. They were planning to come home afterwards and just go on with their lives as if nothing significant had happened other than them having a fun night out together.

When they came out of the movie they talked about it. His friends chattering away about nitpicky details and saying
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Getting Wet

Had an unexpected and interesting conversation about childbirth with someone the other day. We were both talking about how the "pain" of childbirth is difficult to talk about it because it's secondary to the whole experience, and yet is all that some people think about in regards to that same experience.

I found a good metaphor.

Most of us would prefer not to go out in the rain, but when you go surfing, you expect to get wet.

Self-Care for the benefit of others

I put a lot of effort and focus into self-care. Yoga in the morning, trying to eat well during the day, breathing deep to dissipate stress and so on.

And I often feel guilty doing all of this because I know many people's response might be "You have time for that?" 

But one of the benefits of having sort of a rocky inner landscape and a tentative immune system is that I've learned I'm the only one who can take care of myself, and that if I don't, there will be consequences.

So in theory I feel pretty good about the choices I make and hope I can inspire others to do the same in whatever form it takes for them.

Add into that the helplessness I feel when someone is not doing well and I can't fix it for them... if they try their best and want my help, I'm empowered to try and do something to get them there.

But if they're not, well, we're kind of stuck. I don't like how that feels. I hope I can keep from putting others in that position by doing the majority of the work myself.

A Brief Thought About Stuff

I have many things I want to write on here lately... nothing big. Just "what's the purpose of life" kind of general stuff. But it will wait until I have some more time. (Yes, I;m being a big tongue in cheek here.)

A profound thought to share briefly... I got in the mail a couple of things today belonging to Michael who died in September. I've had things given to me that were inherited from family before, but never quite experienced this... I know his family is cleaning out stuff that they won't want to keep anymore, and I happened to get some of it.

I'm touched they took the time to send some to me.

I have to figure out what to do with it. I feel reverence and also some pulls towards recycling. Is there literature on how to cope with this kind of thing?

Time

Amazing article by Anne Lamott on finding time to write and for other creative pursuits. In short, this is an article on how to live.

What The Body Remembers: A Purim Blog Post

I'm currently reading Love's Executioner. It's a collection of essays by a psychotherapist discussing various patients he had and what he learned from them. In one he treats a women who is terribly obese. A really fascinating feature of her treatment is that as she begins to lose weight, she re-experiences traumas that she never fully dealt with when she was that weight previously.

So it's Purim now. There has been some interesting development in my inner and outer worlds in the past few weeks. For one, I learned just over a month ago that an old friend of mine has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. There is no cure and he does not expect to live more than a year or so. This has been in the back of my mind and upsetting me. Then I had the opportunity last week to go visit him in PA and take part in a recording he was making of some songs that friends and family requested him to leave behind.

Now, stepping back a moment. About three weeks ago I had a day when I felt dizzy and as though my temperature kept changing although I didn't actually have a fever. I took the next day off, feeling fatigued but never quite sure if I was actually sick or not. Since then my energy level moved quietly up and down, never quite right, with some pressure in my sinuses, some sore neck muscles and a lot of headaches.

Wouldn't you know, Friday night before my planned trip to PA I suddenly discover my throat is massively swollen on one side. Saturday night I get a positive strep test. I go on antibiotics. I visit my friend anyway. I expect to feel better through the week.

Monday and Tuesday I felt fine... just a little nauseous from the antibiotics. Wednesday morning I get up early to prepare for the Fast of Esther by eating before 5:07 and I feel totally exhausted. I drag myself to school anyway and realize that I will pass out if I don't eat something and I break the fast before school even starts at 8:15.

By Purim night I have a full-blown cold on top of the strep throat. Nose running like mad, scratchy throat, and meanwhile I'm running the women's megillah reading.

So that's my status.

Now what is it my body is remembering?

In 2003 I had a respiratory illness that just wouldn't get better and wouldn't get better. On Purim day I sat in a chair at home, too weak to go to the Purim seudah at shul and U. brought me home a plate. About a month later I would receive my cancer diagnosis.

That year, before the diagnosis, was a very challenging year for me teaching. This year is too. I connected my illness in part to that even though I realize medically it doesn't make sense. This year I found myself beginning the school year with intense memories of my year with cancer. Somehow my psyche is really intensely there this year, thinking more of my body and of life and death, almost as an escape from my daily challenges.

Am I afraid the cancer is back? No... at least not much. I think this cold will pass and the antibiotics will finish and I'll be back to normal in about a week. But how steeped I seem to be in memory right now.

How interesting it will be someday to feel at peak health and to be able to actually complete the fast of Esther... one of these years. I don't want to forget my past at all. But I'd like to remember it in my mind and heart only, without needing to engage my whole body in the memory.

Well, it hasn't

Sometimes when I go to my computer or ipod and check it when I was in the middle of something else it's really to see if somehow, in the past 20 minutes since I checked it last, my life (as wonderful as it is) may have changed in some way, and by not checking, I would know it a moment too late.

Inspiration and Agony

A friend of mine recently got a job with Teva and has been ecstatic since. On Yom Kippur he told me about a transformative experience he had davening Shacharit with a leader in the woods. He wrote a lovely blog post about it.

I listened as he told me about this and found myself exclaiming internally, "Oh oh oh! You've never davened shacharit in the woods before? Oh, how sad!!!! Oh, you know now about the light inside us all that comes from G-d... you hadn't had that before either?" I am so happy for him to have discovered this and feel a simultaneous plummeting inside me as I'm realizing just how few have ever even touched this. It feels as natural as water to me. I grew up in Corvallis, OR with nature and incense and touchy-feely Jews who loved Judaism for its connection to life itself and not just to text or walled-up inside shuls. To me this is what it is.

Over the years my day-to-day view of Judaism has changed, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse, but that connection between nature and the soul and Torah are already inside me. It makes me so sad when it's obscured by materialism or simply by the devoted black hat suited culture that is passionate about G-d but disconnected from land and sometimes from their children because they don't always know how to connect their spirits together. What torture to imagine that it's not for so many people who want that connection so badly, sometimes without even knowing it.

Before this friend told me this story, we were sharing how grateful we both are to have jobs in where we know we daily engage in passions of our life that make a difference in the world. But there's a piece of me that still feels something is missing, a potential connection isn't meeting. Is this just the norm that comes of not being able to do all I want all at once -- change the lives of children while still writing and meditating and being present in my own free time and being a fun mother too. Or is it a gap I need to heal? I don't get to teach spirituality. I teach reading, writing, math and how to be a citizen from a child's perspective. The passion of teaching comes through connecting with children and families, particularly when there are barriers to overcome just as social or behavioral differences.

That's just it... I love connection. I'm connecting with them, sometimes helping them connect to each other, but are we connecting to G-d? Am I connecting all the parts of me, are we connecting all to each other, to nature, to our inner spirits? Or must the writer and meditator parts of me be reserved for different times.

In short, am I doing everything to the best of my abilities exactly as I should be? Or someday should I do it a little differently... the writer, meditating environmentalist teacher of behaviorally challenged children...

who loves to just sit and be alone sometimes in the woods.

And who already does that sometimes, returning to see the perfection in the present exactly as it is right now.