A Life of Balance

Extremes are easy, strive for balance ~ Colin Wright 

 Miki Kashtan's Core Commitment # 6 BALANCE: Even when I am drawn to overstretching myself (including towards any of these commitments), I want to remain attentive to the limits of my capacity in any given moment. If I find myself pushing myself, I want to seek support to honor the natural wisdom of my organism and to trust that remaining within my current limits will support me in increasing my capacity over time.

Balance might be one of the hardest in our society. A culture of pushing ourselves too hard. The rewards are given to the ones that push themselves harder. Do more, Be more.  We praise the supermoms and super-dads that can do it all. 

We talk about binging on Netflix,  Our restaurants serve us too much to eat at one siting. We over schedule our children at school. Regularly I hear in the news that our society is sleep deprived. 

How in the world are we to live in a balanced way in this culture? I have no answers. I want to do so much more than I do.  I have had to learn to say no to doing to much as I have fibromyalgia and over doing it puts me in a place of great suffering.  Yet I want to accomplish so much more than I do..  I want to write more.  I want to take my children out to more places, I want to go camping more I want to go hiking, I want to dance like I did one upon a time. I want to explore the world more. I want to learn more.  I want offer Nonviolent Communication Study groups both in person and online yet sometimes there is just too many other things to take care of. 

It can be so easy to follow what seems to need the most attention in a particular moment but if I pull back and do things a bit more mindfully all seems to go better than if I just stay in a state of chaos and take care of what appears to me.  

This can even be true of my children they can vie for my attention and compete and it will be chaos but if I pull back and make time for each child separately they feel more heard and loved than if I just show attention to whoever is being the loudest.  Because even when I show the attention to the one who is the loudest she or he is wondering underneath if I really care or if I am just showing the attention because they were the loudest.So even though it is so so easy to push myself too hard especially when it comes to Studying Nonviolent Communication, because I so long to live in a better world and who else is going to create that more compassionate world than me?  I must remember to pull myself away and take care of other things that are also important. 

Sometimes I forget the balance aspect of Studying Nonviolent Communication and I am too hard on myself for not being the Superwoman of Empathy. Don don don da! Able to leap tall judgments in a single bound. Able to fly offering compassion to anyone who she comes into contact with! Which is of course not anything that anyone can accomplish. We must all take time to fill our cup. I and everyone else in the world must time to receive as well as give. 

  Oceana SisterMoon is currently living her dream of a sustainable life, raising chickens, and growing food with her 4 children. She seeks to help women unearth their power through sisterhood and healing through self-connection , interdependence, power in vulnerability, and authenticity. 

The World Needs You Now

“You matter.

You are important.

There is a reason for your existence.

You may not see or understand how this is true, but truth doesn't cease to be truth because of doubt, blindness, or ignorance. 

And the truth is―you matter.” 

~Richelle E. Goodrich

I have been meditating on Miki Kashtan's Core Commitments for several months. This is a series of blog posts for me to explore these with the greater world.  Practicing risking my significance. 

3. Risking my Significance: even when I am full of doubt, I want to offer myself in full to the world. If I find myself thinking that I am not important or that my actions are of no significance, I want to seek support to come back to my knowledge that my presence and my gifts matter.

What would change in your life if you trusted that you matter? 

I grew up like so many children do.  My needs came last after all the grown ups in my world. First, my mother then grandparents, when I started school my teachers. I wasn't listened too. If there was a time in my life that I knew how to speak up for myself I forgot. There were sometimes in high school I tried to speak up but teachers either criticized or ignored for whatever their reasons were at the time. 

Speaking up has always been hard for me.  Now close to middle age,  like many times before I am trying to find my voice again.  I have had and lost so many relationships because my needs in the end didn't matter enough to the other person for them to attempt to work through our conflict.  There is still significance ache at the loss of these friends. 

My first thought when I think about this question is not about trusting that I mattered because I have never entered a relationship in which I thought otherwise. Entities are a different thing. Do I matter to the government or a Restaurant that seems an easy no. But the important relationships in my life I have (at least until shown otherwise) that we each mattered equally.  

And yet I know I have so much to offer the world. 

When my oldest was born (16 years ago) I read a book a book called The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff. It changed my thinking on life in so many ways. The author was traveling in the Amazon and met a tribe that cared for their children in the complete opposite way as most people in the United States at the time. Of course nursing their children but also tying them on their backs. They didn't have a word for work.  Even though they "worked" harder than many white people on a daily basis for them it was just life. And each member of the tribe had intrinsic value regardless of whether or not they preformed "work" 

 I longed to live my life this way for myself and for my children. Little did I know then when I was only in my early twenties and so naive how much of a hold our culture had on me. I mistakenly thought if I thought about it differently then I could live it differently. Oh, the isolation and criticism I encountered. While I was ready to change our culture to what I say as something different others didn't see what was "wrong" with our culture and I was at best naive to some people and at worst severely harming my children according to others. I can only imagine these encounters where I mattered intrinsically and they did too to the world. 

I can feel my body relax a bit, I unthinkingly breath a bit deeper my muscles that i hold so tight let go at least for the moment.  For a moment at least I just enjoy this relaxation in my body that I hold so tight so often prepared for fight-flight-freeze. Almost always on alert prepared for the next disaster.  i have spent so many hours trying t calm this being told by the new age movement that I have caused the bad things to happen to myself by being afraid adding insult to injury. 

I would love to offer more of myself to the world . Really this is what I am doing with this blog at least that is the attempt to offer up moments from my life. The thoughts I have about studying Nonviolent Communication for the last 4 years.  I also share it because I still dream of living in a peaceful world despite it all and I want more people to know what can be gotten out of studying NVC.  I  think NVC is a major peace in creating a sustainable future. 


Studying NVC learning to identify my needs in times of frustration and hurt helps me matter to myself even when I the other person appears to not be putting value on my needs this gives me the strength to offer myself more fully to the world no matter the response. So here I am working to offer myself to the world through this blog risking my significance. 

Go to mettacenter.org  for more info about the Core Commitments. 

Oceana SisterMoon is currently living her dream of a sustainable life, raising chickens, and growing food with her 4 children. She seeks to help women unearth their power through sisterhood and healing through self-connection , interdependence, power in vulnerability, and authenticity. 

Adventures in Committing Myself to Nonviolence

“But feelings can't be ignored, no matter how unjust or ungrateful they seem.” 

― Anne Frank

Robert Plutchik's "Wheel of Emotions"

I am working through  Miki Kashtan's Core Commitments from her website The Fearless Heart. 

Today I am meditating on #2 

 Openness to the Full Emotional Range: even when my feelings are uncomfortable for me, I want to stay present with myself and keep my heart open to the fullness of my emotional experience. If I find myself contracting away from my experience, numb or shut down, I want to seek support to release defendedness and open to what is.

This one is a big one for me as it seems to be for so many. For women allowing themselves to be angry is often unacceptable and therefore hard for many. I have met women who are practically unable to express anger except in the most extreme circumstances or who cry when they are mad because this is more acceptable form of expression. For men feeling sad or scared is unacceptable in our society.  These social constructs make is very hard for us  be open to our "full emotional range." One of my goals in blogging about this is to offer support to those out there and in turn I am hoping that a larger community that wants to create such a world that men, women and people may join at least an online community in support of creating more communities that are in local spaces also.

Being open to the full emotional range does not mean that is okay to take actions when we are angry particularly when they would hurt another person or vice versa.  It seems to me that many people struggle to feel their emotions without acting on them. We want change if we are angry we want the person we see as the cause to know or sometimes even to suffer or if we are afraid we want to leave the situation. Our bodies were designed for action as in fight or flight. Or to prepare for death as in freeze. 

But we do not have full access to all of our creativity when we are in a state of fight flight or freeze and so often we end up making decisions that do not help us and sometimes make the situation worse because we are not truly in life or death situations which is where or fight/flight/freeze reaction evolved from.

Learning to sit with an uncomfortable emotion has been a process for me. But one that I enjoy now. In the beginning is was new and very scary and uncomfortable. Now I find  the practice easier.  Though going through each emotion has it's own struggles. 

Anger for me is often a protective shielding for something that is too scary or too sad. Through this practice I am learning to soften myself and allow myself to be vulnerable.  I am still working on finding my peace with sometimes being an angry woman, learning to recognize that this view of myself is influenced by the society I live in that separates us in a binary way allowing some to feel some emotions and others to feel other emotions. 

Miki Kashtan has published some of her thoughts about this topic at Metta Center complete with suggested activities.  I hope you enjoy. Please leave feedback thank you. 

Oceana SisterMoon is currently living her dream of a sustainable life, raising chickens, and growing food with her 4 children. She seeks to help women unearth their power through sisterhood and healing through self-connection , interdependence, power in vulnerability, and authenticity. 

Sisterhood Through Challenge: Negotiating Conflict & Compassionate Boundaries

"Beautiful Heart Rocks found and arranged by Artist Hannah Maxwell Rowell. Her artist page can be found here

  

“To be ourselves causes us to be exiled by many others, and yet to comply with what others want causes us to be exiled from ourselves.”

Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Some relationships are easy. People get along.  There seems to understanding from the start without struggle. Our need to matter is met and so is the other persons. It is just easy.   But what do we do when it is not easy? How to we find common ground when things are not so easy, when doubts are born of if the other sister cares about our needs?  

Our first reaction is to close our heart to these people or ourselves when things get hard.   Since childhood many of us have learned that our needs will not or cannot be met.  So we learn to stop asking, we learn to stop wanting.  I believe this is fear not strength. Finding it in ourselves to go on and continue with open heart is indeed the path to growth and acquired strength and vulnerability.

As a child I felt helpless a lot and in order to protect myself I became prickly. “Unexpressed fear looks like aggression” -Miki Kashtan.  I have a goal in my life and that is to stay open hearted to all people I am meeting and in contact with.  This is hard. Especially coming out of an abusive relationship or just learning to lovingly say “NO” in any relationship.  Many people myself included have abandonment fears. So saying no can be particularly scary.  I have spent a lot of time working on healing myself from relationships that were not meeting my needs.

Because of being raised in this society that teaches us to swallow our needs and try to make them as small as possible the first step in overcoming our urge to close our heart is to experience our needs fully and without apology. To many of us sisters can’t ask for our needs to be met without feeling guilty. Feelings of guilt when making a request to get our needs met will inhibit creativity in meeting all of our needs.  It can also lead to someone meeting our request without a heart full of joy which will not feel any better than if they were to say no.

How do we proceed when the tragic happens and someone you love and you aren't able communicate effectively. What do you do?

When we love someone very deeply and then things fall apart it can be heartbreaking.  I often have opposing feelings one is to seek safety, the other is wanting to comfort the other person. Depending on what the situation is will decide what action I  take. Sometimes when the person is seemingly very dangerous I will want to close my heart to them for fear of being hurt and at the same time closing my heart to them will also cause me pain. We are at our best when we are open hearted seeing the world the way we saw it as children and we are then at our most creative to finding a solution that will meet the most needs.

So when I am in a safe place perhaps with someone I trust I work on opening my heart.  When we first open our hearts to life it can be painful for sometimes we have kept it closed for so long.  I have found the most helpful techniques for healing to be  EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) and using Ho’oponopono for myself and any person with whom I desire a healing of our relationship. I imagine saying to them, and then myself and then to the two of us together. “I am sorry, Please forgive me, Thank you, I love you”

I have learned in my life that I must take steps to keep myself and my children safe from people who are currently dangerous but closing my heart is my choice and it becomes an opportunity for my own healing to take place and in healing my own heart I allow myself to fully love the other person no matter how they see me.

Oceana SisterMoon is currently living her dream of a sustainable life, raising chickens, and growing food with her 4 children. She seeks to help women unearth their power through sisterhood and healing through self-connection , interdependence, power in vulnerability, and authenticity. instagram pinterest