Learning to Live a Life of Nonviolence

"People say walkin on water is a miracle, but to me walking peaceful on Earth is the real miracle" ~Thich Nhat Hanh

I am studying Miki Kashtan's Book Spinning Threads of Radical Aliveness. In the book she offers the Core Commitments.  I have been mediating on these for sometime in an effort to deepen my study I have been writing about what comes up for me with each of these commitments.  It is my longing to live in a more peaceful world and so I am working to change myself first. 

Core Commitment # 7 Loving No Matter What: even when my needs are seriously unmet, I want to keep my heart open. If I find myself becoming judgmental, angry, or otherwise triggered, I want to seek support in transforming my judgments and meeting others with love.

This is definitely a hard one.   I mean who can love everyone all the time.  It is so embedded in our cultural consciousness to judge each especially when someone is doing something that is in opposition to how we want to live. 

I so deeply desire to live in peace with other people and yet it is so often than people act in ways that trigger sadness in me.  Seeing people litter or not recycle, seeing people throwing food in the trash can that will go to a dump instead of composting so that it can become dirt or food that could be feeding people who don't have enough to eat. I feel so sad and have a deep deep longing for wise use of resources. 

Some days I think i have taken on more than taken on more than i am possibly accomplish. But then I remind myself of the other commitments and it is better to have to commitment and “Fail. Fail again. Fail better.” ~ Samuel Beckett than to give up before I start. 

Truthfully I have given up many many times but my heart calls me back or this world calls me to work at it again.  

And I am still finding the line between Loving No Matter What and not allowing people to use and abuse me. I thought when I was young if I would just give and give then the world would have to come through at some point and offer back what I was offering. Now that I am older and in my humble opinion wiser I have learned to step back and give what is comfortable to give and that I can love from a distance.  I do not have to live in the drama to be loving.  

Also while I like the above idea that love is anyway or in spite of. I have a feeling as I grow it will be because.....because this other personal is full human and I can see it. Because we are all perfectly imperfect. Because I see this other persons pain and sorrow. Because I see with my whole heart as I have learned to see myself with my whole heart and not through the eyes of others whose hearts were not open. 

So Namaste,  I bow to you and see the divine energy of existence in you as I learn to  bow to myself and see the divine energy of existence in myself. 



  ☾ 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. 

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. 

Re_Creating my Rituals for Radical Self Care..

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
~ Audre Lorde

I see self care as a radical act. Particularly for women. To move away from the care taker roll of taking care of everyone to slowing down often allowing things to be done in a less than perfect way by others is near impossible for many of us.

Yet taking care of myself is key to the life I want to live. Taking time to do yoga or eat healthy is next to impossible for some of us. And the further down on the ladder of socioeconomic priviledge we go the less resources we have available to us to do self care.

Finding ways to care for myself has been a struggle in my life. If I don't take care of myself I am more short with myself, my kids, and other people. This is why I am creating and recreating my rituals of self care. it is an one going practice not something I do once and forget.

Here are some ideas for doing self care that I use and will be accessible to many though honestly not all people. But if you have access to a computer to read this then you will probably be able to do most of this. I would love to hear from you about what you do for self care in the comments

• Yoga on youtube so many wonderful people have offered their time to post great videos
• Time in nature either go for a walk or even just take a chair and sit their listening to the sounds (I am lucky enough to be in Tennesssee and there is so much nature you almost can't get away from it.)
• Take a hot bath (bonus with epsom salt and candles)
• Practice some mindfulness or mediation again youtube will have many many resources. Here's a nice one
• listen/read to a favorite speaker/author, I really enjoy Pema Chodron, Tara Brach, and Miki Kashtan
• Take time to forgive yourself. You are not perfect you are human that comes with mistakes this is called self compassion.
• Eat the most nourishing foods you can afford, in my area kale has gotten really affordable and I have started to grow a garden
• Get a massage or trade with a friend 
• Take time to do what you love
• find or create a red tent near you
• drink nourishing herbal infusions 
• journal taking time to write down your feelings and needs

If we aren't taking better care of ourselves how can we take care of the world or change it?

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.