Why can't poor people just be more creative

2 weeks ago,  I was talking with someone who wanted me to go to meeting for an organization in another town. I asked if we could have the meeting in a church on a Sunday so that I could use the child care that was available there for my twin 7 year olds. Her response was that she wished I would get more creative.
I told her I am very creative in living my life every single day.  Living my life is an act of creativity.
I didn't go into detail. I've been thinking about this a lot lately. In truth is not the first time she has talked to me about needing to be more creative in my life to make things happen.
I'm a little lost when I hear this. My first thoughts are that I use creativity to buy healthy food for my children, I used creativity to get into and utilize the Habitat for Humanity program so that I am now the owner of a home of 1000 square feet for my family of 5 to live in. I use creativity to live in a house with 2 teenagers and twins with only 1000 square.  It feels like I use creativity all day everyday. I live under the poverty line. I could go on and on about the specifics I use my creativity for but the truth is that I start to feel like I am working to prove my worth. And I have had to spend my life proving my worth to my family.

At what point are poor people allowed to be human?  How much do you need to know about me to know that I tried hard enough to be given a pass? If I tell you about trying to go to college as a single parent but having to quit because my children needed me ?  If I tell you about my children's abusive father who abused me and my children? How much do you need to know about that abuse? Do I explain how he tricked everyone in our lives that I was the one who was the problem? So that when I left him and didn't allow him to see my kids everyone tried to convince me I was doing the wrong thing. How I had no support to get away.  How I've been the only person trying to parent my children outside of abuse outside of punishment. How I have ptsd when I go into a school that the sights and sounds of the public school system cause me to react in my body with fight/flight/freeze.

If I tell you all of this but that I work and use creativity to seem normal and like everyone else as much as I am able. That all I've ever wanted was to be able to finish college and go to work and have a normal family. If I tell you I am not capable of living with a man because of what my abusive husband did to me and my children. That I was able to finally fall in love and felt like I was on my way to healing but that man died and left me raise our beautiful children alone.  I suppose I didn't have to do it all alone but because of the abuse I have lived through it makes it almost impossible for me to know how much is ok or not ok. I don't know how to tell who is safe and who is not.  I have learned I am an amazing woman with so much to offer in the world. I also have so much against me. I do not see a glass half empty or even a glass half full I just see a glass that will quench my thirst but that I have to figure out how to constantly fill up to also quench the thirst of my children daily.

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.