Zen and Practice (aka Hey, a Post After a Hospital Day!)

(first: our MRI day showed everything is stable--time to breathe)

“Practice makes perfect”

Yay, perfect!

Boo, practice.

And really—does practice make perfect?

Practice promotes progress. Practice builds perseverance. Practice fosters peace.

Perfection doesn’t exist. Except O’Bagel bagels (Stirling, NJ). They are pretty perfect. 

Cinnamon Bagel, O'Bagel.

 Yes, it has icing. Be Amazed.

According to family history, my grandmother was a piano prodigy. By 15 she could play Rachmaninoff with ease—but she hated performing, she would accompany other musicians or singers, but she never liked to perform solo, despite her gift.

Enter the first grandchild—the only one lucky enough to meet Grandma, who died very young. My grandfather wanted me to have piano lessons so I could play like Grandma…

But…I am no prodigy, and I hated practicing, and I hated performing on the piano as much if not more than Grandma did. Probably more, since I had zero of her skill—and even as a kid, I hated not being perfect.  I used to pray I would get the flu before recitals.

I never did. 

I know this disappointed my Grandfather (my terror of playing for him, not my immunity to spontaneous flu), which I regret, but my 9 year old self really liked reading and drawing and collecting stickers and pretending to be on Broadway more than piano—even after my parents told me that there were certain songs from Man of La Mancha that I should not belt out at Christian summer camp. 

Probably STILL a good idea not to belt “It’s All the Same” at Camp. Ahem.

And yet, while I know now that it is ok that I did not embrace piano like my Grandma did, as an adult I see the benefits of practice.  More accurately—I understand the absolute compelling need for daily practice in so many areas. Practice no longer means Hanon finger exercises on piano—although sans performance pressure those are kind of zen! Practicing things that promote health, personal priorities, and ultimately what is best for our families is essential, not for perfection, but for progress toward reaching whatever goals we have set for ourselves—even if those goals are as silly as not having Screaming Loud Face when not speaking my opinion (my kid begged me at a recent event not to make “mad face”, I told her that ship had sailed. I have resting SOMEBODY IS GOING DOWN AND IT IS PROBABLY YOU face, which can be problematic. My face YELLS what I am thinking even when I am silent, alas.)

Practice, even when it seems tedious or ineffective, encourages growth. When I started running, I ran secretly, on a field near my house when nobody would see me galumphing about. Over time I ventured on to roads, bought “running clothes”, signed up for a race—not to win, (bwahahaha) but to show up, to prove to myself that perfection doesn’t matter, practice and progress do.

Practice is simply about showing up.

Yoga is all about practice, a theme that has helped me a lot.  Each day is different. Some days are great, other days, every inhale and exhale takes effort, every moment is distracted. But with practice, yoga progresses. After a few years of practice -- AND MEDICINE—to leave that piece of the practice of self-care puzzle out is to mislead, I needed both chemistry and physiology to heal my brain—the breathing, stretching, and focus of yoga has become an important part of my life. Will I be Instagramming pictures of myself upside down on top of a mountain any time soon? That would be a resounding NO.  Will I get back on the mat tomorrow and see where my practice leads? Indeed.

Just show up. Practice.

My morning prayer practice is the same—somedays I am totally “SQUIRREL!” while reading my morning meditation and taking time to pray for friends, family, and the world. Literally “SQUIRREL!”,

I put birdseed on my deck and I see the squirrels coming for breakfast…and an occasional gray cat, recently…but in the practice of showing up for 15 minutes each morning, I am slowly getting better at being present, at checking in with God, at centering my mind and refusing to get caught up in the anxiety that a new day so often holds for me.

Practice never ends; my dad is past 70 and practices his French horn every single day—which is how he maintains his musical excellence—his phenomenal natural talent from his mom provided a base, practice grows the gift—over decades! Practice keeps us in the game, on the road, moving forward—a magical end point does not exist.

So I practice stilling my noisy face. I practice telling my self-loathing interior monologue that some days rumbles to shut up already.  My perpetually cluttered counter: I have to keep practicing dealing with papers and putting things away. Writing AFTER a scan day—here is my practice at that, at writing a few drafts BEFOREHAND--and being ok with having only one little pencil/ink sketch. Progress!

The Goal: Practice showing up. Practice regrouping and starting again when things go sideways. Practice NOT freaking out, practice responding NOT reacting. Practice seeing with eyes of charity, not eyes of OH NO YOU DID NOT.  Practice being ok with imperfection. These practices I must pursue. These are my zen practices.

We won’t reach perfection. Can’t happen. Reminding myself that that is ok is part of my daily practice.  Knowing that tomorrow is another day to try…that practice is an ongoing process…THAT is what keeps me moving right along.

What are your practices that help you get where you want to be each day?

Zen and the Spotlight

“Turn up that spotlight, and though it’s not right, 

I simply can’t refuse its call….” –Nunsense

I cannot control all of the horrible things in the news. Wars. Poverty. Hatred. Exploitation. Racism. Sexism. Discrimination. Hunger. Disease. Hopelessness.

I cannot control the political and ideological quagmire sucking the lifeblood of our country. 

I cannot control people’s ideas, or behavior, or words.  Heck, parenting toddlers to teens taught me that (and really, the infant/adult versions of my progeny also taught me that!).

For a control freak like me, the litany of cannot controls whomps my brain, ramps up my anxiety, depresses my spirit. I feel like my friend’s cat who sleeps faceplanted into the ground. I feel you, Frankie.

Creative Napping credit: Frankie.  Photo credit Christine Dalessio

Meh. 

Saturday I reached my limit—again.  Maybe it is time to swear off all social media again, to stay offline except to check my email and what the Daily Markdown is on the LL Bean website. Maybe I just need to step away from all the noise and outrage (much of it justified!) and frenzied reactions and awfulness and go old school—like returning to the beta version of my life. 

But—

My far off babies are all online (ie my nieces and nephews who are piles of cuteness and love and bub-ness that are all that is good in the world). 

So many of my friends in the brain tumor and NF communities are in the thick of things right now, and social media is how they keep all of us who are pulling for them updated on things.

I only know about faceplanting Frankie because of social media. Solidarity, Frankie!

Slay the paper, then faceplant nap.

Photo credit Christine Dalessio

These are all good, meaningful uses of social media.

So—I don’t think a complete fast is actually going to solve the problem. My brain will just find different things to worry about.

Anxious and discouraged, I left my computer on Saturday to go to church ahead of a predicted storm. In the car I used yoga breathing practices to try and calm down, I felt that bad. And then at Mass, a couple renewed their wedding vows in honor of their 50^th wedding anniversary. 50 years of fidelity. 50 years of struggling through the reality of life together. The short, moving celebration of this goodness moved me deeply.  Despite the ugly outside the doors of our church, in this moment we celebrated good.

This was a sea change moment for me.

I cannot control the ugliness. But I can control what I focus on. I can control what I give my attention to, what I put a spotlight on. 

I can magnify the good.

This is my new mantra, my new practice of being—I want to be a magnifier of good.

I can put a spotlight on how pink the sky is when I walk Coco in the morning. I can spotlight the service projects my kid does, the Eagle Scout project my friend’s son is doing to benefit the hospital where he was treated  (which I learned about on Facebook),  the great grilled salmon I had at a restaurant in town. I can spotlight the things I am grateful for, the things that give me joy, the funny song or commercial that made me laugh.

I can magnify the good. 

yup, went Extra Large on this one. 

Magnifying the good does not ignore or invalidate the bad. Anyone who knows me in real life knows I have NEVER been accused of being a Susie Sunshine, all rainbows and lollipops and unicorns.  Not once. Never.  Hm. The bad is out there. WE ALL KNOW IT. The bad draws the spotlight to itself. The bad grows with attention. The bad festers and expands the more we feed it with “shares” and comments and focus and hyper-analysis.  

Zen means knowing how to acknowledge the bad while living the good. The bad does not get to win the day.

I simply choose not to magnify the bad any more by giving it attention it does not deserve.  I choose not to let the darkness grow in my mind unchecked. I choose not to wallow in that which I cannot control.

I choose to obey my own self-set rule and NEVER READ THE COMMENTS. Ugh. Failing on that this weekend; seeing people of my faith tradition referred to as “demonics” reminded me why NEVER READING THE COMMENTS is always a healthier choice. And this NOT reading is something I can control. 

I can stay informed without reading 50 articles about something. I can know what is going on and address what I can address without being consumed by the angst of a darkness I cannot control.

The darkness is large, and growing.  That is no newsflash.

I know that I cannot ignore it. Nor can I singlehandedly say “YOU SHALL NOT PASS” ala Gandalf to the Balrog.

BUT—I can magnify the lights amidst the darkness by how I talk to my children and spouse, what I write, how I post things online (and NOT in reverse order! Real life first!). One magnified light can literally burn a hole in things. What if we all tried to magnify the good instead of feeding the bad with obsessive attention? What kind of holes could we burn in the advancing darkness? Maybe enough to take the darkness down, together? 

So today—I choose to magnify the good. 

I am going to have to break some of my own habits. But it can be done. And when I find myself spiraling down a rabbit hole of EVERYTHING IS AWFUL (yes, sung like the Lego Movie song), I have to practice stopping, regrouping, getting back on the Magnify Good track...and keep movin' right along.

If you would like to support Davis Ammari’s Eagle Scout project, please check out the flyer below—and magnify the good this survivor kid is doing for others.  He is also accepting monetary donations--even $5 can really help make things less ugh for teens battling cancer. It is hard to be a teen onco patient when most support services are very much geared towards younger children. Thanks for doing this good thing, Davis!

Zen and the Restart

Happy 2019, all.

So…while math is not my first language, chronology is the language of my chosen profession—and I realize that this entry is in no way two or three days after my last entry. 

Oops.

I kept adding BLOG in increasingly urgent fonts to my bullet journal. I dug out my gold star stickers. And yet I could not write the words. 

What the heck happened?

Well—a few things happened. Thing #1: I started working more. Substitute teaching holds a set of challenges that keeps me on my toes until I get home and utterly collapse. As time has gone on and I have worked through most of the different schedule configurations and academic departments, I am starting to get more comfortable with what I have to do. Still, the drain on my mental and emotional energy is pretty profound—especially since as soon as the school day ends I am back on Chauffeur Duty for my daughters, whose schedules are extremely full. Staying awake past 9 has become a challenge!

I understand now why my mom has always been such an early to bed kind of lady.

I am profoundly grateful to be subbing, especially in such a great school where things are clean, organized, coherent (ie there are systems in place for any kind of situation or schedule that might arise) –for my anxiety-plagued brain, the ORDER in this school just makes me so happy. Both my mom and my mother in law have commented on how much happier I seem. I am grateful. This sort of busy just depleted my writing energy tank. 

Thing #2: Hospital Day. More accurately, hospital days, plural. Due to scheduling what-nots, we had to have my daughter’s MRI and neuro-oncology follow ups on different days, around her busy school schedule. The challenges of an evening MRI in Philadelphia, plus days in between, plus oh sh*t we are back in neuro-oncology (an out of body moment that happens every.single.time we find ourselves back in clinic)—all these things put my writing brain into severe overdraft mode. The scan was stable, really stable. There were some other things that had to be pondered/dealt with mentally acknowledged…and once again my brain couldn’t put together words. 

I am continually agog at this phenomenon, how going back into neuro-oncology world puts my brain into insta-survival mode. The mental muscle memory that kicks in as soon as we get on the road to Philly astounds me. If only I had that kind of muscle memory for things like roller skating or backbends…

Thing #3: aka The Big Thing: Enter a Crisis of Ideas. I finished reading New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton—I had been reading a chapter a day as part of my morning prayer/get set for the day time. This book blew my mind—for folks doing any kind of spiritual seeking, check it out. Anyway, the later chapters of this book broached the idea that we really can’t force zen (he didn’t say it like that, but that was the idea). We can’t structure or create inner peace, we have to get to a point of acceptance and surrender for zen to happen.  I am not saying this right—but basically, you can’t control freak your way to zen.

Hey now.

I like me an action plan. I want to DO THE THINGS AND BE ZEN. I SHOULD BE ABLE TO CONTROL ALL THE THINGS AND GET TO ZEN!

I want zen to be the first thing I can check off on my to-do list.

Not only that—not only can I not control freak my way to zen...there is no actual end point to zen. It’s not like I can do all the things and force my way to some Be all And End All of Zentastic Zenitude. I can’t just map a route to some magical place in the northwestern hills of New Jersey and be like Ha! Found you, zen!

Nope. Although note the skillful avoidance of 287 and Rt 80. No zen to be found on  those roads.

This is likely beyond ludicrously obvious, but my denial is industrial strength and honed by years of practice.

Years ago I used to proclaim that I thought running was silly because why would you run and not go ANYWHERE but back where you started? I could see running to Dunkin Donuts, or to get fries somewhere, but in a random circle? What the heck?

I hadn’t even thought of this in years until I started wrestling with my crisis of ideas. The zen quest is like running—you get a lot of benefit out of it, even if sometimes you don’t feel like you are actually GETTING anywhere. Progress is measured by a different rubric than a simple point A to point B hooray for fries kind of way.

In this wrestling I have found my task…er, focus for the new year. (How quickly I go right into Do It! mode …) How to reconcile the deep truth I see in this need to let go, the understanding that it is the trip that matters, the destination remains in flux…with the deep truth I see in myself, that I need to know/control/handle all the things. 

I am not sure I have figured it out. Rephrase, I KNOW I have not figured it out. Anyone who lives with me will assure you there has been zero figuring out. But I can no longer let my questions stop me from writing—I have to embrace the uncertainty and keep moving. In some ways, I think that is what Merton means. Similar ideas resurfaced in my subsequent re-read of Jacques Philippe’s Interior Freedom (another mind blowing read—on this second time through I took notes in the margins).  Freedom comes through letting go, not from holding tight. You get peace and THEN do the things, not do the things to get the peace.

HEY NOW.

As much as this idea initially rankled, (Elsa can keep her “Let it Go”)—I see its truth.

I can’t MAKE THE ZEN HAPPEN. But I can take steps to invite it in.  Brene Brown said it perfectly in this week’s “Dose of Daring” email—“The willingness to show up changes us. It makes us a little braver each time.”

I want to keep showing up in 2019.

I will keep movin’ right along.  I will try to move forward in letting go of resentments and embracing forgiveness as a PRACTICE.  I will try to use my life experiences to help other folks who are wading through the quagmire of yikes. I will keep Christmas all the year…ok, wait, wrong resolution. ;) 

I will share some more of the tools that have helped me—and honestly, will probably find myself wading through quaqmirish moments of my own (next hospital day is in about 5 weeks). But hey—2019 provides a fresh start on my search for zen—or at least my search for how I can let go and let zen in, while accepting that the work remains ongoing. 

Peace, all. And apologies if the Frozen soundtrack is now stuck in your head. ;)

Gratitude and the Darkness

December darkness creates a lot of challenge for me. Only in the last couple of years have I begun to identify exactly how much I struggle with shorter days and early nightfall, a darkness that coincides with some really challenging medical anniversaries for us. December has long, long been a challenging month—and my inability to type words seems somehow connected to that.

And yet I LOVE December, too—decorating the house, pulling out my collection of nativity sets, baking mountains of cookies, working on secret projects for my family and friends. Sometimes I can just barely stay on the edge of my funk by diving into all of these things.

About this time last year, through the recommendation of a friend, I started a daily gratitude practice. I know that the idea of gratitude being a useful tool against pervasive funk isn’t by any means a new thing I discovered—certainly the idea has gotten a lot of press and even research to support it over the years. For me, the PRACTICE of gratitude was something new.

Each day, making myself think of (and share) 3 things I am grateful for—from big stuff to days where all I can say is “I am grateful for socks”—has been transformative.  It really is a PRACTICE, something I have to do, just like yoga or exercise or the piano (which I never did, hence my utter lack of piano skill, to my own dismay. Gosh I hated practicing).

But gratitude is so easy to practice.  We used to have our kids write grateful notes on little leaves that we would stick on a paper tree I taped to our pantry door during the month of November—and honestly, I meant to post about gratitude IN November. But keeping that practice alive throughout the year has really helped me to reframe even the most challenging days as not just a sum of yikes, but a yikes that is superseded by the good.

Granted, some days the practice is REALLY CHALLENGING. Like, Hanon finger exercises END of the book challenging. (I knew they were there, even if my practicing was anemic at best). The last several weeks have had a lot of challenges in a variety of areas—and yet in all of those challenges, or at least around them, I am learning how to find something to be grateful for—and I share it.

Gratitude shared becomes a little point of light—and reading OTHER people’s gratitude becomes MORE points of light—and while the darkness is not dispelled completely, at least I know for certain that the darkness will never win. We always have something to be grateful for. Always.

This day is the anniversary of my daughter’s last relapse/shunt revision/descent back into brain tumor treatment.  Facebook keeps reminding me not only of the terrible fear and despair of that week, but more of all of the people who posted on our behalf, seeking prayers and support for our family. Even as I struggle with reliving the pain of those days, I am also so, so grateful and comforted by the people who surrounded us with love and support.

A dear friend of our family suffered a terrible heart attack a day ago—he is a former colleague—his daughter, also my friend, brought our family a meal on my daughter’s ORIGINAL diagnosis day, an act of love I am forever grateful for. (side note, Jen makes a fabulous chicken divan). John (her dad) was my son’s teacher when my daughter was at the most dire parts of her treatment back in 2006. We were inpatient at a hospital out of state for 22 days during that school year—and that was in addition to regular chemo trips, scan days, etc. John’s kindness to my son during that year, the way he carried him through the challenges our family was facing—that is something I will always be grateful for. John’s son is a pediatric cancer survivor, and thus he truly understood what our family was going through—and addressed the fallout of our family’s trial (as it played out in my 10 year old son) with compassion.  I am so grateful, and in this present awful time for John’s family, I am reminded of all of these gratitude moments even as I pray for my friends.

The frustrations are real. The anxiety—super real. The search for purpose is real. The challenges of painful memories have so long been my reality. And yet the practice of gratitude is helping me find a path through these things.

So November is over. (Yeah, news flash). But the opportunity for gratitude continues.

Give it a try. I promise it helps, even –or maybe especially- on the days where finding gratitude requires some stretching.  The practice of gratitude is truly transformative, and it doesn’t require any special equipment or infomercial paraphernalia—just an open mind.

I am grateful for all of you who slog through these ramblings. Grateful for the opportunity to share words and thus my own journey. Grateful that I am on my 3^rd bag of Cadbury and still have multiple bags left in the cupboard. Grateful my son spent so long in the shower I had time to actually write the first draft of this after procrastinating since Thanksgiving. Ahem. See—it’s easy. J

Give the practice of gratitude a try.

And please, please pray for my friend, John Stein, and his family.