Sooo sorry about that error message!! I'll be back to my bloggin and vloggin on an almost daily basis. In the meantime chin up, heart open, and give yourself a hug. There is only 1 you after all!!
I'm typing this on my new iPhone, which means I can blog from anywhere! This is a test of the emergency broadcasting system! Let's see if it works…
Just felt like sitting down and typing a few words of gratitude. My life is getting so busy and my success is growing and as it does so does my stress. I woke up this morning with a sore jaw. When I was younger, I had no awareness when it came to my body. I was so detached from it. Now, after years of yoga and therapy, I might not have stopped the stress and fear completely, but I have figured out how to recognize it. I know what it means: it means today I slow down, today I take care of myself. The amazing thing is that when I slowed down today, I felt overwhelming gratitude for myself. I felt like "wow I matter." I matter to myself. I care enough about myself to be kind to myself. It's so crazy to me. I would have let the fear chase me into being grumpy before, but instead I slowed down and found love.
Maybe that was what I was afraid of all along.
People say it, they pray for it, they sometimes even take action. Well, it's the new year and what happens every January 1st? People set out to do better. And I believe that they mean it. I believe they intend to do better.
But then what happens? January turns into February, February turns into March and so on. The complexities of life happen and we slack, we think "I'll get to it later" and then later doesn't come until the next January 1st.
I am guilty of this myself. I have always intended to be a kind person because that's who I am at my core. But I let circumstances in my life turn me cold. I blamed others for my life; there is a little truth to that. Some of the things that happened to me were no fault of mine, but the world doesn’t know that.
The World judges me on my actions. We are supposed to be taught that as children that it's not our intentions that matter, it's our actions. But who is going to teach us that? Generations of people who say, "I didn't mean to do that" or "that was not my intention"? I have had people treat me poorly and known in my gut what's right and that I should fight for it, but someone else would ask, "Sue, do you really want to waste your time with that?" Inside I would think yes, but do the opposite. That action caused me to get angrier and angrier. I was a victim of my own choices, not a victim of being treated poorly.
I was so frustrated and grumpy that the action of hope was not a possibility until I decided to take responsibility. It was time for me to take responsibility for my own excavation. I had to be responsible for my own love. I had to dig in and find it for me and for others.
You see one day I said, "Yes, I really do want to waste my time with that" and you know what that got me? Respect, and, lots of times, money. I struggle every day with how to keep my hope when such awful tragedies happen every day. And the only answer I can come up with is: I want to waste my time on it. I want to waste my time on the fight that it takes to remain hopeful. I want to wake up everyday and exert myself. I want to matter.
I also believe that the only way the world will ever change is if people start treating each other with dignity and respect. That means kids, parents, priests, criminals, exes, bosses, people who have done you so wrong you could spit. I actually think the latter are the ones who need it most. You see if you spit, you are making the world worse. If you treat them with human dignity they have nothing to push up against.
This does not mean let people walk all over you; it means look them in the eye, keep your voice low and say what you mean, mean what you say, and don't say it mean. It means exert yourself, fight the good hope fight, and don't crumble under the harshness of others.
Change takes time and in order to change, you gotta do something over and over again; you need stamina. Let's live everyday like it's January 1st.
Oops sorry, the holidays took me away. So where was I? Right. Precious, he and his Dad met me in West Hollywood so that I could take him to the Getty. When I walked up to them, Precious was not having any of it. He did not want to go, he just wanted to go home. Boy was he grumpy. I finally figured out that it was because of the mid-week switch from his Mom's to his Dad's that was making him so uncomfortable.
I thought to myself, that must be so hard for him and upped my patience level with Precious. I convinced him to go with me for a half hour, told him if he didn't like it we would leave, and off we went.
We get off the 405 at the right place, but we take a wrong turn. Precious starts to freak out because he sees all the traffic we are going to have to sit in on the way back. I am not the best driver, so internally his freak out was making me freak out. I pushed through though, and told him to respect me. He did, and it didn't take us long at all to find the Getty and next thing you know we are on the tram above the Hills and the view was spectacular, but no where near as spectacular as the view once we reached the top.
I forgot to mention that I had busted Precious in a few small fibs earlier in the week, which I'm sure all 12-year-old boys do, but it broke my heart because this kid is so cool already that he doesn't have to make anything up.
Anyway, the first piece of art that we see is a photograph of a sentence from a book that said "he lied so much he began to believe his own narrative." Precious read it and asked me what narrative meant. I told him and he got it. We both felt it, like some next level shit, art imitating life and speaking to us because we had the patience and the strength to push through.
Next we look at the old oil paintings. We talk about how amazing it is that they haven't cracked and he says something (I can't remember what) that prompts me to tell him that he is very literal. He asks me what that means and I tell him. Later on he calls back to it and says, "Sue I was just being literal."
As we move through the museum we see a yellow piece of wood leaning against a wall and he says, "C'mon Sue I could do this." I say, "Of course you could."
When we’re done, we stop to get a snack at an outside stand. Precious tells me that he wants a tuna sandwich. I say, "Don't get the tuna it's gonna be gross, it's been sitting out all day, get the burrito, it will be better." He says to the woman behind the counter "I'll have the tuna sandwich." When she puts it on the counter, he looks at it and says, "Can I have the burrito instead?"
When we finish we clean up after ourselves and go home. On the drive home I ask Precious if he saw that he didn't need to be so nervous when everything wasn't perfect. I say that's part of maturing, when you have really uncomfortable feelings and you don't take them out on others, you push through them and get the rewards.
He looked at me nods and asks, "Then I can be successful?" and I respond, "Literally."
Hi there everyone! So, I re-vamped the site and it took me a minute to figure out all the passwords. But hopefully I'm all squared away to let my thoughts flow. Chin up, Heart open :)
I was in LA for a bunch of weeks over the past couple of months and I met some big Hollywood people, went to some fancy dinners and got lots of accolades, but the thing that sticks most is my exchange with my friend’s 12-year-old son.
We will call him "Precious" because that's the nickname I gave him. Precious read me four of his creative writing stories and one of them started with a kid who had a Mom and a Dad who lived in the same house, and he wrote "which was very unusual now a days." Precious has a Mom and Dad that love him very much, but they never married and don't live together.
After he read me his stories, we had a private yoga lesson, and then I asked Precious to take me to Culver City because I had not seen it since they did it over. As soon as we started walking, he saw an art gallery and said, "Sue let's go in here, it's the only cool place around."
While in the art gallery, I asked him if he wanted me to take him to a museum while I was in LA. He said, "Yes the Getty." The next day we went to the Getty and if you want to read the rest you'll have to come back tomorrow...
Here's a little tease: The fact that I can say that I was in Los Angeles and wasn't so consumed with fear, that I actually saw another human being and may have even helped, is a miracle in and of itself.