Over the years I’ve heard two very dichotomous quotes examining our experience of an absent loved one. The first: “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” The second: “Out of sight, out of mind.”

I’m missing Patrick very much right now and it occurred to me that I finally could reconcile these quotes and through missing him as much as I do, I realize I now believe if we don’t really love someone that much, they will be out of mind when they are out of site. And if we really do love someone, the feelings within our heart will grow when we take space.

I’m appreciating the gift of loving someone so much. I feel like the last decade of my life was romantically very difficult and in many ways, tragic. I’m elated to have such a beautiful partner and to have the experience of missing him.

My love, my love, my love….

A series of things went through my mind about how this sort of thing probably happens with all generations as they meet the one that follows them; that I didn’t want to be how I perceived the generation before me; that I had a choice in that moment to either could enjoy it and appreciate the way they were teaching me and helping me grow or I could do what I perceive my elders did and fight it.

I was grateful when I opened into loving the process of allowing the next generation to teach me and help me expand my horizons. I think, perhaps, when I stop doing that will be the day that I really grow old.

So, thank you to all of you who I can truly (and lovingly) label, “those kids today.” You inspire me.

The first day of  school our professor introduced himself and challenged us to get to  know someone we didn’t already know. I stood up to look around when a  gentle hand touched my shoulder.

I turned around to find  a wrinkled, little old lady beaming up at me with a smile that lit up  her entire being.

She said, ‘Hi handsome. My name is  Rose. I’m eighty-seven years old. Can I give you a  hug?’

I laughed and enthusiastically responded, ‘Of  course you may!’ and she gave me a giant squeeze.

‘Why  are you in college at such a young, innocent age?’ I  asked.

She jokingly replied, ‘I’m here to meet a rich  husband, get married, and have a couple of kids…’

‘No  seriously,’ I asked. I was curious what may have motivated her to be  taking on this challenge at her age.

‘I always dreamed of  having a college education and now I’m getting one!’ she told  me.

After class we walked to the student union building  and shared a chocolate milkshake.

We became instant  friends.. Every day for the next three months we would leave class  together and talk nonstop. I was always mesmerized listening to this  ’time machine’ as she shared her wisdom and experience with  me…

Over the course of the year, Rose became a campus  icon and she easily made friends wherever she went.. She loved to  dress up and she reveled in the attention bestowed upon her from the  other students. She was living it up.

At the end of the  semester we invited Rose to speak at our football banquet. I’ll never  forget what she taught us. She was introduced and stepped up to the podium.. As she began to deliver her prepared speech, she dropped her  three by five cards on the floor.

Frustrated and a little  embarrassed she leaned into the microphone and simply said, ‘I’m sorry  I’m so jittery. I gave up beer for Lent and this whiskey is killing  me! I’ll never get my speech back in order so let me just tell you  what I know.’

As we laughed she cleared her throat and  began, ‘ We do not stop playing because we are old; we grow old  because we stop playing.

There are only four secrets to  staying young, being happy, and achieving success. You have to laugh  and find humor every day… You’ve got to have a dream.. When you lose  your dreams, you die.

We have so many people walking  around who are dead and don’t even know it!

There is a  huge difference between growing older and growing up.

If  you are nineteen years old and lie in bed for one full year and don’t  do one productive thing, you will turn twenty years old. If I am  eighty-seven years old and stay in bed for a year and never do anything I will turn eighty-eight.

Anybody can grow  older. That doesn’t take any talent or ability. The idea is to grow up  by always finding opportunity in change. Have no regrets.

The elderly usually don’t have regrets for what  we did, but rather for things we did not do.. The only people who fear  death are those with regrets.’

She concluded her speech  by courageously singing ‘The Rose..’

She challenged each  of us to study the lyrics and live them out in our daily lives At the  year’s end Rose finished the college degree she had begun all  those years ago.

One week after graduation Rose died  peacefully in her sleep.

Over two thousand college  students attended her funeral in tribute to the wonderful woman who  taught by example that it’s never too late to be all you can possibly  be.

When you finish reading this, please send this  peaceful word of advice to your friends and family, they’ll really  enjoy it!

These words have been passed along in loving  memory of ROSE.

Anyway, I got a message today from a FB friend — a beautiful woman whom I’ve met once who was reaching out and just wanted to see how I was doing. I was quite moved.

My response follows:

You know, I have this policy in my life to live as authentically as possible. I could give you lots of shallow answers — I mean, hell, we barely have met, right?

thanks for asking. you have no idea how much that means. truly.

My last few months have been something like this:

• March: Rebirth
• April: Uprooting
• May:   Opening
• June:  Reconnection
• July:  Crazy

So I call forth for my August: Grounding

Then I took a look at him and I almost instantly started to cry. His manner was unassuming. He was polite in asking. He walked away and asked someone else when I said no.

He had no shoes on. His feet were black and rough looking.

I went into this cycle of thoughts around it and why my own immediate response was to say no. Lately I’ve been giving more frequently on the street. Not because I have more to give fiscally, but I have more openness to “feeling into” people’s experience and pain. And I remember what my friend Chris said to me years ago when I asked him why he gave so often. His
response was, “Because I would hope that if I were in that position, someone would give to me.”

What I also noticed was I was nearly debilitated by the experience. I’ve been doing so much work opening up in the last month that witnessing this man asking for help and shoeless had me crying before I was half a block away. My heart ached.

I ask:

How do you stay open and still stay functional without crying all the time or feeling sensations that stop you in your tracks? Maybe I’m just that sensitive. Thoughts?

I particularly enjoyed the first portion of this video because the message was, IMO, a powerful reminder of how both being in our stability and allowing ourselves to step out of our comfort zone is, in fact, a gift to our development and our lives. Thanks Oliphant for sharing this!

The idea is that if one shares information with another person with the intention of creating change in the listener’s life, then the information being shared is coaching. If, on the other hand, the information being communicated is being said just for the sake of talking about one’s own experience, the information is then being shared.

I wondered how this was useful in my own life when Mark shared with me. Over the years, the biggest thing I’ve noticed is that sometimes I want to help my friends — give them ideas or advice — to help them have a better life. Of course, what if they don’t want that help? What if me sharing things with them is coming from a place of me thinking there is something that
needs fixing when in their world, everything is fine?

The interesting thing is that you could say the same sentence and be coming from two different places in your intentions. For example, imagine saying, “I remember when my partner treated me that way. I didn’t think he was good for me so I stopped dating him.” You could be saying this from the place of wanting the other person to stop dating someone you think is bad for them. Alternately, you could be saying this from the place of trying to empathize and just share about your life. You may even have both sentiments going on for you.

Learning to recognize my internal motivation for sharing things has really helped me to have a more clear idea of what my intentions are and what information is therefore appropriate to share. I also notice that I can sometimes be attached to people making some sort of change when I’m coming from the place of coaching rather than sharing and by simply recognizing the different, I am able to be a better friend to others.

I’m curious what experiences you have with these ideas. . .

What I recently discovered through feedback from Facebook followers is that, as one friend/follower said last week, “your personal is your professional is your spiritual is your political — you’re a lot more brave than I am.”

I have to agree – there is a certain amount of courage required. On the other hand, I notice I have increasing amounts of freedom the more rawly I share myself because I am being authentic and don’t feel I need to hide me. I am more integrated in who I present myself as because all the things I am are one. And the truth is, I’d rather be transparent than have to deal with figuring out who I can tell what to. So I just made a decision about 8 months ago and just went for it. And the truth is, I have gotten braver and braver. Read this weeks posts though and you’ll get a sense of real rawness! I have had a crazy week.

I also believe it is very healing to be transparent. We have so much of our lives been told to be inauthentic and “do the right thing” which often means “be polite” rather than “be authentic.” I say f*ck that — let’s be real and share ourselves so our beauty can shine through and we can support each other more fully.

I believe by sharing my world more fully, I feel more free. I also believe that as others see this freedom, they become inspired and take it on themselves. It is a self perpetuating upward spiral.

As I was walking toward the door, a tall male Caucasian with big, not-so-brushed-hair, a baseball cap and outstretched arms approached me. I tried to side step him and he stepped back in my path. Again I tried to side step him, and again he stepped in my path, the entire time walking forward. I took out my headphones and looked him square in the eyes, thinking, “I can take him…” and I attempted once more to side step him and and step back. He continued to approach me and I said, “Dude, get the f*ck away from me.” I pushed him with my left hand out of my space and walked brusquely past him and directly into the WalGreen’s. I walked inside, a bit stunned, aware that the look on my face was not normal. A woman at the counter (customer side) asked, “Did that man just accost you also?” To which I replied yes.

She asked the man (he might have actually been a teen, I’m not sure — he looked young to me) behind the register to call the police. The register guy went outside and because he didn’t see the guy, he didn’t call them.

While I was standing at the register, two people walked in and asked if they sell cigarettes there. WalGreen’s, apparently, no longer carries them. I thought that, at least, was good news.

The good news is I’m moving the upstairs studio — the one with less usable space, lower ceilings, a leaky ceiling and higher rent — to a new location at 10th and Mission into my friend Decker’s place where he uses the space for the Authentic programs. It is bigger and nicer, so teaching wise, this is a huge step up. In fact, this studio will be larger than the main studio I’ve used for 7 years and I’m still keeping at the 953 Mission location. And, it is currently housing my piano, so I get to be reunited with it.

I’m also renting an office there so and I’ll have a home base and some flexibility with chilling there in the evenings during the week.

I don’t really have my housing sorted fully so if you have something to offer, please let me know.

Meanwhile, I’m going to get a hotel room for the weekend of the expo (April 23-27) simply so I can maintain my sanity, then fire drums is the next weekend (April 30 to May 3) so I’m out of town, then I am trying to arrange a trip to Dallas for workshops the following weekend (May 8-11).  I go to Chicago to be with a friend who is doing chemo on the 12th of May and stay there for a workshop over that weekend until the 18th. So a lot of fun travel. 

I will then have a housesit (I hope, still securing this) for end of May through mid August, so it’s only a month of really crazy I guess. At that point it is my hope that James/Hunter and I move in together into a space. We’ll see what unfolds though.

With respect to the Temple, classes will begin in the new space the week of May 13 and this is really exciting because now I have an awesome space to throw Flow Jams in, so you can expect more of them to come.

For the first time ever in my life I was able to express my boundary with my parents showing up fully vulnerably, open and being _exactly_ who I want to be. And while it took a few minutes, they actually, in my experience, for the first time ever, got it.

I was on the phone with my parents. We were talking about Prop 8 and I began feeling sensations in my body that I would describe as micro-convulsions — contraction and release at rapid rate — spams — all seem applicable. But not full body in a way that was disabling… Rather in a small way that just hurt. (Were I in my vipassana practice, perhaps I could have been with them as “sensation” alone rather than pain… So I guess that’s somewhere to go from here…)

I had said what I wanted to say and my mother started speaking. She was saying things I simply didn’t agree with. At first I tried to rebut, and then I noticed I was getting agitated. So I requested that we stop talking about it. She continued to talk and at I tried to interject and then she said, “you had your turn to speak and now I’d like mine.” Which was great. So I shut up and I let her speak. When she finished — without me interrupting, the whole time remaining as present as I could and just being with my sensations — I hadn’t said anything. She asked if I was still there and I said I was. Then she started to ask me a question and I said, “I asked to not talk about this.” 

She kept trying to talk about it. I kept saying, “I don’t know how to not talk about this with you if you keep asking me questions. I’ve asked to not talk about it and I’ve drawn a boundary. I’m making a request.” 

She wanted to understand why and said, “So you’re saying…” and repeated it back in a way that really just took me back to all those times in my past when I haven’t felt heard or seen or understood by my parents and I finally just said, “I feel oppressed when you communicate with me that way.” I kept making the same request — again and again — each time she’d attempt to engage again. This went on for a few minutes of attempts at engaging again from her and me attempting to state the request, saying things like, “I don’t know what to do because I’m trying to ask you to honor my boundary and you’re not. And I want to stay in conversation with you and be fully open and not hang up on your or yell at you which is what I did in the past.” At this point I was just crying while I was communicating … AND I was open and vulnerable, genuinely trusting that I would be able to assert my boundary. 

My father finally stopped my mother. Then he said, “I don’t understand how someone as intelligent as you can’t compartmentalize this.” I realize that I felt that was some sort of judgment about my lack of abilities. Perhaps it wasn’t, and I realize it was statements like this that in the past really impacted my sense of self deeply. 

Staying with my sensations though, I was able to say, “Because I feel it in my body.” My father didn’t seem to understand and brought it back to me saying I felt “oppressed.” 

At this point a floodgate of emotion ran through me and I was able to really authentically share — perhaps for the first time from a truly vulnerable space with my parents, and I said something like, “This is why I fought with you for so long. I don’t feel oppressed so much as I feel pain. And this is how I have felt most of my life. Having spent the better part of the last 10 years getting in touch with my feelings, I am much more sensitive to it than I was in the past. And I refuse to go back to the way I was because that’s how I ended up being 300 pounds and I refuse to do that again. I’m sorry that I have this limitation and I can’t be perfect for you which is all I’ve ever wanted to be because believe me, if I could, I’d do whatever it took to never have to hear you say, ‘what happened to the other three points?’ again in any context.”

This was a joke they used with me as a child – I’d get a 97 and they’d say, “what happened to the other 3 points?” I, unfortunately, didn’t get that it was a joke. So my mom says something like it would be great if I could just get that it was a joke. To which I said, “I do get that it is a joke now, and I still have these tapes from when I was 5 and 7 and 11 and 13 and 15 and the rest of my youth running through my head.” 

We exchanged some more words. They seemed to not understand why I’m the way I am and they still honored my request and they really seemed to try to get it. That felt like a first for me.

As we were getting off the phone my mom said, “Try not to cry for an hour after we hang up.” I have to laugh at that to some degree. I think for my mom crying isn’t a good thing. Me, on the other hand — I feel better afterward. Put differently, I can’t even recall my mom crying 5 times in the whole of my life that I’ve witnessed whereas any given week, I’m likely to cry a minimum of 5 times. 

I left the conversation really loving my parents more than ever. And feeling more love from them than I have ever felt. Such a beautiful gift. All in all, it was an amazing experience.

Though I have to wonder, how is it I’m so different from them?