giving thanks to your scars

That scar on your face that everyone notices is more beautiful than your otherwise flawless skin.

It says more about where you've been and less about where you're going.

It's written all over your imperfect truth.

It's a trail.

The trail where no one wants to know where you're headed.

They are in awe of where you've been.

How you've survived.

No one looks ahead on a map without first looking at where they've come from.

So, the next time you feel ashamed of your mistakes, 

remember to be proud that you're still standing.

Be thankful that you are aged another day in your life and that you are better than yesterday.

Still coming from somewhere to get somewhere else.

Entering healing from an exit wound.

Maybe you got shot down.

Maybe you fell.

Either way, the beautiful scar is yours.

Own it.

There's always beauty in that kind of thankful.

Happy Thanksgiving.
I'm thankful for all of you who follow me at Soul Inspiration.

~ L ~

lesson on vulnerability

"Real isn't how you are made, said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you.  When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes, said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful.  "When you are Real, you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse.  "You become.  It takes a long time.  That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out, and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.  

But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real, you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

~ excerpt from the children's story, The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

this word in my dictionary III

ca-pac-i-ty: noun;    the maximum amount that something can contain.

~ ~ ~

Every public building has a known maximum capacity for it's occupants at any given point in time.

But do you know the capacity for your own inner private space?

Do you know when you've had enough, when you're about to burst?

Do you know where the exit is and what's in the way of it?

The final maximum occupancy ordered by the fire marshall will include all these types of considerations, making sure there is never too many people or obstacles in the room that getting out of the space in an emergency would prove impossible.  

But that's only known because somehow, somewhere at some point in time

someone couldn't get out.

It was a learned lesson. The space had to test itself to determine what it's capacity was.

By now you know one of my favorite intellectuals of all time is Eckhart Tolle.
On this matter, he says we have the most capacity for growth through the empty space that we allow to be.

Empty space has the capacity to be filled, displaced or ignored.

Less stuff in the space makes for more capacity inside.

Less is more.

You can learn your limits only through trial and error.

Someone once asked me,
"How do you exit discomfort?"

Frustration can come out of my seams
when the glue called 'defense mechanism' fails to do its job.

Time to review the maximum capacity limits within,
especially as the EXIT sign of 2013 is right around the corner.

~L~

scattered pictures

Ever drive by your old house, run into an old friend,
or smell something familiar and instantly you are sucked into a vacuum of time?

~ ~ ~

Memories are like airports.

You either can't wait to be taken away by them or you dread the thought of them.

Perhaps you left someone behind.  

Maybe they left you.

For a short while,

for a long while?

Either way, 

there you are - there they are,

being sucked high up into the atmosphere

in a thin metal tube,

in and out of your memory radar.

In an instant, 

loneliness creeps in and aches through your body like a dull heartbeat thud.

WAIT! COME BACK!

Don't go.

Stay right here where it's safe inside my head.

Who cares if you're delayed.

I need you here, delayed,

not there on someone else's good timing.

Of course I love you!

What?

Let you go, then?

Set you free?

Release the suction from my memory capsule?

How do I do that?

How does desperation make room for rationale?

Alright then.

Hold my hand,

sweet memory of mine,

and help me let you go.

If we only have what we remember,

then what would I have left of you?

Can you give me a sign that you're still here,

old memory in my head.

Do you remember me?

I've grown up a little.  A lot.
I was the girl who slept inside your walls,
the teenager who drove you when you were brand new.
The one who appreciated your smell before she knew how to appreciate.
The woman who remembers you.

Your plane is waiting,

right there next to my soul.

You can get on it, 

I understand.

Have a seat near the wing.

Pay attention where you took off

and where you will land.
Hold onto your compass.

And remember me too,

as the one who

held onto you 

even 

when

you

forgot.


~ L ~

if you grow on a vine....

You may not be into wine,

but consider the grape that is....

I am fascinated by the similarity of the wine making process

to that of the nature of a human being,
and to how we keep our souls alive on this Earth.

Alone we are one grape but collectively we are a magical and fascinating science of fermentation, of history, of love.

Consider what makes great wine.

A great chateau, prime soils that have been perfectly groomed throughout centuries, the location on the Earth which shelters the grapes from strong winds.

But then consider the human factor - the love that is given to the vines

like the gesture when each berry is carefully picked and treated with respect.

You are the grape.

Thomas Duroux, CEO of Chateau Palmer in France looks at a grape that was grown on a vineyard that is over 400 years old.

He says,

"Ah, I know you so well, I know your soul, I know your character,

but what do you want to tell me this year?"

While you are the same shape, the same fruit, from the same soil in the same spot,

You have evolved so much. Your history and all of the facts say so much about your DNA and how you taste, yet this year you are different than the last.

The grape is picked off it's life line, it's pressed for it's inner juice.

What is released from within you?

What gives?

Are you bitter because you were trapped in dry, dark soil 

or are you sweet because you felt so loved and grounded in this rich blackness?

The cork is pulled and parts of you are shared with millions

waiting to experience your beauty, 

waiting to judge your taste.

In this fleeting moment where you are so vulnerable with all your insides exposed,

you realize what an impression you can make on one person.  On many.
Your raw inner beauty is appreciated by so many because it's such truth.
It speaks louder than the hills you were grown upon and the name stamped on your bottle.

And once the last bottle of your soul has been opened and consumed,

it cannot be redone. 

It has lived and told stories and eventually that year is a collective memory of a generation.

How that one person remembers your uniqueness that night...

how he still thinks about you when he's an old man and he speaks of you as way more than just a memory...... 

How she remembers that year the grape was so special it won awards....

She even describes you as a musical symphony to her senses.....

....that is how you were known,
that is why you were here
and why you always will be.

~ L ~

I used to speak about the "Circle of Life" as though I were 80 years old and looking back on it.

"Oh, you're born, you grow up, you live, you become an adult, get married, have children, then they have children and then you die (though not necessarily in that order these days)."

But I am in fact inside the circle right now in this very moment.

It's spinning but I'm very still.

I see my 9-year-old daughter texting my father - her grandfather - and the tenderness with which he talks to her and

suddenly I'm 9 years old again.

Sliding back in that circle of time, I'm awkward in my own skin. I'm wearing a yellow shirt and orange shorts and my dad is trying to brush my long hair with his left hand. It's frizzy and my outfit doesn't match and by all accounts I'm a mess

but he thinks I'm pretty anyway.

I could feel it then but only now, inside the circle and very still,  do I have the words.

The words which my daughter now feels and will speak of when she's a mother.

I want to tell her about this circle but she needs to grow inside of it to feel alive in it her whole life.

I watch my mother cradle my children in her arms and cook them their favorite foods and

suddenly I'm in high school opening my packed lunch.

The root beer is on the bottom wrapped in a napkin so it doesn't fall through the bag.

The chicken sandwich with lettuce and mayo sits carefully on top of that so that it's cold all day.

My favorite snacks are gently placed on top of that, 

followed by the love note which is the first thing I see.

"I love you princess, Love Mom"

Oh, mom, you didn't even have to say it because I felt it then.

But only now, inside the circle and very still, do I have the words.

The words which my kids now feel and will know when they, too, are parents.

My brother tucks two lottery tickets inside my daughter's birthday card

with words of love that she understands.

"I love you more than Katy Perry loves fireworks, 

more than Taylor Swift loves umbrellas."

And suddenly I'm 7 years old in an oversized t-shirt crawling into my brother's bunk bed.

I'm scared but he doesn't say anything, he just scoots over and makes room.

Together they scratch off the lottery tickets.

But they've already won the jackpot of a lifetime.

He loves her like none other and she knows it. 

 She feels it because she's inside the circle too.

This morning I walked in my daughter's room and there, snuggled next to her,

is her little brother, curled up in a ball next to her warmth and I know that she must have made room for him last night in her bed because he, too, was scared.

Suddenly I am as still as ever.

Spinning slowly inside the circle but yet very still.

I want to keep spinning inside this Circle of Life

and be as present as I can be in this moment.

~ ~ ~

You're spinning too, right now on this planet Earth.

Very, very slowly.

But are you spinning slowly inside your life circle?

Slowly enough to realize that your life isn't square?

I invite you to spin still with me.

~ L ~

ad-ap-ta-tion; noun

In Death Valley, the hottest place on Earth with temps up to 134 degrees, 

Coyotes can scrape by on grubs and lizards whereas most other animals fail to survive.

I thought about this fact during the first two months at my new gym, my new home away from home.

  "Why do I feel so out of place here?", I thought.

Everything seemed foreign even though I'd been doing similar exercise for years.

There's no way I'm gonna like this place, I told myself.  

It's too.....different.  

I hated on it right away. Why is the floor like this? 

Who are these people?

And why didn't they notice when I was away for two weeks?

They should have called me dammit - what if I was dead?

I wanted to quit, but I'd been here before.

Here, in the quit pits of my own mind.

Alright, I thought, "Are you going to be the sea otter out of place in the desert or are you going to be the coyote?"

Day after day, I got more pissed off at myself for walking in and feeling so out of place.

I knew it wasn't them or the place or the room, the floor, the bars or the cubbies that wouldn't fit my drink.  

And that's what pissed me off most.

----->  It was ME.  <-----

"What do you want from this place, Lauren? From these People?

Do you want a cookie for doing a pull-up? 

Do you expect to be any more than a stranger to anyone here?"

Ugh, there I was, all caught up in the middle of a life lesson.

But what do I learn from this?

My answer was clear today.

They announced the workout. I'd be trying "butterfly" style pull-ups for the first time today.

I immediately hated the thought.  Hating on it already.

I can't do this. I'm going to fail. I want to do a regular pull up for crying out loud.

I'm good at those.

Think of the Coyote, Lauren.

Take it by the 'horns' and get up there and 

butterfly the shit out of the air,

out of your head and all its negative residual clutter up there.

You're a walking, thinking, breathing mammal, a machine

who can more than survive in these four walls

because the coyote THRIVES in Death Valley for god's sake!

I went for it with a new attitude.

One that had subsided in me over the past few months,

that was lurking in the dark valley of pity and quit and fear.

I did it.

And do you know, I was GOOD at it!

It was the surprise that I needed from no one else but me.

It was the lizard the coyote found under a rock after nearly starving.

As soon as I noticed me, so did the others, the 'others' that DID in fact notice that I was gone.

Maybe I hadn't noticed I was gone because I was never really........there.

But now here I was. 

Finally.

Home.

It's in a neighborhood near determination, 

across the street from courage

and on the other side of the tracks from fear.

You can find me there.

Keep feeding your mind the right food, L.

Eat a lizard and like it. 

Butterfly anything once.

Lesson: Adaptation