I Will Survive

More about positivity. That, by the way, was step #1. I wanted to start with “More about negativity,” and the fact that I love this version of Gloria’s fabulous anthem says mountains about where my head is usually at. Waiting for the disco ball or other shoe to drop.

Step #2, I’ve decided to change my responses to “…so how ya doin?” Instead of the hesitant, “Uh, ok or the word vomit that accompanies, “I’m a hot mess,” I might just burst into singing, “I Will Survive” instead!

That’s why my life has been all about Chakracise and AYM lately and since D Day. (That’s D as in Divorce from he whom I still have trouble naming lest I call up the Devil.) It was one of the life preservers that got me back to solid ground and then learning how to be happy again. Because what’s better for shaking off the blues than dancing (especially when it’s through those fabulous things called chakras) and what’s better for finding the road map to happiness than meditating while you move.

I’m a woman. If I’m in my feminine energy flow, I can multi-task and dance and meditate the night away. So lose the nagging ID that I’m scatterbrained and disorganized. We have both flows within us, so I can do that man-glue thing of focusing and fixing as well.

But don’t get me wrong. In Chakracise, there’s both meditation in movement and in stillness because in this day of Covid-19 and age of Aquarius, we are being called on to integrate the feminine and masculine instead of continuing to let them war. So come and Access Your Moment through Movement and Stillness. Zoom ID 771 765 222.

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Smell What Roses?

I know…these aren’t roses. I don’t much like them actually. Too stiff and formal for my taste. And these – whatever they may be – just sung to me.

So let me get back to Roses. Growing up I had been told that I liked to smell them “too much.” Of course our memories are funny things, so my mind has been set to wondering whether I’ve been holding the wrong message in my head about those dang flowers. My friend Paul started by asking “Why do you think you were told that story?”

Did Dad really say “too much” as gentle prodding …to achieve at a higher level? Or was it his realization that I preferred wandering instead of powering through life? And was it just statement of fact and if so, where did I find the Un to transform the happy thought of noticing and smelling flowers into a stick to beat myself over the head?

All those questions were not as important as the one Paul then posed, “How do you turn it – the negative – around?”

So here: I saw the flowers and noticed them at all. That was the gift to cherish.

Any of you remember this ditty? Love Ella’s version:

…You’ve got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
And latch on to the affirmative
Don’t mess with Mister In-Between
You’ve got to spread joy up to the maximum
Bring gloom down to the minimum
Have faith or pandemonium’s
Liable to walk upon the scene…

Change Please

Now to the Change part, which is the Life part, because yeah, yeah, “Change is the only constant in life.” Yeesh, we know this and do it every day as best we can. There are the days when everything goes ‘well’ – whatever that means – and it’s easy to talk about smelling the roses, savoring the journey, and just ‘Be – ing’. You may try to replicate that for the next day and the next, but this is when you realize you really can’t and shouldn’t so precisely. “Have a nice day…or not,” a friend and I have begun to say, to turn on its head that programming that Nice and Good and Fine look a certain way and are what we strive for.

Dad was right about life being a bit Russian Roulette and that we can’t know the good days without having the shxx ones. So I guess I subscribe to the, “It’s all good.” Or not. I’m really loving this “or not” thing to take the edge and Shoulds off of life, because there are other days that are just not fun.

Like yesterday, when an innocent comment like, “I wouldn’t do that” lands with a thud and I have to take a breath to get out of the “Can’t you do anything right!?” file. When you get an invitation to a “bring your swimsuit” bbq and in that off-handed “Hey, bring your friend (whose name I can’t remember)” way. When a conversation that starts as “What do you think about…” turns into wrangling and then to “I feel like a punching bag and can’t talk to you anymore” and finishes out the day with “Guaranteed we’re not going to talk tomorrow.” When the high point of your day is returning a toilet seat to Target. When your sister says the words “family trip” and “Bali” all in the same sentence.

Physical exertion, there wasn’t much, but I would certainly call it a ‘heavy-lifting’ or according to my British sparring partner, a “fxxx-all” day. Essentially it was one of those days when buttons get inadvertently pushed over and over, and memory files are yelling and reacting to each other, and it would have been easy to let the broken record play “Life’s a Bitch, and Then You Die.” The hard feelings could have really set in with each of us making assumptions and decisions about the other.

This is then where the freaking hard work (or not) comes in, all the hours and practice that the magician puts in behind the scenes, deep down, in plain view, wherever it needs to happen to make the Show …. well … magical. Stay tuned.

California States of Mind

It’s real because we’ve made it so: Crazy California. We’re pioneers, thinkers outside-of- the-box, and dreamers who have escaped comfort to commit to an adventure. Flip-side, we’re fabulously busy just being busy, flaky beyond decency, and more sick and tired than healthy and happy. The more refined assessment from the outside world: Northern Californians Fake Real, Southern Californians Real Fake.

I’m a born-and-raised San Franciscan who three weeks ago piled necessities and niceties into the reliable old Accord, and floored it down the 5 to resettle in L.A. (County) for…time undetermined. I’m actually in Long Beach, but that reveal so takes the edge off my adventure. A 93-mph speeding ticket further sobered me up and brought my high-flying escape down to earth.

In the Bay Area, they say there aren’t many of us natives still around, but I think it’s that we just lay low. Many of us are actually firmly planted, prisoners of our homes and family holdings. By accident of birth to American-dreamer parents and outrageous property values, we have an affluence and sense of having made it just by having stayed in the fold. If we were immigrants previously marginalized, we are now the entrenched establishment, landlords holding down the fort against invading renters.

What’s more, as a wanderer by nature, the city so much of a magnet to wanderers had become a crab bucket to me. When you are part of a tribe, you are supported when you stay, and for your own good, pulled back in when you wander off. There was also something disquieting in the collective. I couldn’t put my finger on it, although the Fake Real thing was beginning to seem less name-calling, maybe even truth-telling.

Don’t get me wrong. This may feel like a battle of North and South, California and Everywhere Else I’m setting up here, but it’s truly an attempt at non-judgmental musings. It’s a new age – Aquarius – and a blog makes that possible. Stay tuned.

Visit https://www.willow4u.com/relationships/ to find out how you can look more deeply at your collective and find solutions instead of frustrations.

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