Summer Harvest

 

My garden is bursting at the seams. I have been up to my eyes in cucumbers, tomatoes, arugula, pumpkin, peppers, eggplant—the list goes on! I try and dump produce on any soul who stops by the house, but it isn’t enough.

Mind you, this is my first garden, so the whole thing has been an experiment. My thoughts were, “is this shit even gonna grow?”—way back in April when I plunged my hands in the soggy manure-laden soil.

The gardening process has been a labor of love. In the beginning, I weeded every other day and took time to examine each plant in their fragile nascence. If the temperature dropped below 60, I quickly rushed home to cover the boxes. At my first harvest—mostly strawberries and spring greens—I was twitterpated. There’s nothing quite like eating a meal you have grown yourself. The food tastes so fresh! It’s almost as if you can feel the life force you are consuming. You realize how ‘dead’ grocery store produce really is; it’s no wonder when majority of our grocery fruits and veggies travel all the way from equatorial zones so we can be supplied with any and every lifeform we desire 12 months out of the year—its fucked.

In the modern world, we have become desensitized to many natural forces. We have let our seasonal compass rust and in that we have lost a sweet patience and connection to our food that is cultivated alongside the seedlings. There is no greater feeling than waiting for your berries to ripen or the tomatoes to redden, and then gorging for a few weeks at t time. Blackberry-flavored everything and bruschetta for daaaaayze.

Of course, it’s not always flower-children and Indian summer picnics. Nature is a reflection of our own internal seasonal energy—something I have never listened to before but is ripe with lessons. Leading up unto the summer solstice, we are all growing--planning, planting, watering, waiting for the sun to shine and our explosion of energy to begin. I certainly felt this way—manic almost, like I had a fire under my ass and I needed to do everything. In that time, I moved to a new city, got two jobs, a new house full of new roommates, and began training for a marathon—just for shits and giggles. This is spring and early summer energy at its finest.

Now that summer is waning, we’re all exhausted. The plants are dumping their energy into their fruits in a way of sluffing off that long-cultivated energy. Like, ‘here take it all, I’m done.’ We can recognize that same urge ourselves— ‘yeah, I’m ready to layer up for fall and tuck away my SPF.’

We’re over it. A tell-tale sign is the overgrowth that we see happening. At least with me, I went from over-mothering my garden to straight-up negligence. I was like, ‘come one come all—grow however you want.’ And now my garden is a disheveled forest of wiry, too-tall, indistinguishable specimens.

The waning of summer brings an insightful lesson of how things can “grow-over” in life. If you don’t take the time to prune the thoughts, actions, and behaviors that inhibit your full potential—things get overwhelming. We can’t distinguish one root from the next—good and bad.

There’s a difference between maximum growth and maximization of the plant’s properties. Lettuce, for example, if you don’t trim consistently will put all its energy into growing a super high stalk, and give tiny, bitter leaves. Similarly in my life, when I put all my energy into ‘reaching for the sky’, doing everything I possibly can to stay productive, even if it means working 7 days a week—my harvest is a fraction of the quality that it could be. Even though it’s tempting to shoot up as fast as we can, we must take the time to grow-slow, trim unnecessary influences and have faith that seasons cycle. 

Malleable Empathy

Being an aunt comes with many lessons. Babies have a way of reminding us of our foundations in life, our true necessities. They also come with a lot of responsibilities and ‘growing pains.’ Right now Taft is teething which, for anyone who hasn’t been around infants, is the worst. They won’t eat, sleep, or stop crying because their little gums are so sore.

I personally can’t remember what it feels like to have teeth ripping through my gums, but I imagine it is fairly painful. For those of us taking care, it is difficult to respect the infant’s valid experience when they are wailing and inconsolable. Sometimes I catch myself thinking, “Yep Taffy, teething hurts but life doesn’t get any easier— better saddle up.” And this diminution of experience isn’t helpful for anyone.

I remember my mom once sitting on the floor with me in our living room on a particularly dramatic night. I was very depressed and on the verge of suicide. She came downstairs and tried to talk to me.

“I was a teenager once too, you know,” she consoled me, “I remember what it’s like.”

And yet I felt so alone—like she could never understand what I was going through. I am coming to recognize how feeling with people is very different than relating to them—it’s a matter of empathy. As adults, we have a tendency to diminish woes of those in different ages and stages of psychosocial development with a ‘just you wait till blank’ response, rendering the person’s current issues in this time and space trivial. Even with ourselves, how often do we discount our feelings by drowning them in labels of how we 'should' be instead of how we are.

Sometimes when I stay at the Mirai, I go down to the workshop and watch Ryan wire trees. Hunched on a stool with house music soaring in the background, Ryan has conversations with his hands. He radically bends, bruises, grafts, chops, redirects the flow—all to create a foundation for exceptional growth. The trees respond. 

             “Have you ever broken a tree?” I asked him once as he was precariously bending a deadwood limb past what looked like its tipping point.

            “Absolutely,” He smiled without pausing his copper choreography, “but I have also made some pretty fuckin awesome trees.” He took a step back as the pine’s branches settled in their new contorted harmony. “If I don’t go all out, these trees would never be worthwhile. You’d be amazed at how far they can be pushed.”

I continually am in awe of the malleability of wood—such a rigid medium in my perception. Similarly with the development of the self, our current state often feels rigid--weighed down by conditions of our past or future. 

It is easy to forget that our personal wiring happens one day at a time. We can’t judge other people’s experiences or struggles as invalid, or even our own, because every moment we are in is very real. All of our growing pains contribute to the integration of a whole self-- all are valid and worthy of respect. Empathy is a tool for radical personal and communal transformation. We all agree that it takes heartbreaks, teething, new environments, grafting roots, better fuel, vitamin D, and uncomfortable, radical contortion to make ‘fuckin awesome’ humans--so we should be a little nicer to each other and ourselves on the way. 

A Wise Woman on Love and Relationships

 

Since very early this morning my mind has been reviewing my history with relationships, spurred by Amanda asking about how I've navigated certain relational terrain.  I didn't say much at the time she asked, due to my own uncertainty of how much to share at that moment.  Its an interesting and important line to walk as a therapist/facilitator of how and when to share my personal story or history.  I always ask myself whether doing so is truly in the service of the group, or client, and I have to really be clear on that.  I am pretty sure that for at least some of you, it could be helpful to hear an honest account of the important learning and growth I have experienced through relationships.  So, I will write more here.  If you don't feel that would be helpful to you, trust yourself on that and feel free to stop here!  I won't write an autobiography, but will try to speak to some of the topics and questions that came up last night in our group, and how they surfaced for me, and how I found my way through them.  And really, I feel like I have nothing to hide about any part of my life or myself, so do know that I am open to questions and will continue to be open with you, while listening to and honoring my own boundaries in the moment. 

In my twenties I had several serious relationships with men, interspersed by long periods of time spent being single.  I am pretty comfortable on my own, and enjoy my independence, so that was OK with me.  I also really love connection and relationship, and knew that I wanted a partner and put a lot of energy into relationships when I was in them.  During my twenties I was also moving forward with my career path, and along with that came embarking on my own therapy, and a lot of personal work as I was becoming a therapist.  My relationships during that time were under a lot of reflection.

My time single was critical for developing my sense of my self, getting clear on who I was and who I was becoming, and moving my own life forward.  It really helped build my strength and confidence in many areas, although at times I felt lonely and unsure if I would ever find a relationship that would sustain over time.

When I was 28, a relationship I had been very invested in ended, despite me doing everything I knew how to do to keep it going.  I was devastated.  I was in the midst of graduate school at Naropa, though, and had an amazingly supportive situation amongst my peers, and a therapist that I still feel so grateful for.   And probably because I was so well supported, for the first time I was able to consciously feel what was one of my core woundings: a fear that I was unloveable.  I feel sad even writing that now, that I lived so long with this deep fear, rather unaware of it, but it was always operating on some level.  It all made sense given my family dynamics, and how I functioned for so long, but to really feel it was a whole other deal.

I started to see how I chose men who were rather unavailable in some way, and my unconscious hope was that by getting them to love me, I would then feel loveable.  Because they were unavailable or "hard to get" in some way, my unconscious hope was that I would really feel loveable and special if I got the "hard to get" guy to commit, open up, and love me.  I was actually setting myself up, without knowing it, to be disappointed, and to be thrown back on my own unresolved pain, and face my fear as it seemed that these relationships were confirming my worst fear of being unworthy of love.  The genius in my approach was that I did have to eventually deal with myself, which is what needed to happen all along, and to attend to this fear I was carrying without expecting or needing someone else to do it for me (which no one can, anyway, I found out as well).  So, I spent more than a year picking up the pieces of myself that had been so disowned and gradually, somehow, using every tool I knew, came to a new way of being in myself that felt more grounded, safe, and reliable.  I now am actually grateful to all those men for not rescuing me (which they actually couldn't have anyway) from my own work that I needed to do to restore my own wholeness.

When I finally met my now husband, I was 29, in a much more comfortable place in myself, and ready to start again.  And of course, he was somewhat unavailable!  It was about a year from our first meeting before we actually started dating, and in that year I was just watching how I would have moments of being interested in him, then be completely turned off by his lack of availability, that before would only have made me doubt myself and then be more interested in him.  So I was happy that finally, I was not attracted to someone who kept himself at a distance. 

When we finally started dating, he was more ready and available and I was so much more clear that I didn't need his love to feel loveable.  It was a good start!  But we still both had more work to do.  In 3 and half years, we broke up twice, very painfully, him not ready to commit more fully and needing to do more work on himself, and me having to grieve and feel the loss despite thinking that it should work out since I had really done my work!  I was angry, heartbroken, and completely at a loss.  I finally was able to see that on a very subtle level, I STILL wanted him to love me and commit to me so that I could confirm my worthiness of love.  It was still there, and once again it took losing the relationship, TWICE, for me to see that and really get it. 

Still working with the same therapist, I just kept going with my own work, using the friendships I had cultivated for support, too.  After our second break up something really shifted in me, I was angry and I also felt my own certainty, finally, that the relationship was over NOT because I was unworthy of love.  I finally just knew it very deeply, that I was loveable, regardless of whether he--or anyone--loved me or not.  I wish I could say how exactly that occurred but I just think it was an accumulation of staying with my experience, for years, with really solid and skilled support around me, that I was able to shift how I felt about myself.  That simple, and that hard.

When we did get engaged, about a month after our second break up, we both had learned big pieces for ourselves.  I learned that I was OK without him, and he learned that was OK with me (his fears were more around losing himself, being engulfed, being abandoned).  So, then we were ready!  I laugh as I write this, what we had to go through to get to being Ok with ourselves.  The human journey is rich, challenging....and kind of funny. :)

Some of my friends and family were supportive of us getting married, and some were openly opposed, given our roller coaster of break ups, etc.  That was disappointing, but I also knew again that even if he decided to end the relationship on our wedding day, that I would be sad, AND that I would be OK, was very comforting to me.  Knowing I will be OK, whatever happens, allows me to take the risks in my life that lead to fulfillment.

We have an amazing marriage, I must say, and I think a lot of it is due to getting a lot cleared up before we committed to each other.  We both continue to work on ourselves, and take responsibility for our feelings, insecurities, fears, etc.  We support each other with doing our personal work.  We have a strong community of support, too.  We are both committed to and highly value personal/spiritual growth, and our relationship is a spiritual path for us.  We both work at staying connected to ourselves, and each other, and have a low tolerance for checking out.  And we have fun and laugh a lot.

There is so much more I could say but I hope that gives an overview of the path I have walked when it comes to creating a committed relationship for myself.  There is no right way, but I do believe that relationship is a path to growth, healing, and if we use all the opportunities that come our way, we will have no way to go but to evolve.  And that is fulfilling, whether it leads us to partnership or not.

SIDENOTE:  I just had Jayson (my husband) read this, and he added that he really felt something shift energetically and spiritually for him when I landed solidly in myself and my self love after our second break up.  He feels that shift, in combination with him doing his own work, allowed us to finally come together.  He also says I was more attractive to him after that shift in myself, however subtle it was, he noticed it, for what that is worth.  For me, whether it was attractive to him or not, I am grateful for the growth that I experienced.

Last thing!  All those years, in my twenties, struggling through relationships, I was "doing" self care.  Journaling, extensive time in nature, movement, yoga, meditation, social support, all the stuff we think of.....it was supportive to a point: none of it was touching the deeper work that needed to happen.  Relationship is what helped bring out my deeper work, which was so helpful, and feeling everything in my being as fully as I could, with support and awareness, is really what helped me grow and evolve.  So for me, self care is REALLY about feeling my experience fully, and doing whatever helps me to do so.  I think that is important to know so that we all make it a priority to figure out what actually is caring for ourselves, in a deep and meaningful way, that helps our life be as fulfilling as we will let it be.