Miller Time Friday: Vulnerability

When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/vulnerability.html#QVdR3yzhPF1OGQID.99

When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/vulnerability.html#QVdR3yzhPF1OGQID.99

When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/vulnerability.html#QVdR3yzhPF1OGQID.99

 “When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/vulnerability.html#QVdR3yzhPF1OGQID.99

Happy Friday All! 

First, thanks for the feedback on the dresses yesterday.  Never ask a question you don't want the answer to, and I certainly got a lot of varying responses!  It is always fascinating to me how people can see the same thing and have such different perspectives on it, which is, I think, what makes life interesting!

But it got me to thinking about the whole act of sharing one's life, even if it is only a sliver of that life, publicly.

Blogging is both a narcissistic and wholly exposed enterprise.

Some bloggers share a lot of personal information - this is the camp in which I fall - others utilize a more op-ed or salon conversational approach to areas that interest them.  I think Tabitha over at Bourbon and Pearls falls firmly and brilliantly into this camp.  Some blogs are mostly beautiful pictures and images. 

Regardless of the type of blog, what having a blog or doing anything public requires of a person is a certain degree of vulnerability. 

Not everyone will like what you write on any given subject. 

Not everyone will like the look of you or what you wear or what you ate or where you traveled.

Some will think you spend too much money, others may think you are cheap.

You may think you have written something in a very diplomatic way, only to discover that you have hurt someone deeply.

I am thinking of vulnerability again as I recently signed up for part II of Brené Brown's online course The Gifts of Imperfection.

I did the first course last year and loved it, though if truth be told, I suspect you could jump right into part two without any concern about having missed part one, so long as you have read the book by the same name - which, by the way, is required reading for the exercises in the course anyway.

I've posted on Brené before on this blog and admit to being a full blow fan girl because a) she is a social work professor and how many of THEM make it big?  b) she is a Texan, a no BS kind of gal, but her no BS involves disabusing people of the notion that everyone else is living a bigger, more exciting, and meaningful life than they are.

Surrounded as we are by Facebook posts of the happiest moments of someone's life, of bloggers who share what two dresses they are thinking of keeping but perhaps don't mention that they need two dresses because the last summer dresses they bought 3 years ago are way too small because they've gained weight, we somehow think that our lives don't measure up.

When I left my job last year and then subsequently wrote that very personal story of my unhappiness and frustrations with the life choices I'd made (and which I proceeded to share with the whole frigging country), I opened myself up to a whole lot of vulnerability.  And it was hard, but oh so worth it, because it opened me up to some people that I'd never otherwise know and it also opened me up so that people could see the real me, not the manufactured me.

It also opened me up to some harsh realities about myself.  One of the hardest things about writing this blog or writing the piece in the Globe and Mail or trying to get published at all is that you open yourself up to judgement - your own and other people's.

People talk about you behind your back.  I know, because I used to be one of them. 

I used to judge people all the time.  Now I have come to realize that the act of judging others, while human perhaps, is the sign that you are trying to divert yourself and others away from the ugly truths about yourself.  

You have to love yourself enough if you really want to love other people.  And people often clam to have good self-esteem, but in my experience, we are works in progress and some of us are working through pain, regardless of how we present ourselves to the world.

Now when I start to judge, I stop myself and ask: "why is that bothering me so much? why do I feel the need to judge it?" 

Sometimes my judging is born out of jealousy. 

Sometimes someone has hurt my feelings.

Sometimes it's born out of that feeling that we are not meeting our own expectations and that somehow, that person is smarter, better looking, more competent than us.

Sometimes it is out of some kind of self-righteous feeling because the person or situation is being mean or self-serving or petty and look at me, I'm none of those things.

But of course we are all of those things, aren't we?  Because we are human.

So I'm signing up for part 2 of Brené's online course because I am most definitely a work in progress and I find that every step that I take that enables me to be more vulnerable, more authentic, more me is a step that helps me find my tribe in life.

And that tribe, scattered as they may be around the world (or standing in a snowstorm with me burning effigies!) are the people that I am meant to be with and whom I love.   

They know me, they know the whole me (okay, maybe they know most of me!), because I am no longer afraid to share who I am, with the understanding that those who remain milling around after the big reveal are the ones that I'm supposed to be with anyway!  The rest are looking for their own tribe and I wish them well in the journey!

And that is a nice thought to end a week with!  So thanks Brené Brown and thanks to everyone who shows up here to read about my unglamorous, but real, life!

Ah who I am kidding - here's what really happens:

So thinking of Brené, I think I will make a cocktail today related to Texas!

How about:

Texas Tea

Ingredients :

- 2 oz tequila

- 2 oz rum

- 2 oz vodka

- 2 oz gin

- 2 oz whisky (whiskey,bourbon...)

- 2 oz orange liqueur (cointreau, grand marnier...)

- 2 oz sweet and sour mix

- 2 oz cola (pepsi, coca cola...)

---

Use a "In glass" for Texas Tea drink recipe

Fill a 1 gallon pitcher with ice. Add all the ingredients except the coca-cola. Stir, then add the coca-cola and stir again. Pour into your favorite glass with

Now that was refreshing.  Now I want to go to Texas!

Happy Friday and thanks for reading along!  Stay safe out there!

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.”
― Brené Brown

When you stop caring what people think, you lose your capacity for connection. When you're defined by it, you lose our capacity for vulnerability.

Brene Brown

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/vulnerability.html#QVdR3yzhPF1OGQID.99

Thinking About Gratitude

I have been thinking a lot about this topic throughout the Autumn and given that this is the American Thanksgiving and I have many American friends, it seemed like as good a time as any to talk about it.

Gratitude.

The idea for this blog post was reinforced last week when I was working on my Remembering Kennedy post and I ran across this quote:

As we express our gratitude,

we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words,

but to live by them
John F. Kennedy

I don't know if Kennedy himself came up with those words, or just a really fabulous speechwriter, but no matter - those words called out to me across the years.

I have been guilty in life of not being as grateful as I might be for what I have.  Sure, I thank God for my family and friends every night, especially for my children, but sometimes those prayers and thoughts of gratitude become rote exercises in our lives; we say them, but do we think about them?  More importantly: do we live them?

However, this Fall seems all about my learning to be thankful - the online course I've been doing with Brené Brown, meditation, my writing.

We write about clothing and decorating and the books we read and the movies we watch, but those things are all made by people (well some may be made by machines, but I am not particularly smart when it comes to those things so I am going to gloss over that! I am after all the person who thinks the TV has fairies in it...) and not simply the designers and the writers and the movie makers, but people doing the physical work of creation for us as well. 

I was unpacking Christmas things last night and while my items are imbued with the memories of my family and the Christmases where these items have served as silent (or not so silent - hello to my Mother's crazy wide-mouthed bass that sings Christmas carols that is the most god-awful thing but will always get to stay as it reminds me of her!) sentinels to our good times, but I thought of the people who made them first, the people who drove the trucks to get them to the store, the people who worked in the shops where we bought them.

Yes Virginia, there is an Indy Claus..

It is human, I think, to be thinking and planning ahead.  It is human to want the new "thing" - I mean Adam and Eve wanted that shiny new apple and if they'd hung around The Garden of Eden long enough they would have been scoping out the new Apple Computer for sale by that Mr. Snake Guy - but all things have a cost and if we start to look at the world around us as the magical place that it is, it starts to change our perspective. 

Deepak Chopra says that if you are always thinking of the past or thinking of the future you are living in a dream world.  The only real thing is right now.  By the time you read these words I will be off doing something else altogether.  Learning to be in the present and enjoying the present naturally leads to gratitude.  And if you are not in the place this year to feel that gratitude (and believe me I have had times like that too), the most important gift you can give yourself in the next year is to try to find some way to get your sense of gratitude back.  Baby steps.  Maybe you are just grateful for your lungs that help you breath.  Or that somebody invented dark chocolate and red wine.  Those are good places to begin.

This practising of gratitude is starting to make a huge difference in my life.  It is not Pollyanna-ish - it is actually a gift that we can give ourselves.  Now when I am waiting in line at Starbucks for my tall decaf cappuccino, I am looking at the whole enterprise in wonder - isn't it amazing that I can pop into my local bookstore and these people are just waiting to serve me?  And it may take 5 minutes to get my coffee, but I can take that time to breath deeply and look at the shiny machines and wonder how if the guy behind the counter minds wearing a hair net.  And then my cappuccino comes and it is excellent and I am warm and feeling lucky indeed.  And it makes my interactions with them friendlier and more personal and that can only be a good thing.

I wish I could say I was born feeling grateful as I ought to be - I was not.  I have suffered my own share of "the grass is always greener" and I will struggle with that for the rest of my life I guess.  But I am making progress and that progress is making me more joyful and content.  I think of people I know who are naturally filled with gratitude; they are my teachers.  I read once that the comedian Jack Benny was like that: every sandwich was the best one he'd ever had; he was always filled with wonder.  One of my good friends, G, is married to a man who is like that.  He makes me just gloriously happy to be around him because he is always so pleased and happy for others (and for himself and he should be - he's married to G!).  Cultivating gratitude in our lives is a gift for ourselves and a gift for others - I can't imagine anyone who wouldn't want to be around G's husband.

I have a friend who recently took an amazing trip.  The destination was the original motivator to go; the journey was the gift and he accepted the gift with gratitude.    Through his pictures of life in a very different place, I not only got to see this world, it also helped me be grateful for the life of potential and choices within which I live.

I tried this yesterday when I went to the grocery store.  Normally, I don't like the grocery store; it is big and overwhelms me with the selections.  I only had to get a couple of things, but as I walked the aisles, I focused on how amazing it was that there were these many choice - that you could have red, white or green chai tea, caffeinated or decaffeinated.  Really - could you want more?  And people delivered that tea there and stocked those shelves with that tea and someone invented the machine that let me check out all by myself.  It was quite miraculous, really.

I think that for many people in the past, the remembrance of gratitude was reinforced by the church (of course, for others, the church had the opposite effect!) and that in 2013, we are looking for ways to feel connected.  The world is a big place and we sometimes feel small.  But by practising gratitude and kindness we are able to break down that vastness that separates us from one another.  Not only when we are face to face, but across the miles as well.

On this fine Thursday (and Happy Thanksgiving to my American Friends!), I thought I would leave you with a quote by Brené:

I don't have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness - it's right in front of me if I'm paying attention and practicing gratitude.

I am grateful to day for all of you, whether you leave comments or not - you are ALL important to me!
Have a happy Thursday and say safe out there!