Tara Cousineau, PhD

Clinical Psychologist, Kindness Warrior

Blog

Igniting Wonder, Sparking Joy

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Life offers so many moments of distraction, anticipation, and uncertainty. Life also offers us the present moment, allowing us to hold space for hope, faith, and love.

Apparently there was a 4.0 earthquake in Eastern Massachusetts this morning, but I didn’t feel it. I was walking in the woods on a glorious quiet, fall Sunday. Last week my little corner of the world was covered in heavy snow, with tree branches bowing to the earth and showing off their flexibilty. Today the woods glowed with what yellow and rust leaves remain on the birches and oaks. In a few weeks the trees will be bare.

Everything changes.

I was walking my usual path and reflecting about the phenomenon of creating upward spirals for a short meditation talk and wondering what I could offer. Then, as if the angels heard my question, I happened upon a miniature woodland house made of pebbles and bark and moss. The little structure was resting on an old well cover next to a stone cottage built in 1902, as if this new handmade treasure was its most recent descendant.

Ohhhhhhhhh. Ahhhhhhh. Wow.  

I knelt down and looked at all the details with amazement and gratitude.  With a silly grin and a spring in my step I kept on walking. On my return trip I took a different path, and behold, there was another little woodland dwelling. I stopped to scan the edge of the woods and the fields of grass. There was another. And another. My heart felt as if it could burst with joy.  Like a child on a scavenger hunt, I began to search. Eight little houses in all (that I could find).

The researcher and writer Brené Brown wrote, “The only unique contribution that we will ever make in this world will be born of our creativity.”  I imagined that some students and an intrepid teacher created this miniature wonderland for me, and whoever else might be out for a walk or a hike, just to stop us in our tracks and pause with child’s eyes.

What a gift to strangers to evoke such delight and enchantment!  These architects are creating an upward spiral of goodwill with each suprised being who happens to wander by.

Fact: Emotions, attitudes, behaviors are contagious. Whatever we insert into our social networks, whether online or offline in our daily lives, spreads.  That’s the “three degrees of influence” rule.  Positive or negative, what we put out there, spreads: from me to you, you to your connection, and so on. Knowing this means we can be intentional and take responsibility for what we say and do. That’s powerful. 

Let’s simply breathe into this power.  

What we pay attention to grows stronger. What we practice becomes habit. What inner strength or capacity do you want to spark? Is it love, kindness, courage, respect, connection, social justice, wonder or delight? 

When we want more love or joy or kindness in our lives, we also need to purposely experience them by noticing what pleasantries arise spontaneously, and also by creating opportunities to evoke those positive states.

Notice. Create. Enjoy. Repeat.

Meditation

Let’s begin with a few moments of attention to the breath.

Find a comfortable posture, feeling your body supported by a chair or the floor, with a quality of relaxed alertness. A sense of a strong back and open heart. 

Place your hands on your lower belly, in your lap, or gently on your heart,  and know that these touchpoints can also serve as an anchor for your attention rather than the breath. 

Close your eyes, if you like. Or gently gaze at your hands or on the floor.

As you do so, you may like to shift your body posture ever so slightly, such as a leaning-in with a tilt of the head, which can enhance feelings of care and compassion.  

Begin to notice your breathing, and where you find the breath most easily accessible. 

Breathe in, down to the bottom of your lungs, and notice your belly begin to expand.   

Exhale and release the flow of air. 

Let your body breathe you.

Follow the rhythm of your breath and body , noticing the subtle rise and fall, rise and fall. 

Let yourself feel an inner spaciousness of presence. 

Witnessing your moment-to-moment experience with curiosity.

May you spark goodwill as you walk upon the earth today.

When we love life fully, we leave heartprints on another’s soul. Love is like that. Love is the mother of all positive emotions—awe, amusement, compassion, gratitude, hope, inspiration, interest, joy, serenity—and love ignites an upward spiral for positive change. Just like these mysterious woodland elves sparked an upward spiral of delight for me.

This dose of kindfulness will nourish me for days.

Let love lead.

A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.

Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder

Perhaps someday I will learn who created these woodland homes. For now, I will relish in the mystery of human ingenuity.

These photos were taken at the Eustis Estate, now a Historic New England Museum. It is open to the public to enjoy the wonder of the Blue Hills Reservation. This area was once the land of the Ponkapoag tribe.

RBG’s Shoulders

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There are so many quiet champions for the dignity of humankind. Most we don’t hear about.  They are our neighbors, friends, a kind stranger. And a few rise up in every century with shoulders to stand upon for future generations. In this way, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is exemplary in my mind and heart. I was gutted at the news of her passing. Even though it was not unexpected, I supposed many of us naively hoped that her near superhuman ability to both persist and resist would take her into 2021. Alas, it was not to be. Watching the news footage of RBG as the first woman and the first Jewish person to lie in state in the United States Capitol evoked a mixture of awe and anxiety. With a clenched jaw I contemplated the future for my daughters and future generations of girls. Then, with a deep breath of gratitude, I let go of the tension. She was a beacon of light.

The New York Times posted endearing portraits of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s remarkable ascendance into what can be easily described as her superhero status for so many of us. Buzzfeed published a photo montage of children at the Supreme Court building in Washington DC that makes me clutch my heart every time I look at them. There is one with a four year old in a superwoman ballet costume saluting RBG’s coffin. In another, a mother and child hold a poster that reads:

Don’t let the ruthless replace Ruth’s legacy.

She did so much for fair and equal treatment of women, men, mothers, fathers, immigrants, and the less fortunate over decades. We’ve lost a wise elder.  It’s a feeling of: “Oh, not this, too!” I’ve been reflecting on this loss and think that her superpower was her grace and her grit, her quiet compassion and her enduring wisdom. And also her humor. She is quoted as saying,

When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out.

Ginsburg didn’t waste her energy on negativity or feeding it, she simply kept her attention on what needed to change. That’s grace and grit. 

Many of us have pandemic fatigue and election dread; and some of us may have a heavy heart for one reason or another. It’s been a year of disruption and RBG’s passing is a searing addition. I find myself practicing and teaching the notion of kindfulness in one way or another: on the Insight Timer meditation app and in several workshops at Harvard’s Counseling Mental Health Center that promote resilience, mindfulness and self-compassion. I feel a need for community during these uncertain times. So I go back to basics and focus on cultivating presence. Being present to one’s life is one of the six ingredients in P-E-P-P-I-E that helps wake us from the spell of stress and live a life of joy and vitality. PEPPIE is an acronym I created that stands for 3 nourishing ingredients and 3 actualizing ones. Think of a garden. We must tend to our inner garden in order to flourish: by nourishing, planting, watering, pulling out the weeds, pruning and pinching back — and repeating this over and over. In with the beneficial stuff (positivity, healing, healthy connections) and out with the harmful stuff (harsh habits, thoughts, words, and actions).

The three core inner ingredients in PEPPIE include:

  • Presence
  • Emotion Regulation
  • Perspective Taking

Kindfulness allows us to strengthen these inner resources. These ingredients are like the compost, water and sunlight.  And there are actualizing ingredients, too. These ingredients fuel the potential for living a meaningful life by leading with love. These include the inner strengths of: 

  • Purpose
  • Integration
  • Effort

This is what Ruth Bader Ginsburg practiced over the course of her career. She was never thwarted by setbacks because she committed herself to the long arc of justice.  She kept tending and cultivating the legal grounds to uphold human dignity, fair and equal treatment, and justice for all. When she was asked about her legacy, she said, 

To make life a little better for people less fortunate than you. That’s what I think a meaningful life is. One lives not just for oneself but for one’s community.

It feels like a storm is brewing. I don’t know if it is made of locusts, rain or ice. We already have an invisible pestilence. Yet all storms pass. They do. I do know that Ruth Bader Ginsburg will always be a guiding light for me and so many others. Let her light shine upon us. May we have the grace and grit to evolve humanity.

Thank you, RBG. 

Check out my Insight Timer Live events: Weekly Dose of Kindfulness, on most Sundays, 12 noon ET through the end of the year.

Image Source: RBG Sticker from MoveOn.org

Commit to Being Calm and Connected

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Can you feel it in the air? The fall is upon us as the light changes and the temperature shifts. Every year I welcome the change of season and the academic calendar as I’m a lifelong student at heart.  It’s also a time of unrest and discord and I know many are feeling a bit jittery (and that may be an understatement). The uncertainty with the pandemic has passed the point of exhaustion. If you have brain fog, just know you are not alone. We can only cognitively process so much and be on alert so long before our bodies are shouting “Overload!”

I’ve been thinking about the time I spent writing The Kindness Cure back in 2016-2017, when I felt so frustrated with the world and concerned about the future my daughters might have as they approach adulthood. “What happened to kindness?” I asked. I could write that whole book over again only to change the introduction and switch the circumstances of the cultural moment:  School mass shootings to violence against people of color; devastating hurricanes to the COVID19 pandemic. And all along the fires are still raging. Political unrest persists. What to do?!

So I find myself being even more committed to practicing calming skills and finding ways to ease the stress cortisol flooding my system. Every day I do Donna Eden’s Daily Energy Routine at least twice, try to take a walk outside, and find some time for a virtual yoga class outside of work hours. It is a commitment. I  can’t always keep it.  But when I do, I find myself better able to be present for others.

On a recent walk with a dear friend, she described the emotional pain of having to tell someone that they could no longer be friends. They have opposing political views. But that was not the crux of the issue. It was that this friend was shockingly rude and disrespectful, resorting to blaming and name calling, mostly on social media or text. Tried as she might to engage in compassionate listening and find any common ground, it was for naught. I could feel the grief in her quavering voice. Sometimes the kindest thing you can do is to set a personal boundary. Being clear is being kind, as Brené Brown would say. Yet, context matters. Most of us have lived long enough to know how painful it can be to walk away from a relationship. It doesn’t mean giving up a good fight for one’s beliefs, but it’s an invitation to redirect your attention and energy in more productive ways. 

We can’t help getting tribal. We are wired for it. It’s how humans have survived hardships. Bonding together was protection from the elements, predators, and invaders. Yet now, with so many shared spaces, especially online, we find ourselves fighting over everything. (It’s harder to be mean when face-to-face.) Scientists who study social behaviors, suggest that one way of bridging divides is to engage in moral reframing. This is what my friend tried to some extent. That means trying to understand the other person’s values first. Greater Good Science Center offer a nice Bridging Differences Playbook, drawn from evidence-based strategies. A favorite of mine is Non-Violent Communication (NVC), a method from the late Marshall Rosenberg, which I describe in a chapter called Radical Acceptance (see excerpt). There is also a lovely book, Say What You Mean, A Mindful Approach to Non-Violent Communication, by Oren Jay Sofer. Gosh, with the election coming up followed by Thanksgiving, who won’t be confronted with having hard conversations. We could all learn these skills. For example, starting with an affirmation, building trust, and using phrases like, “The way I see it is [this].” And connecting through your own story or experience. This A-B-C method stands for Affirm, Bridge, Connect. It’s a handy acronym.

In a year of disruption, may you find some measure of ease and kindness. Start with being kind to yourself and then practice the A-B-Cs and NVC. There’s plenty of opportunities!

#VOTEKINDNESS and sign a People’s Pledge:  Check out cool t-shirts, face masks and yard signs.

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

Little Wake Up Calls Everywhere

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If there is anything I am learning to practice in a pandemic it is patience. For weeks I have been waiting to get my copy of Ruth King’s book, Mindful of Race: Transforming Racism from the Inside Out.  I was glad it was back-ordered. People are paying attention to racial issues and want to learn more. I realize that I made a mistake, though. I regret that I bought the book through Amazon. I had not yet posted a link of independently-owned black owned bookstores (which you can find here). The book was a thoughtful yet impulsive purchase, meaning it had been on my wish list for at least a year and popped up due to algorithms beneath my awareness. I had listened to Ruth King’s meditations and wanted to learn more. 

And now it was time to order it with a click on a touchpad. The automaticity of it all. Mind you I have been reading other works, Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson, Waking Up White by Debby Irving and I listened to White Fragility by Robin DeAngelo. Not that I’m scoring points here, just that it takes time to self-educate. This reading endeavor is part of a concerted effort on my own and inspired by my mindfulness teachers. The effort is also being addressed where I work: at an Ivy league counseling center that remains predominantly white, while the student body is blessedly diverse. This persistent imbalance at most institutions is uncomfortable. As mental providers we are (and have been) grappling with systemic racism and are committed to change. It takes time. Too much time. After George Floyd’s murder, a black colleague whose practice is overburdened with students of color experiencing recent traumatic stressors said, “I’m just so tired. I have no words.”  

It’s hard to know what to say sometimes. Yet, her white colleagues need to step up and speak up as a group to affect group change. The systems must change. It’s been too long. Yet, people are coming out of hiding and into the streets. It’s a start.

Collective silence of white people is often used, knowingly or unknowingly to maintain privileges in an unacknowledged but understood culture club. In such instances, silence is a way in which white privilege is exercised.

Ruth King

There are other small reminders of the automaticity of thoughts and reactions which the dual pandemics illuminate on a daily basis. Admittedly, I can be victim to the neural wiring of a human brain to make fast easy choices and overreact to innocuous things or be unaware of biases. While sheltering in place my family regularly eats meals together now that we’re no longer over-scheduled with striving, athletics and achievement. At dinner one evening my husband said, “Tara, you aren’t going to like this.”

“What?” I asked  

“Anthropologie,” he answered, passing the ketchup.

“It’s closing down? Bankrupt?” I had the horrified look one might get when their drug dealer skips town.

“Well, we know where your priorities are,” he quipped.

“Mom, Anthropologie is on this list of retailers pegged with racial profiling,” reported Sophie.

White Chairs ©  2018 Tina McKee

I paused for a long moment. I had to digest this information. I’m not glued to Instagram like my girls. Finally I said, “That is so disappointing.” 


There are two times of the year, my birthday and Christmas, which are evenly spread apart, when the only material thing I ask for is a gift card to this particular women’s clothing and home goods store. The sale rack is my favorite indulgence. I haven’t stepped into the store in six months and I don’t shop online because the therapeutic fix is trying on the willowing pants or soft wraps or handling a sweet vase or dish for tea candles. The fragrances and bobbles are a delight. It’s always a sensorial, embodied experience. A simple yet potent pleasure dousing my brain with dopamine. Sometimes I even fantasize about being a window dressing intern if I didn’t actually have to earn a living; and I imagine taking up space in the magical displays with their impeccable designs. The catalogues are always a visual feast. When I’m overworked or feeling down I just like to visit the home section, sit on a chartreuse velvet sofa and meditate for 5 minutes. Breathing in peace, breathing out calm. I know. Crazy. Crazy privileged white lady.

Common to all of us is the fact that we don’t see the world as it is but how we have been conditioned to see it. The delusion we carry is that everyone sees—or should see—the world as we do. What we see and don’t see has consequences. In general, white people do not see race unless they feel threatened or until someone brings it to their attention.

Ruth King

This retailer news got my attention. A feeling of fatigue arose as if waking up after a hangover. I eventually sighed to my family, “It seems that there are teachable moments for all of us these days.” Teachable moments for white people about accepting racial group identity, white privilege and the system that supports white supremacy. 

Little wake up calls everywhere.

Moment after moment. Some heavy, some light. Some grave, some affirming. I hope this retail corporation steps up and addresses their values and responsibility — and until they do I will no longer shop there. And just like that my Anthro craving evaporated. Poof.

May I remain peaceful and let go of fixation.

May I see my limits with compassion, just as I see the limits of others.

May I be free from preference and prejudice. 

May I bear witness to things just as they are.

May I see the world with patient eyes.

Ruth King

Then something delightful happened. In my email inbox I received a note from a person named Kyle: “I just launched FiveFifths, the largest list of black-owned restaurants and online businesses on the internet.” The tagline: All Things Black Business. There is a series of Black Lists: Clothing. Restaurants. Beauty. Hair. 

Goodbye Anthro.

Kyle must have googled for anyone posting black owned this-and-that and landed on a web page I created called Share the Love 2020. So I clicked on his link and went right to the About Us. There are three young entrepreneurs: two black college grads and one white guy. We are all Five Fifths: equal humans, equal respect, equal opportunities.

I fell in love at first sight with these co-founders and their mission. “Of course I will add this to my growing list of resources,” I replied (as if I have some big following, jeez louise.) 

Last night after finding my Mindful of Race book on my doorstep I stayed up until 2am reading Ruth King’s pointed yet patient and kind teaching about structural racism. I found myself underlining and making stars here and there. I thought about Kyle and karma. I was annoyed that I purchased King’s book from a behemoth corporation taking over global consumerism instead of a black mom and pop shop. Yet, I’m glad her book sales have gone up. She is a wise teacher who calls us to attention.

Ruth King calls racism a heart disease (and it is curable).  Her invitation to me and you is this:

Some of us do not acknowledge that we are racial beings within the human race, nor do we recognize how or understand why our instinct as members of racial groups is to fear, hurt, or harm other races, including our own. And we don’t know how to face into and own what we have co-created as humans. But each of us can and must ask ourselves two questions: 

Why are matters of race still of concern across the nation and throughout the world? 

And what does this have to do with me?

Learn more about Ruth King and her workshops, Mindful of Race: https://ruthking.net/

Check out the black business listings by Kyle Umemba, Andre Joseph and Cam Woodsum at FiveFifths.co, who state: “The reality of our history means that certain groups and people have been overlooked, overshadowed, forgotten and restrained because of factors out of their control.  Our objective at Five Fifths is to uplift those very people and to highlight the many great things being done by members of those communities today.”

Unblocked: Seeing Clearly Our Structural Racism

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A reflection

In a world with two pandemics raging side by side and which are inescapably intertwined, we can’t help but see the social, racial, and health disparities. In our neighborhoods we see circles of compassion beginning to widen.

Franklin Park, Boston MA

June 5, 2020. Journal entry.

It’s hard to know what rush hour is these days when the world has slowed down. Around 5:45pm on a Thursday we parked the old cracked silver Prius on the corner of Ferncroft and Norman, just west of Blue Hill Avenue, where we were headed. My husband Steve and I were carrying the cardboard signs our daughters had created and used on the prior Tuesday at another peaceful protest at Franklin Park. That night I held my breath for several hours as my own implicit biases and fears ignited about the danger of being in large crowds. Sophie and Josie shared their location by cell phone without my not even asking. In fact, I have never tracked my kids like other parents often do. Now they are young women and quite clear about the dangers in the world. It may be too many episodes of Crime Junkies or My Favorite Murder, but nevertheless, I appreciated the gesture.  

On this June evening, it was just white mom and dad with face masks and posters congregating peacefully with others on the Blue Hill Parkway meridian connecting Milton and Mattapan, suburb of the city. As we walked through a neighborhood, people were piling into the streets, with their children in strollers, and middle schoolers on bikes as if this were a Fourth of July parade or an opening scene out of some romantic comedy.

A parent we know from the former track team days was a community captain with her bike in hand, wearing a black shirt, shorts, and a helmet. She explained to those of us on this patch of earth that at 6:15pm people at the Canton Avenue end would take a knee and others would then follow suit.  “Like a human wave?” I asked. She nodded and diligently headed on to the next socially distanced cluster. Across the street stood a group of three Asian American teens in midriff tees and cell phones as their grandmother observed from the front porch with folded arms. Their signs: Defund the Police | Black Lives Matter |Do Justice, Love Kindness, Walk Humbly with God #BLM.

Cars in both directions were making their way, honking their horns, holding out their phones videoing the scene. There are many black people in this neighborhood, as were those passing through this stretch in their cars. This diversity has always made me grateful in raising my kids, even though it frustrated me to no end that the blacks kids walked to the high school, while many white kids drove in with their cars at the other side of the campus. 

One car passed by with two girls sitting on the sun roof holding a sign, Different Name, Same Crime.  I saw a blue Amazon Prime delivery van make a right out of a side street. The driver, a young black woman with sunglasses and braids, did not know what she was getting into.  Surprised, she slowly raised her hand to her mouth and started to cry. I saw her about 3 minutes later come from the other direction talking excitedly into her phone to someone describing the scene with her one hand on the steering wheel. Next to us was a man and his daughter, about 4 years old. She was holding up a rainbow lettered sign, My Life Matters.

Poster No. 6 (c) 2020 Josie Cousineau

After some time the crowds began to drop to their knees and all became quiet except for the cars with the unsuspecting drivers who honked as they passed on either side.  8 minutes 46 seconds. George Floyd’s last minutes.

One man driving along peered out his window, looking us in the eye as he slowed down. He kept nodding to people and saying Thank you Thank you. My mask hid my tears. When the long minutes of silence were over people slowly got up and dusted themselves off. The beeps continued. As we turned to walk back across the street there was the Amazon driver making another round, still talking to someone and wiping tears from a cheek.

Now I know these vigils are but meager efforts in the work that needs to be done to eradicate 400 years of structural racism. Meager in the face of our day-to-day lives and forcing many of us to notice who is delivering our packages, bagging the groceries, applying for unemployment, and dying in unequal numbers every day. Yet there is something happening in our neighborhoods and that feels different.

I have more hope. I watched an interview with Reverend Bernice King, Martin Luther King’s daughter. She was asked in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder if anything has really changed in 50 years and about her understanding of the current protests: Is this moment any different? She paused:

“I do think it’s different…There are more circles of people now, in the white community, who are looking at white supremacy… This is a moment of opportunity… People are crying out and this cry is being heard all over this land and all over this world.” 

Rev. Bernice King
Poster No.5 (c) 2020 Josie Cousineau

Awareness, of course is not enough, but it is an essential step in making change. Rev. Bernice King declared that the moment is here to call on white people to challenge other white people. She said white people’s hearts and souls are opening. And there is much work to be done.

I know somewhere in this crowd of neighbors was a spiritual teacher and friend, who creates singing circles to bring people together.  I belong to one of them. She was there with her mixed race kids but I couldn’t find her. The evening before I was among a zoom circle of women, a gathering to care for our hearts and souls by singing. She brought in the work of Joanna Macy, the great spiritual ecologist and founder of the Work That Reconnects (WTR). Macy describes The Great Turning, an awakening to the dis-ease on our planet; and one of the assumptions of the work is our deep connection to one another.

Our experience of moral pain for our world springs from our interconnectedness with all beings, including humans of all cultures, from which also arise our powers to act on their behalf. When we deny or repress our pain for the world, or view it as a private pathology, our power to take part in the healing of our world is diminished. Our capacity to respond to our own and others’ suffering — that is, the feedback loops that weave us into life — can be unblocked.

The Work That Reconnects

Important realities are getting “unblocked” for white people. Finally. Circles of compassion are widening. Block after block we are standing on lawns, sidewalks, street meridians, in parks and streets all over. There is no more turning away — only a turning toward to what has been there all along. Seeing clearly.

Compassion When It’s Not Easy, a meditation (Insight Timer)

#VoteKindness Project. Check it out

On Being Podcast with Krista Tippet, a conversation with Rev. Lucas Johnson: Living the questions when no questions seem big enough

Resources on becoming an anti-racist ally are listed here.

Artwork and photo (c) 2020 Josie Cousineau

No Time Like The Present

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The shimmering plastic threads hung in full length of the doorway to my home office, the one room I have spent far too much time in while a pandemic looms far and wide. Translucent with pink, lemon and pearly threads, it’s a cheap rendition of 1960s beaded curtains with the sound of kumbaya in the ether. The girls must have escaped to Target I thought as I turned the corner and saw the decor. Tendrils of white light, a wispy prism. I laughed. Then my heart lurched a beat in sweet sorrow. 2020. What a GD year. 

When I was 10 years old and got better at arithmetic I would count by fives. How old would I be, say, in 1980? 1995? Or, woah, 2000? I’d be 35. That seemed impossible to imagine then. Just ancient. Now I divide by 11 and wonder about the five-year-old girl with the missing teeth. In those days, birthday parties were simple. An egg on a spoon, red rover red rover, hide and seek.

A quarantine has invited in simplicity and reduced time.

I like the chintzy doorway tinsel. I’ll keep them up for a while. They are a reminder that my daughters, Josie and Sophie, are delightful spirits here to both tease and teach me. “Come And Experience The New You,” is what they said about the fringe curtain. “Your clients will love it.”

Every day is a quiet milestone it seems.

Just yesterday Josie spotted a shrew out the kitchen window skirting under the porch. You mean a mole, I corrected.

No. It is a shrew and it needs a name. And the baby bunny, too.

We’ve all regressed in this quarantine. Josie left some celery for the critters.

Josie just turned 20 years old in silence. Mostly. Her friends did a coordinated drive around the bend, tooting their horns before returning to their online classes. She left her adolescence behind with the sound of tires on gravel. Anticlimactic. I felt for her. Josie is a Taurus like me. Insistent. Persistent. Passionate. Protective. (My mother called me ornery. Whatever that meant to a small child. I’m still not sure why she landed on that particular word but it was so odd I will never forget it. In kindsight, I figure she read it from a German-English translation dictionary in trying to describe me, störrisch.)

How about Pete? I asked. 

Yup, Josie could go with Pete for the shrew. She named the bunny Tulip on my behalf. She’s been capturing the fleeting moments when I swoon over the 100 tulips I planted in November. The cool spring has made them last. Pale pink, soft yellow, royal purple, bold red, and the exuberant orange ones with black happy masks when in full bloom. Bright, confident, proud blooms. Worth the wait.

These flowers are my antidote to a month filled with death, departure, disruption, loss and grief.  Celebrations, graduations, and memorials put on pause. The faux thread curtain is a reminder that the past seeps into the present and the present informs the future. Yet only what is alive exists in the moment. It’s all temporary. Nothing lasts. Nada.

So I told my girls they are my joy and delight. They are living proof that my choices were very good indeed. Look at their dad! Karma or luck or genes aside, my choices were about putting love, calm, consistency, care and compassion in the center of our household. It’s a damn corny thing to write, especially because I can be impatient and stubborn as my mother noted on many occasions. Except. Except for the fact of my daughters’ presence in the world. They are evidence that choosing to practice these values matter.  It’s not stubbornness. It’s commitment.

Sophie was born the year the first Harry Potter book came out and that’s all thats counts for her. Her first tattoo is a horcrux. Josie was born in a zero year: 2000. A big year in and of itself. A turn of a century soul. She counts big birthdays by tens, allowing her two big ones so far. This is not as fun as being born in a year ending in a 5, which requires a bit more numerical effort. But it is a joyful effort, like adopting my new shiny entryway fringe, which I could never have imagined way back when.

A Tribute to My Mother

Spread the Love 2020

Meditations to Calm

Tulip Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Calling on Kindred Spirits for Healing

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Sometimes I feel like I was a tree nymph in a different existence. Not that I know much about trees except that I love them. I love them like friends. My most peaceful moments as a child were wandering in the woods, building forts, climbing a grand weeping beech with its voluptuous growths. I could nestle in its limbs for hours reading as if in a mother’s lap. My friend Heidi and I mapped out mystical lands with secret underground caverns as we huddled under her canopy bed with color pencils. Once her mother reprimanded us after we stole tomatoes from a neighbor’s garden to stock supplies for one of our woodland forts along Old West Mountain Road.

I read once that our brains are primed to the color green, an instinctual signal of vitality, growth and life. Children’s cognitive skills are enhanced when exposed to nature. We wonder. We are kinder and more creative. In hospitals and nursing homes, patients fare better and experience less pain when a plant is on the windowsill. There is a psychophysiological effect in the presence of verdant foliage. It doesn’t matter if it is a small patch of weeds, an Ansel Adams poster, a city park, or a Sunday drive through the countryside. 

Even if you are a city dweller, you can find some place, perhaps a park or a golf course, where you can observe the mysterious migration of the birds, and the changing seasons.

And with your child you can ponder the mystery of a growing seed, even if it be only one planted in a pot of earth in the kitchen window.

Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder

Inner and outer dwellings

One of my most formative experiences was traversing the forests on Mt. Kenya when I was 20 years old when I had to get as far away from home as possible. So I was captivated when I read in my inbox about a short documentary: The Church Forests of Ethiopia by Jeremy Seifert. The words in the subject line grabbed me: A church forest. 

I clicked the link. In a short nine minutes I was transported to an ephemeral world, captured by the intimacy of a handheld camera. Old trees, hazy light, monkeys…. and a native orthodox priest. The film zoomed out, an expansive Google map or drone view, over a brambly swatch of old growth forest encased by desolate, overused land. A green oasis in the midst of cattle-eaten countryside. 

It was a conservation effort.  And as it happens there are many of these small forests spread far and wide, as many as 20,000. They are tended by spiritual gatekeepers who protect these endangered enclaves of biodiversity, like woodland angels. As the story unfolds, there is a foreign conservationist, a local ecologist, and a forest priest. They convened about what to do. At a gathering with the priests, the spiritual leaders came up with an idea of their own: to build a wall. A wall to keep the cattle from eating the seedlings, so that the forest could reseed itself. “The church is within the forest. The forest is inside the church,” explains the priest. The widening walls would protect both.

And it’s working. 

In a remarkably short time in one forest, the sounds of birds can be heard, monkeys sway in the canopies, and children come to clamber up the trees to find refuge in the cooler air. It turns out that only the native forests inhabited by priests and hermits are the ones surviving, but barely. The walls, yellow and dusty, are carefully stacked with the stones churned up from the surrounding fields. They are wide enough for children to skip along. The walls are helping in more ways than one. Now efforts are being made to connect these forests, like emerald strands across a bare neckline.

Walls for mending and tending

Walls serve many purposes. The American poet Robert Frost famously wrote about mending walls, questioning whether they make good neighbors. Of course, it’s complicated. There are border walls that separate children from families and bar people from safe havens. Chain link and wireless fences can keep anything in or out. There are those that eventually fall I once sat upon the Berlin wall with traveling companions on a study abroad. I think of the virtual walls we are creating now by sheltering in place, standing in lines six feet apart, flattening the curve as it were. A wall with invisible boundaries. 

Separate yet connected

Walls. It all depends on the intention. Is a wall erected out of fear? Or, is a wall erected out of love? And even intentions go awry and can pave the way to hell. We see how the walls of nursing homes, hospitals and prisons can ensnare a novel corona virus, a prolific microscopic invader. Yet, the virus, like the cattle in Ethiopia (and every living organism), seeks to survive. And walls, let’s face it, are porous.

I’m hopeful. The Church Forests of Ethiopia demonstrate what deep listening and caretaking can do. These forest walls arose from a divine partnership: part spirit, part nature, part human. There is no separation. The simple conservation effort brings into view something mysterious, magical, practical (as you will see if you watch the 10 minute film). Now I sit in my home walled off from the world thinking about our intentions. I believe our behavior, our quiet caretaking, matters even more. Compassionate action even with inaction. A paradox that goes against our natural instincts. Most of us are not hermits.

Just like the Ethiopian forest priests tend to the fragile seeds, we are kindred spirits spread far and wide tending to ourselves and each other. It is in our nature to tend and befriend, a beloved term coined by psychologist Shelley Taylor about our survival instinct through affiliation. We are saving ourselves.

It will take time to recover and heal from this pandemic. Let’s take refuge in the dwellings in which we reside.

We all need a kind and wise companion looking after us. I invite you to call on a kindred spirit. The one that lives within you. Here is a meditation to connect with one.  

More Matters in Kind:

  • I am now obsessed with these church forests. Learn more about Dr. Alemayehu Wassie, a forest ecologist and Dr. Margaret “Meg” Lowman, an American ecologist and canopy biologist. Read an exquisite essay in Emergence Magazine about the church forests of Ethiopia by Fred Bahnson, who himself was transformed on his visit. “Less than three percent of primary forest remains. And nearly all of that three percent, Alemayehu discovered, was only found in forests protected by the church.”
  • The Global Oneness Project offers amazing stories and study guides about the earth we tread upon and our connection to the natural world. Its sister project, Emergence Magazine (Ecology, Culture, and Spirituality) is a new favorite of mine. 
  • Watch the beautiful animation The Man Who Planted Trees, directed by Frédéric Back (1988 Academy Award winner), and based on the French story by Jean Giono about a shepherd’s lone journey to re-forest a barren valley after a devastating world war.
  • The Sense of Wonder: A Celebration of Nature for Parents and Children by Rachel Carson, “The patron saint of the environmental movement.”

Pinecone Photo by Anika Huizinga on Unsplash

Roadside Wisdom in the Time of COVID

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We’re nearing Week No. 4 of staying in place and I can tell you that most everyone I know has just about had it!  Even though most of us understand that we are toeing the line to reduce the spread of COVID, to allow resources to become available for others in need, and to ease the burden for those on the front lines, it is still hard.

It’s hard!

Moreover, we are more connected to each other than we ever realized—even when we are staying away. The news of a grocery worker’s passing or the grim toll in assisted living and nursing homes are daily reminders why we must practice being present to whatever arises—boredom, impatience, frustration, grief, guilt, loneliness, joy, hope. It all belongs, as my meditation teacher Tara Brach would say. We are witnesses to it all.  

On the rare occasion when I have gone out in the last 20 days (like the two times when I waited over an hour in line at the supermarket), I’ve been filled with immense appreciation and pride for my good neighbors. Almost everyone is donning some sort of face mask and I find this amazing. The first time I was so taken back, I felt like crying. We all look like we might be ready to rob a bank and yet we are all in the same posse.

One outcome is that no one gives a $#!+ about appearance. And people may complain, but it’s not for too long. COVID19 is a formidable teacher.

So when I drove past a church sign one day I took a u-turn, literally and metaphorically. I got out of my car and snapped the photo above. The world may be shutting down. My daughter’s graduation may be cancelled. But love is not.  

May you and your loved ones be safe and healthy.

More Matters in Kind