A Dog’s Heart

Today in my art studio our exercise was to pick an animal that had qualities we admired and to list them.

I immediately knew I wanted a Rottweiler, the dog that just came into my “real” life. He is a full Rottweiler, his name is Brodie but Bernie is fine with him and he is noble. Gentle. Kind.

I found a dog figurine and I looked it for a long time. I liked the sturdiness, the groundedness, the animal body, primal and unafraid yet cautious and centered in its stance.

And then I didn’t know where to go from there except that I wanted to be loved and love with simple, committed, non-entitled love. Plus a big bonus is that my dog (I have only had him 2 days but yes, he is definitely MY dog and I am his person) never rejects me the way my daughter does.

It is so painful to walk into her room first thing in the morning when I hear her talking to herself and she does not want me to hug her or get her out of bed, she calls for Daddy and tells me no. And when he walks in, she smiles and reaches her little arms out to him as if I am not even there.

Later in the day when Daddy gets in the car, she cries to go with him and when I pick her up to comfort her she pushes my face away with her little hand and shouts “no”.

Painful.  Hurtful.  Innocent.  And I know why she does it. Because I am needy.  I am needy for love and affection. Yes, I am needy.

I look inside myself and I think about this “needy” business. I am needy for her acceptance, affection, love. I am needy for belonging, being loved and being safe. I am needy for being loved, being appreciated, being needed. I am needy for being wanted. But this is not her problem, her job or her responsibility to solve and I will do everything I can to make her feel like less than for not fulfilling that need, the way my mother did with me.

Yet I am not any of these things for her, especially not if Daddy is around. And if he is not around she relies on me passively, as in climbs on me to get to something she needs. She doesn’t need my love or my affection. She does not seem to reply on it. Probably because she senses it fills my own neediness more than it does anything for her. And she has every right to reject this kind of “love”. She has every right to reject me.

Oh how I mourn this. I rejected my mother for the same reasons. Over and over and over, year after year, I rejected her, it must have torn out her heart. I have not spoken to her for over a year since she made my birth recovery about her birth recovery. Her neediness felt so intense, so deep, so desperate that she would try to fill it regardless of what it may have cost me, blind to what it took from me, unable or unwilling to acknowledge how it made me feel, regardless of the appropriateness of the circumstances.

If I can do one thing in this life, I want to stop this generational curse of deprived mothers looking to their daughters for emotional food.

So I got a dog.

Part 1

My childhood ended at age 6. Although I didn’t know it then. I was given a grandmother’s love until age 9 or 10, but life after 6 was never the same because I lost both parents. And they never returned. Not the way they were, together, intact, loving. I mourn that now, still. I didn’t have the chance to naturally evolve out of childhood, to choose adulthood or whatever comes next. I mourn losing that normal transition. And I mourn even more deeply what not having that transition meant I lost – my family. I notice shame and guilt at mourning. I know this happened to others, I know children were soldiers, I know I know I know. But does that mean I am not allowed to grieve?

Here is that feeling again, the feeling that I am building my house of cards on straws. I am trying to build a life on top of not havingness. How does that even work?

I can’t solve it, I can never get it back. I can’t change it. All I can do is surrender, cave into the nothingness of what I think I lost, what I mourn, what I miss the most.

Can a simple dog’s committed, non-entitled love, presence and willingness heal this wound? He must be feeling so vulnerable, new home, new place, new owner, new spot to sleep, new place in a new pack. Yet he loves. He loves. He, unabashed and unrelenting gives every ounce of his precious love.

Reminds me of when I moved continents to be with my mother and I was beaten down, tortured, betrayed (emotionally) by her own brokenness and helplessness. God forbid I so abuse the innocence of his love.

Oh innocent spirit of love, return to me, return to me.

Part 2

Everyone suffered. Mostly alone. Everyone was right in his or her own reality. Everyone deserved more, everyone got less. I mourn for all of them.

Part 3

There are two photos with my parents as a child I placed in my art journal long ago for no good reason. It always hurt so bad to look at them. For so long I wondered why it hurt and today I realized it was a painful reminded of what I had lost too soon. I put the Rottweiler body I traced there, he wants to be there. To love that little girl that is now a mother too. He doesn’t have a head. He doesn’t need one. Just a heart like the image the shaman drew of Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat Pray Love, a body without a head, but with a heart. And I don’t really know of a more loving, beautiful heart than a Dog’s Heart.

Part 4

I can’t change the past but I can change my attitude, be open and receptive to help from the Universe in any way that comes and be thankful for having a Dog’s Heart, one given to me just for me. To love me the way only a Dog’s Heart can. Yes, I liked the sturdiness, the groundedness, the animal body, primal and centered in its stance. But neither of these compare to the power of love in a Dog’s Heart. May I embody this purity of love, may I be graced to be able to give and receive this quality of love. Amen.

Thank you God.

Caccooned in Innocence

Cacooned in innocence
potent, full, unopened by life
unripe
just joyfully flowing through
the moments of love before me
Stripped naked
raw, cracked and
weathered by the sun and rain
need shelter
need is new

Shelter comes
Innocence forsaken
But carried within
a crumpled heap
carried carried carried
mourned mourned mourned
reaching toward
reaching
reaching
will it be that way forever?

Lost.
Not lost.
Seen, unseen.
Recovered.
Rejoicing.
Safely home.

Unbelievably

It has been unbelievably long since I wrote. I got scared, a little thrown off by the take-aways that happen from within my family of origin. But here I am. Yay!

There must be others like me out there
Enthralled by their inner landscape
Daily daring to brave
the thunderstorms of their buried
lovely rage
beckoning to it
thanking it, nurturing it like
the lifesaver it was to
the coming of all there is

Emilia Nagy

http://elitedaily.com/dating/mature-immature-relationship/995278/

http://youtu.be/udh-IAJC490

How to know if a man is emotionally healthy and available

Some women have made poor choices regarding men in the past and are afraid of making the wrong decision…again. This is why I teach the part about how to tell if a man is emotionally healthy, and available. Once you determine that he is emotionally healthy and available then you can date him to find out if the two of you have communication, chemistry and compatibility or the three Cs (as Pat Allen and Flechelle Morin refer to them).

An Available Man

Available means that he is not in any other relationship except the one with himself.  :) It means that he is over his X. It means that he is ready and desiring a deep friendship with a woman. It means that he is ready and willing to invest time and resources in getting to know you. It means he is ready and willing to have uncomfortable conversations as they undoubtedly will come up at some point down the road, see below :). He may not be interested in a long term relationship but most men are. He will likely not call after 8 pm. He will ask you when you are available and make himself available too. He will be comfortable with weekend dates.

1.   Catch His Eye and Smile
If you see a cute guy you’d like to meet, instead of approaching him and introducing yourself, catch his eye and smile.

If he doesn’t react or doesn’t approach you, chances are he’s not available or interested.  If this is the case, move on.  Find another cute guy and keep smiling.

2.  Wait for Him to Approach

After you’ve smiled, IF he’s interested and available he will most likely approach you.  Wait for him to come to you.

(This can often be a nerve-racking experience because you can feel like a slut.  It can feel like you’re inviting him to molest you on the spot.  Don’t worry.  He’s going through his own meltdown as he’s crossing the room.)

from http://cherrynorris.com/how-do-you-know-if-hes-available/ 

An Emotionally Healthy Man

He will not expect you to do anything you don’t want to do. He will ask you what you want to do when he calls so be nice enough to tell him. Have some ideas of dates you would like to go on such as walking by the bay or going to a special restaurant. He will call when he says he will call. He will be on time. He will most likely offer to pay. He will ask you respectful questions and likely talk about himself. He will keep his promises. He will show empathy, which is the capacity to understand what another person is experiencing from within the other person's frame of reference, ie, the capacity to place oneself in another's shoes.

He is honest and will share his thoughts and feelings. He is ready for you.  He wants to fully support you, be all that he can be because he knows you’ve got it goin’ on!  He is comfortable with who he is in the sense that he doesn’t need or try to control you, your behavior, or your life.  He is invested in his and your emotional & spiritual well-being, and he can define to you what he loves about you (even if he’s a man of few words).

He may not have it all together (do any of us?) but he is okay expressing his feelings and needs to you.  He can accurately assess when he has hurt you, and he jumps to make it right because he genuinely cares for you.  He does not have a need to lie to you, and he will assertively ask for the same respect in return.

Okay, so since we’ve established the difference between an emotionally healthy and unhealthy man, let’s move forward (and this is by no means an exhaustive list of healthy/unhealthy qualities above – it was just a few) from (http://tamishaford.com/2013/05/15-reasons-why-emotionally-healthy-men-love-assertive-women/). He will most likely be most if not all of these:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shannon-kellogg-psy-d/emotional-wellness_b_3722625.html

Finally, a word about SEX:

When I tell women this, it blows their mind. I had a client who had gone through cervical cancer. When you have cervical cancer your vagina shrinks. One of the things that kept her back from dating was her fear that men would want sex right away. Due to her past of sexual abuse, she had a deeply ingrained belief that if she had a boyfriend, sex would be one of the things that would be required of her as a woman. And she felt very unsure of her sexuality due to her previous illness. 

The thing is that healthy, available  men who seek a mate won’t require sex. I don't mean require as in want or need. I mean require as in specify as compulsory. In fact, they will do their best to figure out what you require from them in the relationship in order to be comfortable with them and anything else the two of you do. In other words they will genuinely want to know what makes you WANT to spend time with them and yes also to have sex. Sex is something that is yours to give and share with a man you choose and desire when and only when you are comfortable doing so. Any healthy, caring man knows that anything less than that is coercion and will not participate in it. Unless there is some sort of misunderstanding or a mix-up of signals, a healthy available man will not ask for sex until he thinks you have given the green light.

What we found out together is that a man who loves and cherishes a woman will be less likely to ask for sex. Even to the point where you might start to wonder if he really digs you and finds you attractive. There are several reasons for this. First a man who likes you and is “charmed and enchanted,” as Alison Armstrong puts it, will never ever I said ever want to put you in a situation where you are uncomfortable. In fact, he will want to save you from uncomfortable situations. It would be crushing to a man to know that he was the cause of discomfort to a woman he loves. So if he thinks you are uncomfortable about sex or you have not very clearly repeat very clearly given the green light on the subject, he is more likely not to broach it than to broach it.

The second reason is that when a man is charmed and enchanted by you which means he cares deeply about you he will be very vulnerable to rejection. He won’t want to initiate sex, again, because getting rejected by the woman he cares about would be crushing. For these and some other reasons a way to know if a guy is into you by how he approaches the subject of sex. Most men won’t outright lie to you to get sex. I would say 9 out of 10 men would not have sex with you if you make it clear that sex comes with commitment and they are unwilling to give commitment yet or ever. That is why I recommend always putting out those boundaries within the first three dates. That will weed out the men that are not available or emotionally healthy. Then we find out if we share the 3 Cs. But that is the next post.

Happy dating!

Miracles Happen in Real Estate too!

Today is a particularly rollercoaster-y day and this past week has been action packed. I spoke in my video about how there has been miracle after miracle in my last real estate transaction. But when push came to shove and the final documents needed to get signed, panic ensued. Both the escrow agent and the listing agent became frantic in wanting to ensure everything was done.

And that’s natural. But what puzzled me abbot this is that the listing agent and I knew in our hearts that this transaction even going as far as it did was a miracle and that it would close. We knew in our hearts and so as complicated as the transaction was, with as many moving parts as were involved we didn’t lose faith.

But yesterday she lost faith and today I lost faith. I notice when someone in the transaction loses faith then the others have to carry the positivity or belief in the transaction closing, the loan funding, the money literally appearing electronically in the buyer’s escrow account. Miraculously.

I felt that this whole transaction was a deep lesson about faith. When do we have it, when do we keep it, how do we lose it? It’s easy to keep faith when, despite difficulties, everything appears to be going your way but what happens when things start to seem to fall apart?

I lost faith and that was the whole test. There were 88 individual miracles in this one transaction and this family’s faith and good humor in going through each seemingly impossible obstacle was amazing and I felt completely blessed to be a part of this. I felt privileged to be doing the work I do.

I lost faith, my clients lost faith and for a minute everything looked bleak. Then I remembered how God carried us all through every obstacle in this transaction. And I decided to believe that there would be another miracle and the necessary funding condition would appear. And once I decided it would, it did.

I decide to live a miraculous life and I decide to be fulfilled. I decide to have faith that everything I need will show up for me and that all the moving parts needed to arrange themselves for me will. And they will.

This decision changed, is changing and will change my life.