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Learning To Speak

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I just finished up my 2-day intensive on PUBLIC SPEAKING FOR PROFESSIONALS.

I jumped at the chance to do this as I actually get a great deal of pleasure speaking to groups of people.

But I want to know how to do this WELL so I don’t waste peoples’ time.

It was an impressively conducted, jam-packed event peopled with interesting and inspiring folks.

I’ll write more on this but today, as I recover a bit, I am struck by how HEALTHY I feel!

Tired but alive, engaged and curious as to the pleasure I took in using ‘life’ muscles I had all but forgotten.

It’s been a couple years of reclusion, seclusion and ‘wrap-yourself-up-in-a-blanket’ to conserve energy for the trip to the kitchen or desk..

Fully out in the world for the past two days, I remember myself as someone who has energy enough to care for herself AND some left over!!!!!!!!!

I am reclaiming health.

The crucial medication being CONNECTION.

I’ve taken time to reconnect with myself and because of those choices I now have it in me to reintroduce myself to the world.

Often, these choices have proved unpopular.

But wait! I am voting for myself, now.

SPEAK FIRST FOR THYSELF.

Only then, turn to your neighbor.

Speak Up

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This morning I am off to a professional public speaking seminar for two days.

This is how things go in my life..

Yesterday, I had no idea this was taking place.

And today, I have secured the last seat available.

I love to speak in front of people about my own story of change and resurrection.

I am interested in change.

It is common to us all.

How do we do it?

I mean, how do we change?

There are ways to negotiate this terrain with the outcome leaning toward a thriving life.

Or not.

My choice is the former and I seem to be well on my way toward that end.

Truth be told.. I’M SMACK IN IT…Thriving inside change.

And today, I will join 11 other people to practice talking about just that…

…Because it makes me happy and I want to make public speaking a big part of my life now.

But I want to do it WELL.. and EFFECTIVELY.. and HONESTLY.

So- I’ll sidle up next to those who make this their profession and see what I can learn.

She’s out in the world after a long hiatus and fairly chompin’ at the bit…

Hands Off

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When I look at this painting, I see a crevice.

A free fall between two hard places.

I think when I did this it was supposed to be a landscape but things change..

I am so tired from working so damn hard to reclaim wholeness and health.

After awhile one just has to stop for awhile and do something else.

I’m noticing that when I take my hand off the tiller a very interesting thing happens.

It almost feels like another kind of intelligence kicks in and throws up it’s hands in relief.

THANK GOD SHE HAS STOPPED ALL THIS INCESSANT ‘TRYING TO MAKE SOMETHING HAPPEN!’

Tool kits are exchanged and while I sleep, small but gorgeous men and women file in and begin their song-singing or nervous system whispering or color bathing.

Whatever weird and wonderful, otherworldly medication they deem appropriate.

And, lo and behold!   I wake refreshed and lively. Having DONE NOT A THING but make room for healing to happen.

Pressing into a health challenge (or any other for that matter) has it’s limits.

But do we know when to let go?

That line between the fight and taking the gloves off is a sensitive one.

I don’t want to neglect doing anything that offers support toward healing.

But working too hard toward a desired outcome is exhausting and leaves room for only narrow results.

Miracles happen when our vision gets a little fuzzy so something beyond what we know can sneak in and take it’s place at the table.

That doesn’t mean collapsing into an expected result, desired or not.

Nor does it mean armoring up in your finest chain mail suit.

The action/non-action I am trying to get to is a little bit of both, it seems.

On top of that razor’s edge it can get windy and the weather changes fast and without warning.

But it is not a malevolent weather pattern.

There is a surprising quality of support that wind has..

Balancing on the very edge and keening back and forth; the wind is at your back when you need it and to the left when you need that then it changes direction to break your fall by pushing against your right side as you lean up against it reclaiming your footing.

In that place up there NOTHING can be decided.

Surrender but avoid collapse.

It seems support is always there for me in that very moment I release the tiller.

One must drop the reigns and be moved.

Windows

For many years I have been known to look closely at my eyes in mirrors.

The urge comes upon me when I notice something vaguely ‘off’ energetically.

During the 99% of my life I lived inauthentically, I would never have had the where-with-all to discriminate exactly WHAT was off because there was not a real and true person behind those eyes.

And so I looked.

Checked out my eyes real close.

Were they sort of grey and filmy?

Or distant and removed?

Maybe I got surprised by seeing bright white with a generous dollop of hazel floating there.

More often they were veiled and almost mute.

By doing this weird ritual, I was getting a reality check.

I couldn’t give it to myself because, well… I wasn’t THERE!

As I write this I am thinking about who I was on my recent trip to Colorado.

I have been gestating at home for a couple years now. Truth be told afraid to travel because of logistics and fear of the unknown in general, actually.

I had no idea how to move through the world independently.

I also REALLY needed these couple years to segue into this version of Cathy.

All this sounds like I know/knew what I was doing but I don’t/didn’t.

I didn’t know this whole gestating time would give rise to the confident and extroverted woman I experienced on my trip.

She was new to me.

She made relationships wherever she went and felt life in her blood whether she was exhausted or rested.

There was ABSOLUTELY NO NEED to look in the mirror because I was right there for myself and everyone else..

Right there… present and alive and vulnerable and curious and tired and worried and grateful and willing..

All of it.

And it was GREAT to meet her!

Had no idea she was as together as that.

Together isn’t really right..

I AM HEALTHY! .. AND VERY ALIVE.

I see that I couldn’t have known the changes which have taken place in me had I not left familiar territory behind.

As an artist, I know the value and need for times of gathering.

It often looks to others like withdrawal and quite possibly depression but certainly disengagement.

In my art life I never really felt the need to explain or apologize for those times because I knew I was filling myself up and eventually it would appear in form.

How is it that I did not extend myself the same generosity of spirit in my healing process?

Why have I been thinking I SHOULD be producing more or BEING more?

Once more, I shall put the pesky and larger-than-life judge to bed and try to leave her there without food or water.

And I shall eat cake.

Joe Montana and Lipstick

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Yesterday, I bought a new shade of lipstick…

And last night I dreamed of JOE MONTANA.

I didn’t even think I knew who Joe Montana WAS!!

I don’t ever watch football because I can never find the ball in the midst of crashing maleness.

So, here I am, waking from a dream in which I meet Joe.

I am sitting on the ground with my back against a wall and he joins me there.

We like each other. He flirts. I feel fluttery. Life is good.

The conversation ends and it is time for me to get up and retrieve my walker which he has not seen yet.

The point of me telling you this is this:

In the dream, I did NOT cave to tears or apology or even anxiety in the unveiling of this new piece of information to my dream icon.

I JUST DID IT..

I got up (in my dream..) and got my walker and carried on with grace and the confidence of a true ‘warrioress in life.’

I know it was the new lipstick that ushered in this dream.

The perfect lipstick is a tool to be reckoned with.

Egyptian women knew the power of adornment better than any.

You may think I am kidding here…

Not a chance.

That dream was showing me what I have in me..what I have earned.

It was one of those rare iconic dreamscapes which arrive as a gift and message.

I am NOT my disability.

I am a woman interested in LIFE.

The fact I chose Joe to join me tells me that I may be playing too small.

Or, rather, I may have it in me now to widen my field of possibilities.

All this because of my new lipstick..

Transparency

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This, I think is interesting..

A new site developed to graph comparisons between patients challenged by various diseases/symptoms.

I saw an 18 minute video presented to TEDMED which is a relatively new spinoff of TED.com (Technology,Entertainment,Design).

The man who designed this software had a brother with ALS and felt compelled to use his skill set to do what he could to help get information and get it quickly.

It’s heartening to see this type of comparative results graphing from various treatment modes etc. in a user-friendly and graphically interesting way.

Check it out, if you’ve a mind to..

Change

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Interesting how when one changes up one’s life in ANY way that the ripple effect stands true as a universal law.

If you read my blog regularly you may have experienced a redirect to another site in the past few days.

I had my blog tech guy upgrade Wordpress and all hell broke loose.

Everything is better than fine now.

Speaking of change..after my trip last week my physical self is in integration mode.

The journey toward wholeness goes like that..

An action is taken which produces a reaction.

We live in a world of duality so this is the deal..

You do one thing and another thing happens because of it.

Installing a new and better computer capability or working intensively with a healthcare professional or even eating a new food or beginning a relationship.

Divinity and demons are built in.

I suppose the thing to do is notice them and make another action in the direction you choose for yourself.

Toward the ‘demonness’ of blame and loss of hope or ‘this is uncomfortable and I want it gone’ or ‘this is too hard and I’m giving up’…

Or perhaps ‘I wonder what’s around the next corner? It might be better than this,’
or ‘this is new territory (food,person,treatment,behavior,computer program) and I need time to get my sea legs.

For me, since I have lived a good deal of my life with a protected and hardened heart, I generally choose to move toward softness; any choice that leaves me less defended and more open to MORE CHANGE!

That really sounds insane when I write it.

But essentially that very thing is what I’m out for this time around.. moving toward wholeness whatever that looks like.

And as I am sensitive to my inner workings after all the work I’ve done on myself, I can pretty much recognize now when change might help me move closer to home.

Do I always ACT on that knowledge?

NOT.

And then stuff comes back to bite me and I GET TO CHOOSE ALL OVER AGAIN!

I’m telling you, if you can’t make this ride into an interesting one, you may as well get another car..

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