,Time to Check-in and Update

It has been a long time since I have sat at the computer and written freely. Yesterday a beautiful snow covered our favorite cemetery/park. Aimee (the cutest little puppy on the planet who is now a 3 yr. old dog) and I walked, played stick and ball, talked to each other, socialized with other's doing the same thing, and looked for the coyote. Others have seen her lately. We have not for a week or more.

I think it is time I talked more about aging. I would have to agree with whomever it was that said: aging is not for the faint of heart, or aging is not for wimps, or aging is for the valiant and courageous. I fully agree with all three! I think there is a moment in every one's life when they really GET it. I----me----I am not just getting older. But I am actually aging.

What makes us think (hope) that it really won't happen to us? Not the way it has happened to others we have seen, or loved, or heard about. I believe every one of us has a secret belief way way back behind our heart, that if we do after all have to get older, WE will be able to do it right. And by "right" I believe we mean, easily, smoothly, without trouble to others, with minimum pain and fuss. I also believe we expect to continue hurrying here and there, filling 12 to 14 hour days, keeping on top of all life brings to us.

Many of us pull that off. For a very wonderfully long time. Some of us feel ourselves beginning to slip here and here and chalk it up to a bad day/week/month/year. Too much stress and we have to just get through this stretch of time and all will be as it was.

My comeuppance has happened through my heart. Never would I have expected my heart to break. I have not had and hope to not have a heart attack or stroke. I have a heart that beats too fast all of the time and even at that does not beat a regular too fast. It is fast and irregular. Not terribly unusual. Many of us are on this particular journey.

Louise Hay says about heart: "Represents the center of love and security." Right. That makes sense to me. Especially the security part. When I get anxious, I believe my heart takes a huge hit.

Under Heart Problems, Louise Hay says," Longstanding emotional problems. Lack of joy. Hardening of the heart. Belief in strain and stress."

Now, doesn't that just give one a lot to think about!

Do I "believe" in stress and strain? Yes, I guess I do. Do I want to change that belief? Absolutely! Do I know how to change that belief? Well, now that is the question, isn't it? Do I know how?

Off course I do! Let me count the ways: hmmmmm--learn to laugh more; don't take myself so seriously; stop caring so much about what others think of me; play; remember the ways in which I am safe and let go of fears that I am in danger (of not being loved, financial disaster, health issues, world situation); continue to be an important player in my Gratitude Club.

Do you know about the Gratitude Club? Check the fall 2008 newsletter on my web for details. http://www.couplerelationshiptherapy.at/ Essentially, you send me a minimum of 5 things you are grateful for daily and I send you mine. Get every day off to a great, positive, impowering start.

So-----my first step, starting today, in letting go of stress and stain is to go to the food and wine festival. That should distract me a bit. My second step is to write today's gratitudes:

I am grateful for a full, restful, and dreamless sleep last night
I am grateful for a warm and comfortable bed where I rest, restore, dream often times, process, learn and heal
I am grateful for cello, piano, and flute music that I find healing and peaceful
I am grateful for my wonderful daughter and her family who have offered to visit if I am looking for love and support
I am grateful for the library where I can get as many books as I want, freely offered and of great variety

Off to start my day. I will write more about aging and hearts soon. Enough for this moment.

Write to me, phone me, eamail me, keep in touch. Your response, energy, suggestions, caring, are all appreciated.

Nancy

My Ethereal Self

Ethereal: delicate and airy; heavenly, celestial

A friend and I were talking the other day about what happens next? You know, as in where to from here? "Here" being Here, as in Now; here in this now. Particularly in terms of the physical. What happens, really! (ha) in the non-physical?

I look at Me, which pretty much means my body. I know there is much more to Me than my body. I can get how I can take all of that with me when I walk through the door from here to there. But I just can't wrap my mind around not having a body. How do you do that?

Then my friend used the word "ethereal" and I sighed with relief. Ahhhhh, I get it. I get to be "ethereal". I particularly like the delicate and airy part. I can imagine that. I think I would even like it. Ethereal is soft and lovely and easy. Not hard. Not painful. I think I remember being that before. It is a relief and you can rest and breathe easily.

I am reading a mystery called Thunder Bay by William Kent Krueger. He tells us that the Ojebwe tell about the Path of Souls. Waiting at the end of the Path of Souls to welcome us Home is someone who loves us and took the Path before we did. Who would you like to be waiting at the end of the Path of Souls to greet and embrace you?

I am not my ethereal self yet, so that means I am still in the psychical and that means I have the mind and thinking process I have cultivated for 7 decades. I've often gotten a chuckle out of sayings like, "one brick short of a load," or "not the brightest bulb in the chandelier," "not the sharpest knife...." What best describes me is, " one sandwich short of a picnic." I love it! The picnic blanket (me) is lovingly laid out under the trees, in the grass, near the wild flowers. The blanket is lush with abundance and nourishment, colour and surprises. Oh, no! The missing sandwich! ( my critical thinking self ).

None the less, I do have opinions and feelings about the upcoming U.S. election, never mind whether or not I have all my sandwiches. I have run the gambit: from fear, to amazement, to humour, to frustration, to.... you just won't believe this...excitement. Check my web for what Deepak Chopra has to say. It is brilliant. The bigger picture. He gets how what is happening has to be happening and that it is a good thing. All that stuff I just said about sandwiches and me is about my critical take on what Chopra is saying. I don't pretend to be academic or have a critically scholastic or political mind, but what I think he was saying is that the Sarah Palin and Barack Obama shoot down had to come. Some day. It has been in the making for sometime now. And blessed be. I get to be here even as it is happening.

What I hear him saying is that the polarities had to face each other. The country has to decide: is it going ahead, or is it going back? It is their choice. If going ahead, it is truly exciting to be a part of that and to watch what will unfold around us. If going back, those of us who prefer forward movement have to stay steady and hold our own. We have to be patient and wait for them to catch up. My challenge is to remember that there is not a right and wrong here. It is not that I am right and they are wrong.

That isn't easy to hang on to. It isn't even really fair to say I need to wait for them to catch up with me. That somehow suggests I think they need to believe and act like I do. There is room for all of us on this planet. The Obama-Palin face off so makes me think of couples I work with. Sorry. It just is true. I have been letting my fingers do the talking as I write this, and that is exactly where my mind has gone. To couples.

Palin and Obama are a couple. There is not a right person and a wrong person. Just two people who believe differently, thus behave and respond differently. How do we learn to live with our difference? Through dialogue, I teach my couples. Surely that would work in the bigger world, even the world of politics, as well.

Well, I surprised myself about where "ethereal" took me today. If I surprised you as well, let me know. Love hearing from you. Blessings, Nancy

Anniversaries

People often find themselves having particular feelings on the anniversary of something significant in their lives. I have always honoured that and recognized the importance of pausing in this busy life to remember the death of some one loved, a birthday, the time when an illness hit or was recovered from. A special delicious trip or treat or encounter------anniversaries can be of a myriad of things, both delightful and difficult.

I think our memory cells are miraculous and mysterious. I think we can be in the midst of an anniversary and have forgotten, and our physical self reminds us. We find ourselves surprised, awed, feeling very reverent. That's what happened to me.

A year ago today I faced death head on. They didn't want me. I saw a huge total black cement wall. No light, no colour, no sounds. Black silence. I begged for safety. I longed for arms to reach out to me through the veil. They didn't. I returned. And I returned to a beautiful, magical, challenging and exciting world and new life for me. Hence my dreams of working in Vienna, Kuwait, and possibly France. I won't turn back. I only go forward.

The mystery to me is what happened to me 2 days ago: Aug. 19. I spent the first few hours of the day in what I called " a psychic web." I spent time there as my mother prepared to leave us and then for some time after she left. There is an unseen and unknown power that takes me over. I can not pull out of it. I am exhausted and unable to function. I am not of this world, and have no idea what world I am of.

I went back to bed with my clothes on and with Aimee in my arms and gave into the ennui. I drifted. I dreamed. I don't think I slept. The only memory I returned with was the memory of multi-coloured star dust floating down all around me. I loved the colour. It felt like the bits of colour were tired to strings, like the tails of balloons or kites.

When I "woke" I felt I had shifted somewhat. Although I spent most of the day feeling far away and tender, I felt somewhat in control of myself. It was the first year anniversary of the death of the partner of a dear person in my life. I thought I was caught in my friend's pain and anguish. I wondered if I left this world to be with her just briefly. Then I wondered, "Which her? My friend or her partner?"

I don't fully understand what happened. But I am learning to appreciate, not feel embarrassed, and welcome those times of being "caught in a psychic web." I trust I have much I can learn while there. The more I honour what is happening and choose to not fight the pull but to lean into it and follow the power, the more I will understand. Out of the understanding I think will come the possibility of expanding my conscious awareness. I want a greater consciousness of where I am, where I am going, maybe even some clues as the what I will find when I get there.

This past year has been a year for me of learning to let go, learning to trust my process and surrendering to the universe because I am safe and I am loved. Blessed be, Nancy

Number Two Thought for the Week

Maybe I should save this for later. But I won't be here next week, so I will do # 2 thought for this week: The difference between people who are successful and those who are not is that people who are successful have failed more.

Oh, boy. Do I like that. The more I fail, the closer I get to success. Alright! Feels like an important thought for my Vienna adventure. Over the years I have had a myriad of hopes/plans/ideas/dreams, stuff like that. Vienna is the latest, and the one I MOST want to succeed. So I am counting on having failed at: TV hopes, radio plans, Dear Nancy column, collaborative law ambitions, big time couples groups dreams, on and on; means it is about time I am successful at the most recent rocket of desire, which is a blooming private practice with the English speaking community in Vienna.

The first time I return to Vienna to see 3 to 4 couples, I am going to go to the top of my son's condo, a view of Vienna that passes all expectations, and launch 30 balloons with my new and very beautiful bookmarks tied to the strings. The balloons represent my rockets of desire. I will celebrate a new era in my life/practice, by letting the universe know I am doing what I want and loving every minute of it.

Sunday I am off to Houghton Lake to be with family. Three of my grown children and their families, 2 cousins, and my brother and sister-in-law. Fun! And no new thoughts for the week.
This is it until September. September is fall. Fall is beautiful. More about that in a couple of weeks. Warmly, Nancy

'Thought For The Week

I'm going to try to do a thought for the week. I will write a quote then comment, if I so decide! Often times the quote will be from Abraham. Sometimes not. I will acknowledge whoever it is I am quoting.

Today's: "Life is supposed to be fun........You cannot struggle into joy. Struggle and joy are not on the same channel. You joy your way to joy. You laugh your way to success. It is through your joy that good things come." Abraham (as channeled by Esther Hicks)

I really was not taught that "Life is supposed to be fun." Sadly, I didn't teach that to my children, either. Laughing my way into success seems almost sacrilegious!

However, it sure might be more fun to laugh my way to success than to angst, fret, stew, loose sleep, and be annoying. Love and fear: the only 2 true feelings. Well, there you go! If I am not loving my life then I must be afraid of something. Well, rrriiiightttt. Fear it is. Fear that I got it all wrong, that I am not doing "it" right. Fear that there isn't enough to go around, that I won't be loved, that life "is but a dream."

Remember that song from childhood: "Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream."

Even as a kid I wondered about that. What if this is all a dream? What happens when I wake up? Ultimately I think that is our greatest fear: what will happen when we wake up? Thus, we must take life seriously. Seriously work, relate, plan, love, play. Seriously set out to be as successful as possible. If we loose our grip and become too cocky or self assured, or have too much fun, we might miss something important. Then we could fall over the edge, slip out of the dream, and wake up in the real world where-----where what? That's just it, isn't it? Where what?

As long as we really don't know "what" then maybe we might as well have a good time in this dream and take our chances. I remember as a kid hearing the expression, "Laughing all the way to the bank." I think our phase today is, "Laughing all the way to success." Whatever success may mean to each of us.

Take care. I love hearing from you. Warmly, Nancy Ross

Dear Anonymous

Man! Would I like to know who you are. Thank you for calling me distinctive and remarkable. I choose to take you seriously. If your a pulling my leg, it is working. I feel honoured.

As for Kuwait, I won't be able to go if I am not welcomed and wanted. I totally trust my intuition and know I will not be guided to go someplace where I will be in danger. My medical doctor col.league who has suggested we discuss trying to make this happen tells me there is a 60% divorce rate and most of those are initiated by the woman. Women of Kuwait no longer want to serve their men and want some equality and want to be heard and understand as does every one.

That is what will heal this poor trembling planet: to listen and understand each other. No need to agree. But understanding, compassion, empathy, that is what it takes for us to learn to life safely with each other. Fear and love. The only two true emotions. If I am not being treated lovingly, than my tormentor is afraid. I can help keep him or her safe by listening, empathizing, understanding and not being defensive.

Lots to say here I guess. Any way, Anonymous, thanks for writing, write more and tell me who you are. Warmly, Nancy

More of the Wonders of Life

The past 12 months have been wondrous. It was a year ago, Aug. 21, 2007, that I had my first "event", as I have come to call the two hospitalizations I have had. This time last year was tough slugging. It was hot, humid, and very polluted. I was having trouble breathing and even moving much.

This morning I head for the cemetery with Aimee, the wonder dog, so she can play with the coyote and I can exercise, meditate and celebrate.

In-between, we have been to Austria twice and I have opened an office there. I am talking with a medical doctor about the possibility of doing something similar in Kuwait. Life, growth, joy, after near death. So much to celebrate.

I can use all the help I can get out there, to get my Vienna practice off and running. Anyone who is willing to help promote me, please feel free! Giving my Austrian web some hits will help: www.couplerelationshiptherapy.at

Sometime this week I am going to let go 30 balloons off the hill at the cemetery with my beautiful new book mark tied to the string. The book mark talks about Toronto office on one side and Vienna office on the other. Fun! My rockets of desire, exploding off the hill side where Aimee and I have had so very many mystical and magical moments.

Blessings to you all. Email me at clo.nancy@sympatico.ca any time. I would love to hear from you.

Warmly, Nancy