Every Day I Choose Life

A few days ago, I decided it was time for me to take a look at some of my more recent journaling entries. With a bunch of my writing pieces being in the messy middle and not quite ready to be shared, I decided to reflect on a journal entry from a few months ago that started with the words, “How do I choose life each and every day?”

Daily life can be overwhelming. With every day comes deep feelings, a long to do list, and a desire to hide under the covers for eternity. I am not sure that I have ever totally checked out of life for very long; instead I take one step and then another. I reach for the next best thing and I move forward. Each and every day, I choose life.

I am the architect of my life.  While daily practices sustain me, so does living authentically, engaging in activism, creating a home that nurtures my soul, and by surrounding myself with friends that I adore. Perhaps all of these things are practices.

A rough childhood taught me that I really needed to take care of myself. And I have learned that the best way to do just that is to consciously create daily life practices that ground me one action at a time.

1. Morning routine
   • Wake-up without an alarm clock by 6 or 6:30 AM (at the latest)
   • Take probiotic
   • Drink water (lots)
   • Make bed, stretch, feed dog, do some quick chores, and journal (30 or so minutes)
   • Take my stomach medication
   • Chant and/or walk for a couple of miles
   • Eat breakfast
2. Throughout the day
   • Paint inspirational cards, etc.
   • Journal whenever thoughts pop into my head
   • Weave
   • Read
   • Facebook
   • Walk (5-7 miles)
   • Food norms – (This is relatively new for me since I have been doing this only for a few months.)
     • plant based diet (mostly)
     • fish – once a week
     • green smoothies (4 – 6 times/week)
     • no added sugar
     • no alcohol
     • drinking lots of water
     • dinner with my sons (5+ times/week)
3. Night Routine – Work In Progress (WIP) that needs to be strengthened.
   • Evening walk (4+ times/week)
   • Stretch
   • Golden milk or tea
   • Before bed chanting

Above is not all I do, but it is a skeleton of how I navigate my life.  Without these practices, I would be in rough shape. They provide order when my spirit is in disarray; they ground me so that I can live with more ease. Daily practices always provide me a pathway to healthy living.

Looking Back

I am not certain when I started embracing daily practices as a “thing”. It started slowly, so slowly that I didn’t notice it was happening. Perhaps it can be traced back to when I realized that if I wasn’t writing/journaling then I must be in a dark place. My son Dovi was actually the first person to point this out to me when he was about 8 years old. And ever since that time, he has been the first person to remind me that I must not be writing enough when I am less than grounded, angry, or sad.  He is still the first person to remind me to get back to my writing if I fall off the wagon.

Over time I have learned that daily practices empower me to live life more fully regardless of where my spirit is. And what I love most about them is that they are always a work in progress; as I stretch and grow, they do too.

Every day I choose how I want to live. Every day I choose life!

Onward with love, light, & blessings,
Chava

PS: Thanks for reading what will likely be part of my memoir which at this point is being called, Living Out Loud: A Thriver’s Journey. If you like what you are reading, please take a moment and like it on WordPress or any social media site, AND if you have feedback, I’d love to hear it.

 

 

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Practicing Me

The Way It Is

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

by William Stafford From Ask Me: 100 Essential Poems. 
Graywolf Press (January 7, 2014).

As a little girl, my father would cup both of his hands over my ears and say, “Listen to the quiet.” Each and every time he did this a calmness washed over my spirit. While my father has been gone for 17.5 years, I have never forgotten that sensation or released my longing to ‘listen to the quiet’.

Over the last several years, I have become aware that I am navigating a life with many moving parts; I often find myself overwhelmed and struggling how to get my to do list done and show up for life in a healthy way. As a seeker, this has invited me to find options for how to best nurture my spirit and to literally practice being me.

Making Artist’s Cards is only one of my daily practices. 

The great news is that creating and doing practices comes naturally to me. While some of them could have been considered detrimental in my youth or for moments in time, today they tend to be quite beautiful and grounding. I am the person I am because I take significant time to ‘listen to the quiet’ and to honor my needs.

Making conscious choices for how I spend my time has truly made it possible for me to process the darkness that has been known to blanket my being. I feel deeply and love unabashedly. My heart has been shattered by those I should have been able to trust and by those that have loved me differently then I have wanted. I don’t tend to do well with a broken heart; my entire being seems to hold that feeling unable to emerge with ease.

While this truth is painful for me, the awareness has lead me to engage in healing practices. In the last eight months or so, I have found a new rhythm that includes new rituals or what I prefer to call daily practices. They have empowered me to move forward and to better embrace self-care. Yes, I feel the wounds of my broken heart and spirit, but they don’t devastate me. I am choosing to live within my truth. I am practicing being me!

I love how I walk through the world and how on a good day I radiate light. Yes there is sadness, but it is what it is. What matters is how I move forward and that I always choose to move forward. Creating practices has literally saved my life; it has given me tools to cope and made me stronger for living with all the moving parts of my life.

I am able to thrive because of what I do to take care of my body, my mind, and my soul. Here are some of my daily rituals/practices:

Morning Rituals:

1. Make my bed
2. Drink water:
3. • two cups – usually room temperature
4. • with apple cider vinegar
5. • with fenugreek seeds
6. • with spices (aryuvedic )
7. Peel and eat 12 raw almonds with local honey (Peeling raw almonds that have been soaking in water is a real meditative treat.)

Daily practices

1. Journaling – My daily check in helps me negotiate whatever is weighing on my spirit. Only through journaling can I really find out what I think and what I feel, what I need and what will help me to better function.
2. Reading books – Right now I am working on four:
3. • Becoming by Michelle Obama
4. • Practice Me  by Elena Brower (This inspired me to write this blog.)
5. • Hands Free Life: 9 Habits for Overcoming Distraction, Living Better, & Loving More by Rachel Macy Stafford AND
6. • Diana, An Allegory of Awakening Herself by Martha Beck (This book just arrived and will be started tonight.)
7. Making Artists cards using watercolor and words of empowerment
8. Keeping the kitchen sink clean and clear

Regular Practices (4-5 times/week)

1. Walking 10,000 + steps
2. Listening to AMAZING podcasts while I walk
3. Chanting/Prayer
4. Deep breathing exercises and/or meditation

Developing Practices (I am always trying to make healthy choices, but I haven’t quite mastered the following, but I am fairly consistent :). . .)

1. Yoga in the morning – I made it through one week, but felt really sore. . .tomorrow I start again.
2. Nutritious smoothie
3. Eating vegetables with every meal
4. No sweets and almost no sugar

When I picked up the book Practice Me last week, I was blown away by how well I am doing it. I am living as authentically and constantly working on the non-negotiables in my life. And I am learning, always learning about how I can show up and live life more fully.

What practices do you do that make you a healthier you?

Onward with love, light, & blessings,
Chava

PS – Keep your eyes open for later today or tomorrow when I share my practices for nurturing our world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Day 28: #The100DayProject #ActivistCardsByChava

(Note: To learn more information on #The100DayProject which is also known as #ActivistCardsByChava, you can see https://wp.me/pthnB-3cH.)

Nearly every day, I take time to go inward through my journaling, meditation, and chanting practices, I often focus on remaining present. Breathing deeply, focusing inward, and ultimately figuring out where I am truly meant to be. This isn’t always easy because in truth I am also a bit scattered.

With Rosh HaShana on the horizon, this reflection seems more poignant than ever. Learning from those moments that I allow myself to go inward, I know that I need to navigate my life differently then I did this past year so . The goal is to ultimately show up for others as needed, but also honor my own needs.  It’s time for me to prioritize all the moving parts of my life while also creating boundaries around the things that I hold sacred.

May I always be present – not only for my family, my friends, and my world, but also for myself.

Hineini. Here I am. I am present. I am exactly where I should be.

Onward with love, light, & authenticity,
Chava

PS – I’d love your feedback on my blog, my writing, my thinking, and/or my Activist Cards!!! Feel free to like or comment. I will try to respond to all comments to this blog. Input is always welcome.

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Writing: A Window into My Soul – Moving through my Fears

“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at,
what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”

~Joan Didion

Writing is how I dance with the world around me. Through writing I navigate my deepest pain and my most radiant joy; I process my unrelenting tears and my heartfelt laughter too. And with each strike of the keyboard or stroke of a pen, I find my true rhythm and my soul.

As my younger son expresses so well, “Ima (Mommy), if you aren’t writing, you aren’t in a good place.” Dovi has been reflecting this truth to me since he was about 6 years old and 15 years later, he is still the one to who reminds me that as long as I am writing I am probably exactly where I need to be.

Poem by me; AWESOME & one-of-a-kind pen created by Steven Clark!!

Lately, I have been struggling to write freely which has left me at a loss. Since writing is how I process the world I live in, it means that I am wrestling with my life and allowing myself to experience some very deep feelings – not all painful either. I am someone who is always on the path – navigating, seeking, and simply being.

In this moment, there are two significant challenges that I am facing around my writing.

1. After 8.5 years, I am facing the ending of a relationship that I thought could last forever. How stupid considering the father of my children is no longer my husband and barely my friend. Although, I am happy to say that that may be changing. While I know that this man is not meant to be my partner, I truly believed our connection would last as lovers and friends. As this man and I are building a friendship, I am aware that if I spoke from the deepest part of my heart all the time, I would crumble and/or I would never be able to find peace with the man that I am still hoping will be my life-long friend.
   Since I can’t have the fullness of what I want, I am faced with learning to silence my voice. AND to be honest, that comes at a cost. My writing around him is pathetic. I am afraid that my honesty would close the door to our friendship, so instead I have become an awkward. Whether or not he registers this is irrelevant, it is what I am feeling. And words have power so until now, I have been holding back even when I simply journal.

   My work is to trust my ex-lover knowing that we love each other deeply and we are emerging in a new and very different place. In the meantime, I have to keep putting salve on the wounds of my heart and that means I better go back to my journaling practice.

2. As a community leader, I am often forced to face the insight of everyone that reads my blogs, my Facebook posts, my emails, etc. While that is the case for everyone, I am struggling. Even though I know that everyone reads my words through their own eyes, I am also so very tired of how people struggle with my transparency. I love being able to openly explore the world as I do.

   I am a writer who thrives by living out loud. I don’t want to be silenced in order to accommodate how other’s walk in the world. I have been silenced throughout so much of my life. I have found myself wearing masks to hide my beautiful face or to protect my loved ones. The good news is that my loved ones can handle me being exactly who I am and so can I; writing is how I embrace authenticity-always!

   I am so very tired of how people put ‘their stuff’ on me. And yet I know that while so many only find the darkness, others reflect the light. The challenge is navigating those that only focus on the darkness. I am so not about darkness.

   Throughout much of my life I have been silenced in various ways and for various reasons.  Ironically, it isn’t always about something difficult happening, more often than not it was simply that I didn’t know that I could speak up or that my voice mattered. For me, learning to share my voice, trusting myself to be articulate, and growing up though my writing was a process. Aren’t we all a work in progress. The more writing became a practice for me, the more I learned to value an intensity that I never knew existed. It was through that writing that I also began to adore the rawness of my spirit. I love my who I am and how I walk in the world. And it was through my writing that I was able to reach this place.

Writing is a sacred act that needs to nurtured daily if not more. I am committing to journaling daily, blogging weekly, and writing letters whenever I can.  If I want to be grounded in life and soar with each breath, I have to put pen to paper and fingers to keys.

Writing,
the song of my heart;
the meaning of my mind;
the feeling of my soul:
Is what makes me whole.

Looks like I may have some work to do so that I can honor my spirit a little more each day.

Love, light, & blessings,
Chava

 

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Selfie Challenge: Day 17 – Riding Waves

While not a selfie, this is my favorite photo of me in the world! I love the Bay!

Today is Day 17 of My Selfie Challenge. This is my time to look at how I walk in the world and to shake loose from some of the very things that bind my spirit.  And if I am going to be really truthful, it is my hope that as I take each photo, I will learn to be just a little happier with the person that I am. As a seeker, it is my time to find the beauty that is me.

~ ~ ~

Life is messy.

As a writer, a dreamer, and a seeker, my world is feeling a little daunting right now as I navigate new beginnings. With each step, I am embracing the journey – even the hard parts.

Somehow I am able to stay afloat – most of the time.

And then there are days when I’d like to curl up on the beach and just let the waves soothe my spirit, but I simply don’t have time for that. Instead I have some tools that help me to keep riding the waves through:

1. writing/journaling as much as possible.
2. listening to inspirational podcasts, Ted Talks, and now Facebook lives.
3. chanting, drumming, breathing, meditation, and other mindful practices.
4. taking time for creativity and movement.
5. dealing with the hard stuff even if it makes me cry.

Always stretching, growing, and evolving.

Sending love, light, hope, and blessings. . .

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Riding the Waves of Hurricane Harvey

Life is forever altered.

(Note: Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant address this again and again in their book, Option B. If you haven’t yet read it, rush to purchase it and embrace the wisdom.)

No one ever wakes up one day expecting a moment (or many moments) can change the course of life, but sometimes it happens. For us living in Houston, Hurricane Harvey did the job.

Option B is my new norm and has been for just over a week. Although, it has only been over the last few days that I am feeling the long-term impact. Our new norms have left me unable able to take a deep breath (literally); I have, at least temporarily, shed the calm armor of grace and bravery.  AND I do know that at some point soon calm waters will appear. I have faced enough challenges in my life to trust that somehow I always find a way to navigate new norms.

Here is just a short list of how life has been altered:

• The air quality is making it difficult to breathe.
• Four or five hours of driving time have been added onto our daily commute. Although we will be looking for ways around this.
• The possibility of flooding is a constant fear. With water levels so high. . .
• While Houstonians are resilient, they are also bone weary.
• Time to take care of myself via exercise and whole food cooking is gone. Although, a recent physical has dictated that I make some significant changes.

These are the biggies, but their are so many more.

Last night, the new realities hit me or should I say sucker punched me – knocking all the air out of me. The good news is that today, I am reflecting on how to navigate the new norms without allowing a sense of despondency to envelop me – Option B. I have NO doubt that my family will find new norms that work and a healthy new center.

Keep sending your prayers and sweet visions our way!

Even with the stress, I am immensely grateful.  We have our home and I have a widespread village to support me. While the harshness of the new landscape is not easy to integrate into my life, I am hoping that those that love me will be able to handle that I am a little more sensitive than usual.

Maneuvering Option B is going to take some time, but it is happening – a little by little each hour. And the only way that I can do it is with my amazing village by my side.  While my village is extraordinary, I want to share some insights and advice for better supporting me.

• Sometimes I just need a ‘witness’ to listen.
• Being transparent on Facebook is what I do, if you want to know how I am. . .check out my status; it will probably let you know exactly how I am.  AND for the meantime, I will continue to do my Facebook Live at 5 (or as close to 5 as I can).
• While I know that I didn’t lose my house or anything of significance, this new norm is hell. I don’t need to be reminded that I should be grateful. I am. AND I am also acutely aware that Hurricane Harvey is even more devastating for others. Still, I have a right to feel as I feel.
• Suggesting that I take care of myself doesn’t serve either of us well. In the early days of the disaster, I was constantly on the phone and connecting with those in need. Drumming and chanting would have been great, but when I had time, I needed to sleep/rest. The one thing I do multiple times a day is journal. Trust that I will find the pockets of time and embrace them. Telling me to take the time is a reminder that time is not what it once was. And hearing that again and again by the same people makes me crazy.
• Social media offers so many gifts. At any moment, I may choose to engage or disengage, that is my prerogative.  I love the support of it, the information I glean, the sayings, the inspirations, and stories/music shared.  Telling me to unplug is infuriating; I am more than capable of deciding what I need to do at any moment.
• While I love the support that surrounds me, I am fairly clear about what I need. If I ask you to connect with me or not in a certain way, please listen. I won’t be demanding or disconnected for long.

The vulnerability I feel right now can be earth shattering at times. The new norms petrify me. I can’t explain it all just yet, but I will over time. I am comfortable with transparency, but I am hurting right now and I am not always clear that I have the resiliency to navigate.  Yet I have a long history of thriving and my guess is that Hurricane Harvey will be no different.

Hineini, here I am, riding the waves. . . .  I don’t have Option A any longer, so Option B will simply have to do.

A few days ago, I shared that I am finding myself creating and humming a lot of niggunim, wordless melodies. There really are no words to adequately describe the mixture of emotions that each and every person in Houston is feeling. Today was my first effort in writing.

Moving forward. . .

Tell me, what is it you plan to do 
with your one wild and precious life?

~Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

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synchronicity abounds

waking up this morning, the universe has felt totally aligned for me.

my body moved as I needed it to move. my heart felt and still feels whole. by 5 AM, I was on my ayurvedic journey. i had done my loving-kindness meditation, drank a cup of fenugreek tea, and now I am drinking holy basil tea.

it’s only 6:22 AM and I feel ALIVE, beautiful, and centered. everything feels balanced. WOW!

i have already journaled, and now I am writing a short blog.

sure there are bills that I am struggling to pay, weight that I need to lose for my health/back, and family challenges. there are also amazing and inspiring friends, a snoring pup at my feet, and a job that I can’t wait to get to today.

there are also paint brushes that need to be used, books that are being read, and a world to explore.

courtesey of terri st. cloud of bone sigh arts at: http://bit.ly/2tzcBxD

perhaps best of all was opening up my morning email from terri st. cloud of bone sigh arts to see this amazing prose and picture. I love terri’s work, it always shows up at the perfect time!

each and every word here speaks of my soul; my entire being is reverberating with a rhythm that reminds me that:

I am alive.

I am thriving.

I have arrived to this exquisite time.

synchronicity abounds.

 

ps: confirmation that I really am a writer came when someone ‘liked’ a blog and then became a follower. when I went to the specific blog (http://bit.ly/2uSVhry) that was ‘liked’, I found that it resonated with me too. and then WordPress asked me for feedback about their blog platform. I am not sure if they will respond to my feedback, but I hope so. I so want to grow THIS blog!

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