Are the Himalayas Far?

Posted on February 14, 2023 by barbmorris

It’s 1983. I’m sitting behind our apartment in Tucson, the desert sunlight dappling down through pomegranates, creosote, and a grapefruit tree, doing homework from my University of Arizona post-bachelor’s teacher prep program. I’m 25 years old.

My husband joins me and says, “I’m thinking about starting the ordination process.”

“Oh. Okay,” I say. I remember feeling excited about a new adventure, and happy to go along for the ride.

“Well, thank you, I’d love to. Are the Himalayas far?”

Jed’s vocation has taken me places I never would have landed otherwise. Four years of seminary. Two babies. Six cities and five states—Massachusetts, New Mexico, Missouri, Illinois, and Oregon. Twelve houses. Nine jobs (for me).

I have friends all over the US, and a few in Europe. I’ve had a unique perspective on Church in action, both good and bad. I’ve enjoyed the benefits of Jed’s sabbaticals: England and Ireland, Iona, the Camino de Santiago.

This life has also been costly. 25-year-old Barb had no idea what she was saying yes to.

I’ve been doing this clergy spouse thing in one form or another for forty years, since the day Jed told me he wanted to pursue ordination as an Episcopal priest.

“Well, thank you, I’d love to. Are the Himalayas far?”

Jed recently announced that he’s retiring this summer. (Trinity, Bend readers: You’re awesome! I love you so much.)

We’ve been anticipating his retirement for years, imagining what it might be like and what we might do.

But now that it’s here, I’m noticing a part of me hanging on for dear life, resisting the upcoming seismic shift. As costly, painful, crazy-making, and occasionally lonely as these decades have been, this is the life and the marriage I know. This is the life I’ve conformed myself around. This is the life I’ve cut off pieces of myself to fit into.

Two primary threads weave this web of resistance, I think: my relationship to change, and the difference between soul and façade.

First, change.
We’ve all been doing this change thing since puberty, really. Followed by leaving home for the first time. Graduating from college. Committing to a life partner, and maybe deciding to become parents. These celebratory changes in the first half of life are then followed by a smorgasbord of the more complicated changes: Divorces. Serious Illness. Retirements. Big moves. Deaths.

Just because we’ve been doing the “Change Cha-Cha” for our entire lives doesn’t mean we know how to do it well.

Marriages, births, divorces, deaths, retirements, serious illnesses, big moves—they’re all Square One dissolution events.

Wayfinder Life Coaches learn this mantra for Square One: “I don’t know what the hell is going to happen … and that’s okay.” I’m changing this to: “I don’t know what the hell is going to happen … and I’m okay.”

To complicate matters, Jed and I have also got our feet in Square Two, as we begin to imagine concretely what these actual bodies of ours will do beginning in August. The Square Two mantra? “There are no rules … and that’s okay.” Modifying again: “There are no rules … and I’m okay.”

I’m also grappling with the loss that accompanies change. We’ll be leaving a community that is dear to us. Places that are dear to us. And people that are dear to us.

Underneath those obvious losses is a more subtle, sneaky thing poking my heart. I can’t tend to this sneaky thing until I see it. And to see it, I’ve had to sit still for a long time, look within, and listen to myself.

Which brings me to Soul and Façade:
That part of me that’s hanging on, asking for attention and poking me until I listen? It’s that social self I’ve constructed over more than six decades, buttressed by being “the rector’s wife” for so many years. It’s my façade, feeling itself in danger, clinging desperately for survival.

Social Self, False Self, Ego, Façade, Cultural Self—all are labels for the same necessary part of ourselves: the part we show to the world in order to get through our days. This façade, first formed in infancy and childhood, is continually refined throughout our first four or five decades. Finally, hopefully, we begin to let go of that false front in midlife, when it gets too damn heavy to carry around. If we do the work.

For so many years, it was just easier to be who I was expected to be than to seek for the pure strength of my Soul within me. And, of course, as kids we don’t have the option to say, “Screw you and your bullshit cultural rules. I’m gonna be ME!” We must figure out what behaviors will keep us alive, and those behaviors get wired in.

For the first time in our adult lives, Jed and I can let those roles drop away. We can be whoever we want to be, individually and together. Oh, the freedom of that! And the anxiety. We’re a little “deer in the headlights” right now. When those roles drop away, we’ll be vulnerable and naked. And new.

Who will I be?

Who will he be?

Who will we be?

“Well, thank you, I’d love to. Are the Himalayas far?”

Here’s what’s helping me to stay over my feet right now, this minute:

1. I’m remembering that the Change Cycle is baked into our Earthling DNA. Death and rebirth, over and over and over, is what life on Earth is all about. Even rocks get into it. Resistance is futile. I have the tools to ride this wheel. I have understanding. I have my mantras. I’m okay.

2. I’m intentionally discerning who’s speaking, who’s running the show. Is it my Social Self/False Self/Façade? Or is it my Soul? The façade part of me is scared shitless, really worried about doing this right, and bracing herself against all the impending loss. My Soul, however, when I get down to her, is peaceful, connected, and not the least bit worried. So I’m spending a lot of time being quiet and listening.

3. I’m paying attention to what feels good in my body. My body came into this world knowing what’s true for me. She still does. I simply need to use my skills, pay attention, and trust her guidance. Staying present and connected feels good. Worrying does not.

(These skills—Embodiment, Soul-based Living, and Skillful Change—are components of my Coaching Intensive program.)

What does this mean for my coaching practice? I feel comfortable committing to this work through June. After that, who knows? Not me. So if you’re feeling the nudge for private coaching, now is the time to connect for a Clarity Call.

I’m also creating a three-month Group Coaching Intensive to begin in March. Details to come! If you’d like more information about that, let me know.

Ooof! This is a long one. Thank you for hanging in with me!

Gratefully yours,
Barb

P.S. This is the blog version of my weekly-ish newsletter. That’s where I share my latest writing, news, and coaching offerings. You can subscribe here, and thank you!

Image: New Yorker cartoon, by Robert Weber

Four shifts to heal your life.

Posted on December 8, 2021 by barbmorris

(Three foundations – embodiment, awareness, and ownership – are fundamental. The four healing shifts – more soul, more acceptance, more intention, and more creation – are powerful. But making the shifts without the foundations is like building a house on the sand. I’m diving deeper into these seven facets of healing throughout November and December. You can subscribe here if this was forwarded to you.)

Shift #1: More soul, less façade. Explore the difference between your essential self and your social self. We all have both, and we all need both. Learn which one is in the driver’s seat, and how to change drivers if you choose to.

Many writers and thinkers have explored this core concept, often using different labels for these two parts of ourselves. Other names for “Soul” include Nature, Essential Self, Heart, True Self, and Must. Other names for “Façade” include culture, false self, space suit self, and should.

A couple of ways to begin to work with soul and façade:
1. Ask yourself these questions: What do you do because you should? What do you do just because you want to? What’s the payoff in doing things you don’t want to do but you believe you should? What’s the proportion of “should” vs “want to”? Are you happy with this?

2. If you played with last week’s “If God is … then I am … and my soul is ….” exercise, ask yourself what the opposite is. Is this a good metaphor for your façade?
Example: If God is an infinite underground river of living water, then I am a spring, and my soul is the place in the Earth where water emerges. The opposite of this could be something like “I am a Costco parking lot. I keep water from moving freely through the earth underneath me.” This feels like a good metaphor for façade to me, because wildness erupts when water is free to flow where it wants to go. So then I would ask myself where I’m hard and unyielding, stopping up living water.

Shift #2: More acceptance, less resistance. Explore your beliefs about the inevitable changes of being alive. To live is to change. Much of our suffering comes from misunderstanding and resisting change.

Change is a feature of this human life, not a bug. Because to live is to change, we have infinite chances to begin again, over and over. Every loss leads to new life. Where are you resisting change? Do you have losses to grieve? Thoughts about change to disbelieve?

Here are two blog posts from the archive for exploring this core concept further.
Seven things I wish I’d known about change fifty years ago.
Change and Covid. (Written early in the pandemic, when we didn’t know what the hell was happening.)

Shift #3: More intention, less reaction. Explore how your thoughts cause your feelings, not the other way around. This is good news, because you can learn to choose your thoughts.

Learning to hear and question the thoughts that precede your feelings is the work of a lifetime. And it’s so worth it. When we’re in charge of our brain, we can choose thoughts that make us happier, healthier, and more whole. It’s that simple.

The most powerful tool I know to start hearing your thoughts is the Awareness Wheel. Remember, if a thought causes suffering, it isn’t true.

Post from the archives: Thoughts create feelings. Feelings motivate actions. Actions determine results. Your results become your life.
If you want more of my writing about the Change Cycle, there’s lots. Just search “change” on the top right corner of the blog.

Shift #4: More creator, less victim. Explore the victim triangle and the empowerment dynamic. Create the life you want, instead of passively settling for the life you have.

To what are you acquiescing? To what do you aspire? That’s all you really need to notice. Then ask yourself Dr. Edith Eger’s Four Questions:
1. What do you want?
2. Who wants it? (You, someone else, the culture, etc.?)
3. What are you going to do about it?
4. When?

Blog post from the archives: This will change your life. I’m not kidding.

PS. We’re approaching the Winter Solstice here in the Northern Hemisphere. I love this time of year, not because of holiday energy but because of the growing dark. Despite the frantic nature of holiday preparations all around, this growing dark feels to me like a time for letting go. A time to embrace emptiness, silence, and waiting.

I’ve been doing this work for ten years now. I feel a new thing wanting to emerge, and I want to honor that feeling. So I’m trusting the cycle and letting go of my coaching practice as currently constituted. My surgery and subsequent newsletter hiatus created a lull in my client roster, so this is a perfect time.

I don’t know what my coaching work will look like going forward. I have a hunch I’ll be writing and offering classes, workshops, and retreats. I’ll be organizing ten years worth of blog posts into categories and putting them under a coaching tab on my website as PDFs. I’ll continue to writing books, both fiction and nonfiction. I’ll continue to send this email as I have news and writing to share. Probably. What I do know is that I love this work, and I want to honor my soul’s mysterious “musts.” I also know that new life grows in the dark, and emerges on its own time.

So much change happens in the dark. I’m wishing you abundant blessings of this dark time and the return of the light, and I look forward to connecting in the new year.
What does it mean that the earth is so beautiful? And what shall I do about it? What is the gift that I should bring to the world? What is the life that I should live? ~Mary Oliver

Photo credit: Natalie Rhea Rigg on Unsplash

How to heal your life.

Posted on November 3, 2021 by barbmorris

These eight actions will heal your life.

Three Foundations:

Embodiment. Your body is the only thing you have for your entire life. Know your embodied self. Honor your body. Listen to your body. Learn to love your body.
Awareness. Be courageously present to your life: body, mind, heart, soul, spirit.
Ownership. Examine your theology. Deconstruct and reconstruct as you choose. Reclaim your rightful authority over your beliefs.

Four Healing Shifts:

More soul, less façade. Explore the difference between your essential self and your social self. We all have both, and we need both. Learn which one is driving your bus, and how to change drivers if you choose to.
More acceptance, less resistance. Explore your beliefs about the inevitable changes of being alive in a human body. To live is to change. Much of our suffering comes from misunderstanding and resisting change.
More intention, less reaction. Explore how your thoughts are causing your feelings, not the other way around. This is good news, because you can learn to choose your thoughts.
More creator, less victim. Explore the victim triangle and the empowerment dynamic. Create the life you want, instead of passively settling for the life you have.

Put it all together.

Design a solid, personalized, do-able plan to create what you want in your life.

These eight actions are the core components of my Coaching Intensive, a culmination of everything I’ve learned in my six decades of loving, suffering, learning, and delighting in my one life.

I’d love to share them with more of you and dig deeply into them, so this space will be devoted to exploring them in depth, one each week until the end of the year.

Currently my Coaching Intensive is only available in a private coaching format. I’ll have a special announcement soon about another way you can work with me to implement these eight healing actions, starting in January. (If you just cringed because that feels salesy, I promise I’m not being coy. I’m just still working on the details.)

PS. Thank you for sticking with me as my right hand heals from its surgical intervention. I’m typing with nine fingers now! And emerging from my chrysalis full of words and ideas!

Is your chrysalis calling?

Posted on September 15, 2021 by barbmorris

Catalytic events come when they will, and we find ourselves once more riding the Change Cycle. We’re not in charge of the timing, try as we might to control the uncontrollable. Whee, anyone?

When we were younger, catalytic events were more often positive – graduations, marriages, parenthood. Catalytic events were largely results of choices we made.

As we age, the events that push us onto the wheel are more often unchosen by us – kids off to college, death of a loved one, a serious illness. These catalytic events feel more like grief and loss.

This is okay. This is how it’s supposed to be. Resistance is futile. Resistance to what is only causes suffering. Painful events are holy and full of grace, when we allow them to be.

A common metaphor for the cycle of change, part and parcel of the Earthling deal, is metamorphosis. In metamorphosis, a caterpillar dissolves in her chrysalis, becomes goo, and eventually emerges as a butterfly.

The caterpillar has no say in the timing. And she must dissolve completely for her cells to reform as a butterfly. These two things are important.

As humans, we have the capacity to resist the chrysalis. This is never a good idea. When your chrysalis calls, it’s best to give in and dissolve. Resistance is futile. All resistance will get you is a gnarly beat-up caterpillar slogging through winter snows, shaking its withering head and muttering under its breath in disgust, eventually freezing to death. Not pretty.

I’m having surprise surgery next week to rehabilitate my right thumb. (Ligament Reconstruction and Tendon Interposition, for you medical nerds.) My right hand will be out of commission for a month or so. Surgery day, September 21, is also the day I outlive my mom – a day I’ve been aware of for a while now. Evidently, to mark the occasion, I’ll be getting my hand retooled for the next forty years, forty more than she had. Not what I would have chosen, and yet it works somehow.

I’m attempting to accept this enforced rest as a gift, a retreat, chrysalis time. I’ll do my best to be graceful about it and be a happy patient, but I’m finding out just how much I resist rest. Who will I be if I’m not working? Will I deserve to take up space if I’m not productive? Is healing really necessary? Sheesh.

This newsletter and our Community Conversations will be on hiatus until I can work a keyboard and a mouse again. This means our September 30 Community Convo is cancelled.

I’ll be back, as soon as I’m back up and running, with updates from the Chrysalis.

PS. Many of you are fans of Glennon Doyle’s Untamed. Did you know Glennon and her sister Amanda host a fabulous podcast, We Can Do Hard Things? I recommend it so highly, and will be catching up on episodes while I’m resting in my chrysalis. (Thanks to my daughter for urging me to listen.)

When your Yes becomes No

Posted on June 10, 2021 by barbmorris

Do you want to say No to people, situations, and commitments that used to be Yes? You’re not alone. This is a common theme with my clients, especially as we re-emerge from Covid.

These “used to be Yes” items run the gamut from the immense – a marriage, at least in its current form – to the seemingly small – dropping out of a small group or unsubscribing from an email list.

Why is it so hard for women to honor their new No?

Here are two stuck spots my clients experience. A third, women and our discomfort with our power, is a subject for another newsletter!

1. You feel afraid of hurting someone’s feelings. Fear of hurting someone’s feelings is actually just avoiding conflict. Underneath the avoidance of conflict is the belief that your own desires and priorities aren’t as important as the perceived desires and priorities of the person whose feelings you’re afraid of hurting. And this belief you have, that your desires and priorities aren’t as important as other people’s desires and priorities, is bullshit perpetrated on you and other women by the patriarchy. (See last week’s newsletter for more about trusting your desires.)

2. You feel afraid of the emptiness and openness created when, not knowing what might emerge to take its place, you honor your No. This fear of unknowing, of emptiness and openness, is actually the belief that you can’t trust yourself, your desires and your priorities. And your lack of trust in yourself is actually a fundamental misunderstanding of God’s nature and your connection to It.

We’ve been trained to believe in a linear, patriarchal, masculine, capitalist model that we’re one and done. That the goal of life is to figure out what we’re supposed to do, go do it, and then maintain this state, kicking and screaming if necessary, until we die. That there’s one correct answer and our job is to figure it out. Get it right or die trying.

This false, toxic model underlies that question we ask kids: What do you want to be when you grow up?

This false, toxic model also underlies the questions we ask ourselves as adults: What’s my purpose? What’s my calling? Who did God create me to be?

Beloved, this is NOT how Creator works. The God who is constantly making all things new asks us very different questions: Who am I called to be right now? How can I respond most fully and joyfully to this moment?

The answers to those questions almost certainly aren’t what they were ten years ago, ten days ago, or even ten minutes ago.

Creation and the force continually creating it, aka God, is always birthing, dying, and being reborn. Always. As members of that matrix, inextricably entwined in this holy cycle, we are born, we die, and we are born again. Over and over and over.

No is as holy and as necessary as Yes, when your No is rooted in your soul. Listen to your No. Trust your knowing. Trust your desires. Trust God to be at work in you, continually creating you, continually making you new.

PS. I share news, dates for upcoming free Zoom conversations (our first one is June 17th!), and coaching opportunities through my weekly newsletter. You can subscribe here.

Photo by The Humantra on Unsplash

Four healing shifts and a simple awareness practice.

Posted on March 4, 2021 by barbmorris

I’m convinced that healing happens as we make four simple shifts. These shifts aren’t rules. They’re more like touchstones. Truths. Signposts along the way of integrity. They’re not linear, but rather a spiral unfurling. They’re my attempt to “systematize Mystery.”

More soul, less façade. To orient ourselves more and more to the truths of our hearts and souls, and less to others’ expectations.
More acceptance, less resistance. To accept and celebrate the ever-changing nature of being embodied on this earth more and more often, and resist life’s inevitable changes less often.
More intention, less reaction. To choose our thoughts with intention more often, and become caught in our emotions less often.
More creation, less victimhood. To actively create our lives more often, and less often behave as passive victims of other people, circumstances, or “fate.”

Supporting my clients as they make these four shifts is the core of my coaching. These shifts are simple, but that doesn’t mean they’re easy. And we have to know where we’re starting from to get where we want to go.

Moving the dial on these shifts requires awareness of what’s happening in our bodies and our brains.

Powerful, lasting change begins with clearly seeing, acknowledging, and being with our current reality, and loving ourselves no matter what we find when we tune into ourselves.

My clients and I begin every session with a few minutes of tuning in. We stop, we feel our bodies, we breathe. This tuning in is non-negotiable.

Here’s a simple two-minute awareness practice. You can do it anywhere, and you won’t need any special equipment. Don’t complicate it, or try to excel. Just do it.

1. Stop what you’re doing. Take three breaths, Feel your feet.
2. Scan your body for sensations.
3. Whatever you feel, simply allow it. Let the sensations be what they are.
4. Sit with yourself for two minutes.

Do this practice as often as you remember. Set a reminder on your phone, if you want to. Journal just a few words about what you find, if you want to. Pay attention to any patterns you see, if you want to.

That’s it. That’s all. This simple awareness practice, just coming home to your body for a couple of minutes, is such a powerful place to start making important shifts. Your body is your life. Your body is a gift. Your body tells you what’s true and real and alive.

Your body is your connection to your soul. Your soul is your connection to meaning, purpose, and deep joy. Everything starts with your body.

You might find as you do this practice regularly that you become aware of emotions and thoughts. If you do, you can jot them down if you want to.

All change, for conscious humans, begins with awareness.

I go a little deeper into one of the four shifts mentioned above in each newsletter, and suggest a practice, exercise, or journal prompt to explore it further. I value your feedback.

I’m collecting everything I’ve written about these four touchstones into a short e-book. Your responses and questions will help me make that book clearer and more useful. Contact me here or leave a comment with your thoughts. Thank you!

PS. I’m transitioning from a blog subscription to a newsletter, in order to serve my readers better. Please visit my website and subscribe to my newsletter to continue to receive posts. Thank you!

Photo credit: Daoudi Aissa on Unsplash

Toddling through COVID-19

Posted on April 3, 2020 by barbmorris

1962, San Diego Zoo — Three-year-old me at the San Diego Zoo

“We’re supposed to feel like toddlers in Square One, not knowing what the hell is going on half the time, and needing lots of naps. If you’re completely bumfuzzled and often tired, you’re doing it right.”

That’s what I wrote in last week’s post about the Change Cycle and how this global pandemic has smacked us into our next metamorphosis. We’re all preschoolers again.

It’s an uncomfortable feeling, this not knowing what the hell is going on. I’m finding it easier to stay in the present moment, the only refuge from what we can’t control or predict, when I care for myself like I’m a three-year-old.

You know how to care for a toddler. You give that child a structure that keeps them safe and supports their toddler work.

Here are some concrete practices for being simultaneously three years old and that three-year-old’s caregiver.

(Do you have a photo of yourself as a preschooler? Put it where you’ll see it often. Do the same for the other adults in your household, as a reminder that we’re all preschoolers now.)

Sleep when you’re tired. Nap early and often.
Draw something. Scribble and doodle, then add color. Finger paint. Mess around with clay.
Go outside. Sit in the sun. Plant seeds. Take lots of walks. Stack rocks. Make a nature mandala. Pay attention to birds and flowers. Lie on your back and watch clouds. Gaze at the night sky. Cuddle with a warm, furry animal.
Put yourself in water. Splash your feet in a river. Wade in a creek. Swim in a pool or lake. Take a bath
Keep yourself comfortable. Stay warm. Snuggle up. Wear your favorite clothes.
Dance and play.
Pay attention to what interests you. Do what you want to as much as you can. Follow your urges. Be all in. “What doing, do.”
Be intentional about screen time, and take a break from horror and violence. Give yourself screen-free days.
Feed yourself healthy food, and a few treats. Drink lots of water. Limit intoxicants and stimulants.
Give yourself structure: Put yourself on a schedule that nourishes your body, mind, and spirit.

Ask for help when you need it. Hold hands when you can.

Breathe deeply. Laugh often. Love with your whole heart.

For more on the grief associated with this global pandemic, see this post from the Harvard Business Review.

Barb Morris

Writer, Teacher, Facilitator, Artist

Tag Archives: change cycle