Organic Wisdom :: The Result of Your Experiences

April 27, 2012 By TheOrganicSister 1 Comment

Every Friday I try to share some of the quotes I post on Twitter and Facebook, with some of my expanded thoughts and feelings on it here.

“Organic Wisdom” is what I have found speaking to me in those quiet moments, that guides me and that echoes Truth in my life. Please feel free to download, or share this image in any way you’d like.

I think we (myself included) give too much credit to our experiences, saying that they are what made us who we are today.

Likewise we can give too much blame as well, insisting that they are the cause of our suffering.

But we are not the result of what happened to us.

We are the result of what we choose to do with it.

Painful, heartbreaking and horrific things have happened in my life: abuse, assault, loss, depression.

I’m not being contrite when I say I am am thankful for each and every one, even though I have no desire to experience it again nor would I wish it on anyone.

But as painful as those events are, they did not happen to me.

They happened for me.

And more importantly, I happened to them.

From those events I learned how to suffer and how to overcome suffering. I learned that I could allow things to tear me down or I could choose for them to build me up.

There is a difference in what happens to us and what happens for us: One creates victims. The other creates survivors.

Kick-ass survivors. Men and women who are ablaze with wisdom, strength, confidence and the desire to transform violence into love. Men and women who experienced something that will embolden them to change the world.

You are NOT the result of what has or will occur in your life, of the pain you are or have experienced, of the mistakes you did or will make.

You are the result of what you choose to do next.

Filed Under: Organic Wisdom Tagged With: abuse, assault, choices, empowerment, fear, life, personal growth, suffering

How Your Life is Like A Riptide

April 9, 2012 By TheOrganicSister

You know that most riptide deaths are not caused by the riptide itself? They are actually caused by the swimmer’s exhaustion as they fight the tide trying to regain their control and sense of safety.

Da Moon and Da Sea

Last week, after a long day on the beach, I was connecting with a girlfriend online around the idea of surrender and allowing when it dawned on me…

This is life at times: A riptide in the ocean.

We dip our toes into Mama Ocean, playing with the idea of jumping in headlong, with the thought of independence and glory and Big Ass Dreams of the moves we’ll make and the way we’ll look. Then comes the time when we’re finally ready and we dive in (thinking we look like sexy mermaids, of course) feeling happy, excited…feeling the excitement of freedom and exploration as our Big Ass Dreams become Big Ass Plans.

But the ocean sometimes has another idea.

Sometimes it laughs at our mermaid-esque attempts and our Big Ass Plans and it wraps it’s arms around our waist and says “This will be more fun.”

And then it shows us what we really get to see.

And that loss of control, the pull in a deeper direction, feels dangerous. Our natural inclination is to fight against the current, swimming hard toward shore, toward what looks like safety. To regain our authority, our rightfulness, our power. To be the commander of our own direction. To push through the fear, fight the resistance, or force our way forward.

But that’s how deaths happen, you know.

Surrender Saves Lives

They say if you’re caught in a riptide you should do one of two things to save yourself from exhaustion and your ultimate demise.

:: Swim parallel to the shore: Don’t lose sight of your bearings, your safe ground, your desires. But don’t fight for them. Just move yourself out of the chaos by side-stepping it and getting yourself into a new place (a new frame of mind, a new environment, a new idea, a new rhythm). But sometimes that current has other plans and won’t relinquish you that easily, and so your safest bet is to….

:: Lay back and surrender to the flow: The riptide will move you, it will pull you beyond your comfort zone. It will show you things you’ve never had the courage to explore on your own and take you a bit farther than you thought possible. And then the calm will come, as you pass beyond the rush and you can find your way back to solid ground with a new understanding of the power that surrounds you, a new respect for the forces that envelop you and yes, more clarity on your path.

Yes, Life’s been teaching me a lot about surrender, about allowing, about dreaming and actualizing with an openness to Trust.

It’s been helping me to release the tension and the resistance and lay back with my arms spread open and surrender to the flow, or the sunshine, or the sweetness of rest.

It’s been showing me when to focus in, and when to let it all go. And it seems a disproportionate amount of it looks like surrender, especially when it comes to juggling three businesses and family connections and spiritual grounding. Surrender to what my heart really aches for, for what my mind really can’t focus on, to the idea of doing jack-shit all day, then staying up “too late” to get three solid, uninterrupted hours of work done.

And here are my frantic efforts to swim against the current: chastising myself for going to bed at 2am and waking up at 10, feeling guilty for too much time working, feeling guilty for too much time playing, stressing over the taxes due and tires that will need replacing soon, the needs of a daily changing son and the upcoming events on my calendar, and my deeper need to escape to the mountains with my nomadic mamas. Thoughts of rudeness as I just can’t find the time to catch up on emails, when I am instead writing in my journal at the beach. The old tapes that play out when I measure my own needs against the needs of others.

And all the while hearing The Ocean, as it allows me to fatigue myself, whispering to my spirit with the words,

“Release. Surrender. Let me take you deep and far beyond your comfort zone and show you what awaits out there. Lay back and let Me carry you. You are safe…but only if you let go.”

Filed Under: Organic Business, Organic Wisdom Tagged With: allowing, control, life, ocean, resistance, surrender, trust

Part Three: On the Experience of Shaving My Head and Being Free (Before, During and After Photos!)

December 28, 2011 By TheOrganicSister 82 Comments

I’ve sat here looking at a blank screen grasping at inadequate words to describe the shaving of my head for way too long.

Incredible? Weak.

Empowering? Still weak.

Enlightening? Closer.

Let me start by backing up a little to the beginning of my weekend. We’ll see where it goes from there.

Tiffani, my badass freeplaylife photographer, arrived in Orlando on Friday evening.

Now let me just say something about Tiffani.

She’s flipping amazing. Colorful. Playful. Daring. Vibrant. Envelope-pushing.

But she also has this deeply sensitive side that you only get to see in her photos or videos or in long conversations about Life.

So I knew she was the perfect person to help me commemorate this powerful step. Because she totally “got it”. ♥

We had an amazing weekend that I know I’ll be talking more about later.

But the photos!

Oh wow, the photos.

We started with the before photos (for obvious reasons) and let me just say, one amazing photographer can make you fall in love with yourself.

She captured so much more than either of us felt was possible to convey without being there.

Because, oh being there was amazing!

We laughed, drank wine, ate and talked, shared epiphanies and dreams and laughed some more. I love that woman so much. Yes, I’ll definitely be writing more about that soon.

But back to the experience…

Capturing the “Before”

I wanted to capture it. My dreads. What they meant. I wasn’t sure if it would be possible but if anyone could do it, I knew it would be Tiffani.

And she did.

And I love them, each and every one of the “Before” shots. They so perfectly capture the depth and love I’ve had for my dreads. They leave me breathless. Speechless. In awe and honor of my own spiritual path, of where I’ve been and Who I Am because of them.

I’ll let my favorites do the talking…

I looked at them on her camera between Day One of photos and Day Two. And I had an ache. I saw the beauty and the story Tiffani had caught for me. And for the span of one deep breath, I loved them so much I couldn’t fathom letting them go.

But then that breath passed and I felt my whole body, my whole spirit say “Trust”. Mmm, yes I can do trust.

The During and After Experience

As much as the before photos LOOK amazing, it was (and is) the during and after process of shaving off my dreads that FEEL amazing.

And that feeling of “amazing” was something that the camera couldn’t capture.

The way it FELT to have my husband there, the man who spent 14 loving hours putting my dreadlocks in, handing me the empowerment, the strength to take this next step – on my own this time.

The way it FELT to acknowledge my fear as it turned my hands cold and made my heart pound and asked me to pause, to breath, to give it a just a moment to be heard so that it could willingly let go.

The way it FELT to call forward the faces of the beautiful women, my many sisters, who had emailed or texted or messaged me their love, to feel them circling around me.

And then the way it FELT to remove my dreads, one-by-one, to feel the world shift beneath me, while also shifting me forward, the rushing in of exhilaration, and of an emotion I still do not have a name for.

I’ve said it so many times but it bears repeating again: It was as if my dreads had, over the last 43 months (to the day, I just realized), systematically entangled all the energy of my past, the fears and challenges and limitations and all those things that were not serving me.

And towards the end of my three and a half year journey with dreadlocks, it was “heavy” with the past and the stories that were ready to be let go.

And so, with all the yuck carefully secured in my dreads, I began to snip it all away.

The past that didn’t belong in my present, the heaviness…

The weight of the world fell off my shoulders.

One at a time. Landing on the ground. With only a few feet between us but feeling as though it was the length of the world now separating me from it.

Distant. Done.

Old and gone and unattached.

And then the way it FELT to see “the past” lying on the ground, to hold it in my hands, to feel as though it was ancient history, detached from me – something to honor and smile upon, but not something to ache for or regret or miss.

(To miss them would’ve felt awkward, like going backward, like losing wisdom, slipping into clothes that had once been comfortable but that I had outgrown. It would’ve felt silly trying to wear the things of my past, like a grown women trying on her favorite childhood shirt. It was and is and always will be beloved, but it’s not comfortable anymore.)

I felt LIGHT…not weight-light, but energy-light.

I text my mom an After photo and she said it perfectly in just a few words:

You look beautiful. And FREE!!!

Free.

Yes, that’s what this feeling is.

It’s the feeling of being free. Open. Unencumbered. Spiritually showered.

A lot of people (my dad included) don’t get it. How was I not free before?

But I AM FREE now. I recognize the difference, in the way only a previously and ignorantly unfree person could recognize. I’m suddenly free of the past. I’m free of the expectations I’ve accepted in my life (from myself and others). I’m free of the facade, the props I would use to convey Who I Am.

I’m free of the NEED to convey Who I Am.

I am free.

I never expected to feel as free and as feminine and as sexy in my own skin as I do right now with no hair. I’m walking on clouds, in love with my raw self. Feeling as though I’ve settled into Who I am, dropping into my own essence, JUST my essence. Nothing trailing along behind me.

Calm and simple and joyful authenticity.

I can’t stop rubbing my head or reveling in that menthol-cool feeling of the air across my scalp or the warmth of the sun or swimming in the pool, holding my breath beneath the water, feeling the sensations moving around me, no more worry about “getting my hair wet”, nothing taking me out of the moment, out of the experience it.

Present-moment awareness. How does having no hair offer me that?

I don’t know but there it is.

The whole experience. Commemorating my dreadlocks. Preparing to send them off with love. Those two minutes of fear, where my hands went cold and shaky and I wasn’t sure I had the courage to take my next step forward.

Then the instantaneous and immense feeling of YesYesYes! as I snipped the first dread and it fell to the ground, the feeling that propelled me forward like a mad-woman, feeling the heaviness lift from my spirit, feeling the open space begin to fill with excitement and LIGHTness as each knot of hair was shed.

The JOY and smiles and that sense that my whole body was laughing that suddenly came rushing in, not from my mouth or my face or my words (I was pretty much beyond words), but from my belly, from my core. Bubbling up and spilling out of my eyes, my pores, my fingertips, the top of my head.

The way I suddenly felt lit up, nothing getting in the way of SHINING. Radiating. Reveling.

To feel so deeply connected to Who I Am, to the people in my life, to Spirit and Life itself…

It has been one of the most deeply spiritual (yet insanely, hysterically, joyful and downright silly) experiences of my thirty years.

It’s sounds silly to many.

I even have to laugh at how silly it sounds to me.

It’s just hair after at all.

But it’s not about the hair.

It’s about the experience of my hair. MY experience.

It’s about what this small, seemingly meaningless experience (in the grand scheme of life) had to offer me.

And it’s about me accepting that offer.

It’s about being open to a grandiose, breathtaking and awe-inspiring overture in what looks inconsequential, impermanent, and trivial.

This is life.

Mundane. Simple. Momentary. The details small and ultimately insignificant. A blip on the screen of the Universe. A monotonously repetitive story throughout the span of the centuries.

But still never duplicated in the narrative. Consistently renewed in our emotions. And regularly, excruciatingly and inconceivably mind-blowing to participate in.

It’s all “just hair”. Until we embrace the experience of it. And then it’s the whole Universe bursting alive within the space of one fleeting moment.

Click here for all the photos from our shoot!

All of these amazing photos are from Tiffani Bearup.

Check out her full set on Flickr.

Tell her how much you love her work here on Facebook or in the comments below!

Want to read more about my process from dreadlocks to a shaved head?

All dreadlock posts from start to finish are here.

Part One: My announcement video of my decision to shave my dreads

Part Two: A more in-depth, emotional and raw video on my decision

Part Three: Putting The Process of Shaving Them into Words (and lots of photos)

Part Four: A GORGEOUS Video and words from other women who’ve done the same

And lastly: Burning My Dreadlocks: The Final Goodbye

Filed Under: Organic Wisdom, Things To Remember Tagged With: Dreadlocks, fear, hair, life, organic beauty, organic wisdom, photography, shaving my head, spirituality, trust

The Experience of Gratitude is Not a “Should”

November 23, 2011 By TheOrganicSister

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and so many of us are turning our hearts toward big, beautiful meals and the idea of gratitude.

Gratitude was my main guiding word this year. So naturally I have lots of thoughts during my very favorite holiday.

I’ve never loved Thanksgiving for the gratitude part. I loved it for the simplicity, for its ability to not add so many layers of complexity to what I am really wanting to experience: deep connection with those I love, deep enjoyment I find myself most capable of within a slower pace in life, and deep nourishment – physically and spiritually.

But something about the idea of gratitude tended to rub me the wrong way.

And I didn’t understand it until this year, as I dove into this word, allowing it to guide me, to show me, to open me to what I longed to understand.

And this is what I understand.

I resisted not the practice of gratitude, but this ever pervasive idea or sense of obligation, guilt and shame I felt around the word.

“I should be grateful.”

“You should be grateful.”

And my heart would hear those words and want to yell “No!”

And now I know why. Why I resisted what seems so true.

Because every time we feel as though we “should be” grateful, we negate the pain or hurt or struggle that we are experiencing in that moment, instead of gratitude.

We tell our tears to stop. We tell ourselves to suck it up. That others have it worse. And so who the hell are we to ache, to hurt, to need to cry, or to desire change when we have it so good.

“It could be worse, so we should be grateful.”

And in thinking that “it could be worse”, we ignore what is yearning for attention right now.

Because if someone else has it worse, we don’t deserve to have it better.

Oh, and there is a time for that!

A time to recognize our blessings, to give thanks.

And there is also a time to acknowledge our own pain, to heal our own wounds, to protect our own hearts and understand that under our ache, our pain, our frustration, our complaints…under the surface of what we’re experiencing is something within us that deserves love, that deserves attention, that deserves validation, that deserves to have its deepest needs met.

Not because we’re more deserving, not because anyone else is less.

But because we all deserve to have our needs met.

All of them.

Because that’s what that pain, that lack of gratitude is…it’s just a sign to meet a deeper, fundamental and universal need.

If there is one thing I’ve learned this year, it’s this:

I went into this year assuming that I would simply focus on the act of gratitude.

And I did. And it was good.

But it didn’t last.

Because those aches would resurface and ask with longing for the attention they needed.

And that’s when I understood that I cannot make gratitude.

I cannot make myself grateful.

Gratitude is already - and always – there.

I simply choose to experience it by first addressing all the aches, the longings, the unmet needs, the pain I am holding within my heart and that is standing between me and the experience of gratitude.

But when I simply lean into those aches for a moment, giving them the attention they are screaming for, encircling them with compassion, examining what they are and why, and bring Light and Love to them, they ease and vanish.

And as they do I experienced the rush of gratitude.

The gratitude that was always there.

Waiting for its turn.

But patiently, knowing that something else needed to come first.

And then gratitude had its turn.

And it enveloped me.

And I held it.

And it changed my experience of life.

And it only recedes when something bigger needs to be held for a moment.

Gratitude was - and is – the natural consequence of healing my spirit, of peeling back the layers of my painful beliefs and fears, of coming into awareness of Who I Am, and what I’m here to do.

Without those fears, there is nothing but gratitude left TO experience.

And when I experience that gratitude, it gives me the ability to not just “suck it up”, to not feel awash in my guilt or shame, but to come alive, to feel vibrant, and THEN and only then do I find myself capable of offering what I am experiencing within me to those who have the same or deeper needs.

There is no “should”…this just simply is.

When I validate and give love to my lack of gratitude, I experience gratitude naturally and then I can actually create the same in the lives of others.

And that is one equation I am so incredibly grateful for.

Filed Under: Celebrations, Organic Tools, Organic Wisdom Tagged With: choosing happiness, core beliefs, digging deep, fear, gratitude, life, thanksgiving

Born a Human Being, Not a Chair

November 2, 2011 By TheOrganicSister

I just want him to stay with me until I can be sure he won’t turn into Norman Nothing.

I want to be sure he’ll know when he’s chickening out on himself. I want him to get to know exactly the special thing he is or else he won’t notice it when it starts to go.

I want him to stay awake and know who the phonies are, I want him to know how to holler and put up an argument, I want a little guts to show before I can let him go.

I want to be sure he sees all the wild possibilities. I want him to know it’s worth all the trouble just to give the world a little goosing when you get the chance.

And I want him to know the subtle, sneaky, important reason why he was born a human being and not a chair.

- A Thousand Clowns, Murray trying to explain why he hasn’t put his nephew in school yet