Making Time Together :: Yoga in the Woods

May 7, 2012 By TheOrganicSister 8 Comments

I shared on the Organic Tribe last month how April sort of felt like a kick to the teeth.

We had mishap after mishap and mine and Justin’s main relationship trigger is stress.

Not just stress, but a string of stress that really throws us off and disconnects us. We were good for the first round. The second, third and fourth rounds is when we fell apart.

We’ve found that when we can come together we can weather damn near anything.

But in April we let 9863653886 give us the lame excuse to not make time to come together.

We really noticed this by the end of the month. Yeah, things were stressful with tires going flat and slide breaking and the dog getting fleas and on and on.

But it was made harder by our distance from one another.

It’s too easy to allow Life become an excuse. It feels hard to not fall into that trap. But it becomes simple when you just don’t allow it too.

So we came back together. And we’ve been working on more mindfully staying that way.

Case in point: Yoga in the woods.

Early yesterday morning as I was sitting in the lake I just felt compelled. There’s a perfect deck at the RV campground we’re currently in and the weather was wonderful. (We’re in South Carolina currently.)

I came back prepared to need to jump up and down on the bed to wake him, but he was already awake and reading. I just had to ask and he was ready to go.

This morning we did it again. Although this time he convinced me to try his YogaX (from the P90X program). Yeah, that’s really not a more-than-once-a-week practice for me.

But we have some other videos and audios and plans to continue as often as we can roll ourselves out of bed before 9am.

And who wouldn’t want to get up early to watch your husband do this:

The man is an animal!

What do you do to come together?

Filed Under: Life on the Road, Organic Health, People I Love Tagged With: Justin, marriage, partnership, yoga

When Our Partners Are On Different Pages (Or Different Books)

March 31, 2012 By TheOrganicSister

Photo Source

I love my husband more than I thought possible. We have a damn good relationship. And it shows. So people often assume we work together effortlessly. That we’re not near opposites on so many topics. That we don’t have to work to find ourselves on the same page – or even the same book – when it comes to things like parenting or food or life in general.

But work, we do. Or sometimes don’t.

Sometimes we slip into our own ego and refuse to budge. Sometimes we know the exact relationship tool that’s practically screaming to be used in the back of our mind and we tell it to “eff off”. We are a funny creature like that, aren’t we? Resisting the very thing we want.

Those are the days (weeks) that we can’t connect, that we can’t find agreement…that we feel 12 miles apart screaming through the wind in two different languages (what the crap is he talking about?!).

I end just wanting to be heard. Feeling resentful. We end up having a fight…or worse, shutting down to one another.

And our son feels the difference, even when we think we shelter him from it. He knows when we’re in love and when we’re acting out of fear. He thrives in the former.

Thankfully Justin and I always find our way back around to each other.

We reach through the discord, we calm our fears, and we lean into the trust we sometimes refuse. We take deep breaths and we come back around the Wisdom speak(scream)ing in the backs of our minds for our attention. And we find what we always find – that these principles, these tools work…when we allow them to.

Ah, allowing. Surrender. Trust.

Nothing we try works when those foundations are shadowed over. I can say all the right things, use all the right tools, but without Trust firmly in place I might as well sound like the adults in Charlie Brown’s world from all the good it does. (Wah wah wah.)

So Yes…It Starts With Trust

If you’re ready to lean into that, you’re halfway there. (And it took me a looooong time to get to that place. Lots of healing and lots of experience understanding he’s not the person I fear he’ll be.)

It starts with trust (well, really wasn’t doesn’t?) and moves from there.

If you’ve got trust in place (or maybe you’re even still working on it) and you want to join us in moving from from it, I’ve got just the tribes for you….and I’d love to see you – and your partner – there.

THE DEETS ::

Below are the details to one free and two upgraded events.

Facebook Circle with Relationship Coach Jeffrey Platts
This Monday, April 2 at 8pm Eastern

We’re going to gather on Facebook on the page’s new chat room (this will be the first time I’ve tested it out with a big group, so let’s all gather our energy around the fact that it WILL be working – if not we’ll chat on the timeline instead).

Jeffrey Platts will be joining us as well! Jeffrey helps men and women connect more deeply and authentically in their relationships and is the perfect guest for this topic.

Facebook Circles are open to anyone. No cost, no commitment. Grab a cup’o something, and let’s circle around this topic, creating connection between us and deepening our own understanding.

Click here to join the page now, then set your reminder for Monday’s chat!

The Organic Tribe – 2 Sessions
Thursday, April 12 and Monday, April 30

In the Organic Tribe this month we’re going to delve deeper into this topic with the coaching, tools and tribes that can help you breakthrough your resistance, your walls, your disharmony to co-create with your partner more connection and synergy and allow you to meet one another with the only things that will help your relationship to thrive – love and trust.

The Organic Tribe will meet over the phone, but don’t worry if you can’t make the time. You’ll receive the call recording of each session to your inbox. You’ll also receive access to the Organic Sisterhood, as well as the opportunity to win 1 of 2 complimentary coaching sessions with me. You can then stay with the Tribe each month or cancel whenever you wish.

AND I’ve lowered the price of the Tribe, making it more accessible to everyone!

Click here to read more about the Organic Tribe and join now.

I hope to see you at each of these, to hear your words, to share in our collective wisdom, and to help you find what you need to reconnect.

Filed Under: Organic Tribes Tagged With: facebook circles, marriage, Organic Tribe, partnership, relationships

Ebb and Flow and Love Notes

March 17, 2012 By TheOrganicSister

My hubby and I.

Who knew you could still love someone so much after nearly 12 years? (I didn’t.)

It’s not always pretty love notes around here. In fact, about a month ago we went through several weeks just. Not. Connecting. We couldn’t reach each other. We were overscheduled and underenergized and it sucked.

But life ebbs and flows like that, and we’re learning to flow with it. (And making time for lovin’ doesn’t hurt either.)

This week brought a flow of hidden love notes to brighten me day.

Hidden in my laptop….

In the bathroom….

Wrapped around my toothbrush….

Stuffed in my makeup bag….

He’s a keeper this one. ♥ ♥ ♥

Filed Under: People I Love Tagged With: Justin, love, marriage

Why You SHOULD Focus On Being Perfect (And It’s Not What You Think)

July 18, 2011 By TheOrganicSister

Ah, perfect. That word is a hot one. Especially for us women.

Most of us strive so hard to be perfect: the perfect mother, perfect partner, the perfect person with a perfect purpose. We try to create the perfect home and the perfect world with perfect hair and perfect kids.

And then we hear the messages that perfection is a myth, that it can’t be obtained and that striving for it is a maddening and pointless attempt to be something we’ll never be.

After all no one is perfect, right?

This is where I get all Big and Philosophical on you…

Both are wrong.

Zoom out with me – way out – and take in the Big Picture of your life, your journey of self-discovery and growth, your contribution to and purpose in the world.

The entire purpose of your life is to learn, to grow, to experience this human experience and make sense of it the best way you can.

You don’t need to strive for perfection and you don’t need to give up the idea of perfection…Because you are already perfect.

Where you are is already perfect. What you are experiencing, doing and thus learning is absolutely perfect.

You are the perfect mother for your children. You are the perfect person for your purpose. Everything you’re doing and experiencing is perfect.

Stay with me here.

It’s perfect that you make mistakes. It’s perfect that you beat yourself up for them. It’s perfect when you don’t do either.

It’s absolutely perfect when you wake up one day to realize something totally new and life-changing and it’s perfect when nothing ever seems to change.

It’s all perfect because it’s all purposeful, because when we zoom way out the little details that we stress over and complain about and push against blur together, and we see the process, the journey, the contrast that teaches us, the resistance that strengthens us, the meaning at the end of the story, the light at the end of the tunnel and the Magic that brought it all together, that connected the cosmic dots and created something amazing.

If our purpose in life is to learn, and if we learn best through our experiences, then yes, it’s all actually perfect.

And only by acknowledging that it’s perfect can we embrace it, learn from it and expand because of it.

Your mistakes have value. Your journey is oh-so-valuable.

But you won’t get that, you won’t experience that value, until you accept it as perfect, as exactly as it gets to be.

Yes, this applies to everyone – you and your kids, your partner and THAT one frustrating person you would rather not talk about. No matter what you all are doing or experiencing in your lives, you are all in the same perfect place.

Acknowledging that you are exactly where you need to be, and that everything you are experiencing or doing is perfect is not license to be an asshole, hit your children or just quit trying, anymore than the lack of a posted warning is license to shoplift.

On the contrary, and perhaps paradoxically, embracing the seemingly imperfect as perfect will take off that heavy weight of Not-Good-Enough, Less-Than, Doomed-To-Mess-Up, and leave you only with desire to move forward into seeking more….more Love, more connection, more experiences, more compassion, more beauty, more peace, more learning.

You cannot create your Life from a place of imperfection, unworthiness, brokenness, less-than. You can’t. Whatever you see this moment as being, you will notice and create more of the same.

But when you can connect to the fact that this moment is perfect – that it is here for you to experience and learn from, that’s it’s all opportunity, all of value – you can connect to the fact that you can create something more, better, and beautiful from it.

Only by stopping the fight against what is can we give ourselves the clarity and power to create what can be.

Look for it: What about that one frustrating thing is actually perfect?

“There is only one world, the world pressing against you at this minute. There is only one minute in which you are alive, this minute here and now. The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable miracle.” – Storm Jameson

Filed Under: Organic Learning, Organic Parenting, Organic Wisdom, Things To Remember Tagged With: acceptance, choosing happiness, marriage, perfect, personal growth, relationships, spirituality

Making Love Last

August 27, 2010 By TheOrganicSister

A reminder to focus on my love.

You know sometimes I’m amazed Justin and I not only made it this far, and are still so in love with each other. We had both come from divorced parents and I especially didn’t have very many healthy relationship models. Neither one of us really knew what love was or what marriage took to succeed. But we did know we didn’t want to put our child(ren) through the pain we experienced as children.

A few of our single friends have asked us in the past how we did it: how we found “the right one”, how we made things work and how in the world we stayed so passionate for each other. I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the past few weeks, trying to understand our own romantic journey and discovery, or self-discovery really, trying to find our own “keys to marital success”.

The journey is different for everyone, I’m sure, but here are the things that made the difference for us:

Letting go of our type: I was The Bagel Girl and Justin was a construction runner at the time; we both had daily stops at a tool warehouse in town. He spotted me and worked on intuition. My first impression of Justin was “not my type” (based on my type until that point, I can now see that was a good sign), and although he didn’t say so, I wasn’t exactly his either. Justin was accustomed to thoughtless, high school girls; I was accustomed to assholes. So when I started talking philosophy and theology on our first date, he knew I wasn’t the standard cookie-cutter girl. Likewise when I watched him turn his truck’s system down (yeah, he was one of those guys with extremely large and loud speaker systems in his truck) upon entering a residential area, I was literally shocked. Neither of us would have been able to get to that point of noticing these new and interesting qualities had we not stepped outside what we thought we knew about “the perfect date”.
Letting go of the fairy tale: A very well-meaning woman had once told me, as I was sobbing over a broken heart, that “if it was meant to be it wouldn’t be so hard”. I loved her to death but something about those words didn’t sit right with me. For all of our lives, we’re read fairy tales and “happily ever after” stories. But love doesn’t always come in and sweep us off our feet, carrying us away to Perfect Marriage Land – especially when you’re entering into the relationship with so much baggage. Justin and I went into our relationship knowing that we were in love and that we would have a lot of work to do to figure out how exactly we should put that into action. The first two years of our relationship and several periods throughout were fucking hard. There were moments no one thought we would (or should) make it through. But because we accepted in advance that it wouldn’t always come easily, we didn’t let the worst of times tear us apart. We kept pushing through it, focusing on what we wanted with each other and building our partnership skills along the way. I can’t imagine where we’d be if we had given up.
Remembering it’s not 50/50. This one came from my Grandma (who has been happily married since 1954) and is probably the greatest key to our success. I had asked her several months before our wedding what her best advice would be and she was quite adamant that a good relationship is never 50/50. It’s closer to 80/20…you just have to be willing to give more than you take. This one challenged me at the time, but she insisted that marriage needs to move from a place of generosity. She explained what I now know to be true in regards to marriage or parenting: unconditional love and endless generosity do not create selfish people who walk over you; it creates an environment of kindness and compassion. It fills people up until they have no choice but to pour it back into those around them.
Never letting myself go. This one also came from my grandma as well and seriously rubbed up against my feminist mind. After all, shouldn’t Justin love me regardless of whether I wear makeup or gain weight? The answer is yes. But letting yourself go has more to do with Who You Are than what you look like. Justin fell in love with me because I was determined, strong-willed and cared deeply about myself; physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. If I “let myself go” – stopped learning and fighting for what I believe in, sat on the couch eating junk food in my pajamas watching trash TV, stopped being the best person I could be…if I let go of my role in our partnership and did a 180 on my personality, he was obviously going to feel differently. He fell in love with me for Who I Am, for my best qualities and for my desire to impress him with those qualities as I did when we first dated. And he’ll miss that person if she leaves just because “we’re married now.”
Filling each other’s voids. I used to feel resentful anytime I felt I was “mothering” Justin. Likewise I felt uncomfortable admitting that I needed him to care for me the same way. But recently we’ve come to see the amazing healing power and stronger connection that can be had when we symbolically “parent” each other. I believe we marry the person who can love us the way we’ve never been loved and our gift of understanding, kindness and generosity has the power to fill voids we’ve been aching to fill. Together we can right the wrongs of one another’s pasts, giving each other what we may not have had enough of and sheltering one another just as a loving parent unconditionally and automatically shelters their child.

There are a myriad of other things I feel contributed to our success: being open and honest but knowing when honesty would be more hurtful than helpful, understanding our first role is as Zeb’s parents but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to neglect our needs as lovers, being silly together and that sometimes we need reminders of it all.

I’m glad to have written these things out; I love when messages like these come through me, as well as to me. The past few weeks have given us new challenges as we navigate this life and our unjobbing experiences and it’s good to be reminded of these principles of mindfully choosing unconditional love, generosity and compassion.