Daniela Ginta, Freelance Writer

Gratitude makes the journey better. Kindness, too.

Category: Self-improvement Page 26 of 29

Unconditional Acceptance? Is What You Make Of It

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On June 8, 2014

In Life Stories, Motherhood, Self-improvement

If clouds were hunks of cheese and you’d take the biggest one, grate it and spread the shredded bits all over the sky, you’d get a milky-white cupola cradling early morning light like one does in a white tent.

That’s the sky this morning. It smells of roses and the noises from far away are dimmed down to a light buzz.

The street I walk on has old fences, shy cats, and garlands of head-heavy roses, bowing to the morning light. I like it. Two blocks more then I switch streets.

This one has been touched by inner city life more than I care to accept. Graffiti is not artsy but offensive. Dirty. Is offensive sprouting from artsy instincts? Creativity is a beast of many shades but is this one?

Cigarette butts and a few empty beer bottles guard the outside of a restaurant that has an intriguing sign in the parking lot. ‘The most amazing show on Earth.’ What, where? Is it a live show? Why not say more. I’ll leave it to remaining a mystery for now.

My walk to the library is complete. I drop the books into the slot (already two days late,) then I head back. The streets are still empty.

It is early Saturday morning. The boys were still asleep when I left the house. I like that. It is like they are left sleeping in a cocoon; they know some early mornings are for running or some quick errand and they usually wait in bed, reading. I like that too.

Today they are just about waking up; warm faces and fuzzy hair, trying to remember yet another dream forgotten in between the place between asleep and awake, the repository of lost dreams.

Since the first sleep after they were born, I’ve loved to watch them sleep and then wake up. The fluttering of eyelids, the first glimpse into the world they’ve missed a bit of during sleep. The smile that follows, an offering of their most inner being. I take it all, I am greedy that way. I like those moments of full acceptance. Arms wide open, eyes lazily hugging my face, slow paced sweet human beings returning from a world of their own and stepping into mine.

The day unfolds. They’ll move from sweet beings to wild, loud, mischievous, unkind and they’ll challenge me to bits. Again. I know they will.

Acceptance will wane during the day and I will logically remind myself of it. It is a trap, I know it is, and it is everyday learning… to accept my boys not when they shine in all that they do, not just when they’re sweet and surrendering to hugs, but when they simply are.

If I don’t accept them whole, how will they ever accept themselves?

I learn to do it every day, sometimes I fail, and then I try again.

As parents, we are stopped frozen in our tracks by memories of conditional acceptance. So did our parents. It is a bad spell that needs to be broken, yet there are no instructions. How to then?

We become more every day, and our children do too, all sides showing. We yearn for acceptance, in all that we are. Gracious, ungracious, sparkling, dull. If we’re loved, all sides show. And we become better.

A giant yellow swallowtail butterfly flutters around the front yard, a dance I perceive both indecisive and fascinating. Latter is accurate, and I will never know about the first. Assumptions can be traps sometimes. Still, I’d like to stop the butterfly. Beauty is captivating in a most primal way. That part of us never grows up, never becomes bored with seeing.

‘Mom, a wasp is eating the pollen off the daisy I gave you!’

Oh, let it. Little boy is not convinced. In his world, wasps are enemies, reputable ones.

‘No, it’s yours. I’ll chase it away.’

Don’t, look at it… The daisy is mine as much as it is the wasp’s. Or less? Wait, it is not pollen. I see legs. Do you see them?

‘Eww! Now I should chase it away?’

No. Let’s not. Daisies come with pollen and tiny spiders and sometimes wasps that eat them. It’s all that could be, and it’s real. Chase the part we don’t like away and then what?

Can we do that all the time? Chase the unwanted, the ugly, the scary, the parts we don’t understand or accept?

Life is unkind, ungracious, ugly at times, but fascinating in how it expands minds and souls. Real is all we get, if we’re ready to accept it. Real is what we grow from. Selecting but the good parts will never give you the full measure of what life is…

Half the sky has cleared up and it is blue. We sit on the porch steps, holding the glass with the one daisy, with many tiny spiders, with a wasp, with a chunk of life explaining itself, no shortcuts.

‘Mom, can you please make some pancakes? It’s Saturday.’

It is indeed. We always have pancakes on Saturday.

 

The Gardens That Grow

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On June 6, 2014

In Life Stories, Motherhood, Self-improvement

Will it rain? Who knows. It’s all a guessing game, though if you were to ask my dad he’d tell you it’s not. You do know, he’d say. There are signs. Humbly, you know it’s true. There are signs, you have a way to go until you learn them that’s all…

You want the rain because there’s tomatoes and spinach and garden peas that beg for it. Water is water but rain is better water, they seem to say.

Rain brings weeds also, there’s more weeds every day and less time, and you wish for a magic touch that will take them all away and make the garden clean of unwanted green. Someone once said that weeds are good, they would not flourish in bad soil. Take heart, is what they meant…

TenderBringing up children and tender crops. The same. Weeds taking over in both worlds. Screams, stomping of small feet and sulking, fights among boys too wild to know the slow art of diplomacy, and they’ll tell you being diplomatic makes you a loser… ‘cuz they know, they’re in the thick of it. Could all of that go like dandelion fluff, all the weedy dragon-like behavior and you’ll see but smiling faces, mannered boys taking turns speaking and never ever talking with their mouths full or stealing from other’s plates, no talking back… Nope. Sigh? No sigh. Joy. Nothing goes away that comes from within. Acceptance, all the struggle that children put into becoming people. The relentless struggle of tiny seedlings pushing through gritty soil.

You pull weeds, and the air is pierced by the boys’ voices. Shrills, screams, laughter, then the loud dragons again… ‘No, no, no, I am not playing with you…’

Should you step up and see about it? You call their names… Silence.

‘We’re good!’

Magic? Perhaps. They are tough, you can see their heads past the weeds just like you can see the corn rising thin and green and brave, reaching high. There’s no going back now.

Weeds, glassy skies, rags of clouds hanging lose, the world seems lazier than a sloth in the leftover heat of late afternoon, but you don’t stop. You can’t. The earth is dry, feels sandy between your toes. Barefoot boys, skipping past pebbles, they don’t stop… They can’t. It’s the game.

It’s the rhythmicity of it that makes it all exist, grow, and become more. Day after day, small things becoming big deeds, small roots holding small bodies, there’s no going back now. Rhythmic. Every day. Enough to fill the spaces in your body where you felt fear so often. You will again, but fear moves up, like bubbles in a glass that’s always half-full. Fear for them, for the crops to grow. But fear withers like the weeds you pull out of the ground and throw to the side. Fear has small roots. It must…

‘Mom, can we go for a bike ride?’ Little boy rides fast, you run to catch up.

Boy, tag‘Tag me if you can…’

If you can. Ha! What cheekiness… Fast becomes faster. You chase him just to hear the giggle, almost touching his back, then you slow down so the mad dash won’t make boy and bike topple. And they do, but there’s no crying. Grimaces, a look of ‘it hurts’ that you want to go and make better, but there’s no need because… ‘Tag me again!’

Remember the day when big brother stopped crying when he fell. That day… he rubbed the knees, rubbed palms, no need for kiss to make it better. T-shirts wiped all that Band-Aids masked until then. ‘Will these scars stay, Mom? I hope they do…’

Signs of time. Scars are not to cover. Boys are afraid no more, now your fear can go away too.

‘Try to catch me on the way home!’

WildYou run, fast, but wait… there’s berries in the back lane, growing wild, kissed by sunsets and taken care of by invisible hands… time. You gotta remember to bring the boys to the back lane bounty in a couple of weeks. Bounty, growing wild. You know it’ll be sweet and flavourful, and it’ll be like that whether someone pulls the cluster of weeds surrounding its spiky feet or not. It’ll be sweet, whether it rains or not, or despite of it… You know everything grows stronger without perfection to choke it. Children too. Bounty.

You follow the boy and his wild head of hair, palms of sunset glowing light caressing every strand and making them into golden streams. You’re at peace, not worried of rains and weeds and magic touches that can make everything perfect.

Magic is when you let go of the fear that you have to have it perfect so they’ll turn right. Magic is when you finally understand that they’ll still need the hug to make it better, but not for scraped knees. For egos that grow too soon, for life so loud it makes your heart pound and for bruises that come with it.

HarvestDay’s over. You pick tender leaves of lettuce, green and red, herbs… The shimmering sunset light is about to plunge behind the horizon. Tomorrow’s roots.

 

 

 

Places Like That

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On June 1, 2014

In Environment, Life Stories, Self-improvement

CirclesThe lady you met in downtown Bella Coola said don’t drink the water by the petroglyphs unless you want to return, so I set out to not drink the water…

I didn’t. It was crystal clear and I didn’t.

I resisted the beauty of the emerald valley until the last day when we said goodbye. It was no longer worth resisting.
Countless cascades tumbled down every mountain like long white arms grabbing the very edges of my heart pulling it all in like one does a drawstring bag. Inside, all the joy I did not let out fully during our trip to Bella Coola.

I found reasons not to, you see… It’s too far, too isolated, too this or that. But that never works. Because…

It’s beautiful.

It’s peaceful.

It’s a world apart…

It’s a world that calls you to it and if you’re not careful you’ll answer its mermaid song.

…
GiftIt matters less that I didn’t drink the water. In a rainforest, the mist envelops you and you breathe it in. You don’t need to drink the water, you breathe it and then you realize its primal call is already tying your heart to that mossy path in the woods that you followed because you wanted to know where the place came from, how it all started and how people lived back then.

Simply, you find out… you listen and find out.

The old man sitting by the river, rubbing his hands in delight as the young fishermen tango with the fast moving river in their aluminum dinghies, tells of the simple life. It still is, yet many years after the white people came, many things have changed. As always, some for the better and some for the worse.

Back then it was dugout canoes that slipped as if on ice on the shiny surface of a river that misleads the ones who don’t know its powers.

Back then they were still as connected to the land as they are now.

Back then, the river was swollen with fish and the ocean too.

Back then there was a glacier on top of one of the guardian mountains. The old man points to where the glacier was. Gone now.

The next morning, the lady at the small gas station says the same. She came to homestead here 35 years ago, the glacier was shining blue like a droplet of sky, now sorely missing.

PeekingYou know you’ve heard this story before. Worlds disappearing, worlds we take for granted. You know it’s not fair. You know it’s a privilege that you could be here.
You know you’ll be back, though you did not drink the water. In fact you’ll return because of that.

 

 

portraitYou’ll return because you want to drink it. To know more, to understand more and to cherish more.

The journey will have been a humbling one. So much to learn, so much to understand about simplicity, beauty, new beginnings and resilience. About yourself.

If You Could Stop It, Would You?

By

On May 27, 2014

In Life Stories, Motherhood, Self-improvement

Monday morning came heavy and grey; a merciless headache and sore throat included.

Some chores had to be done, less so taking the boys to school. Pink eye on one, a bit of a cough on the other, the house felt like a camp where the blind learned to lead the blind. Everyone stayed home.

What then?

Two boys and a sea of Lego has but one big consequence. Creativity; with loads to spare. Breakfast anyone? Later, yes. Clink-clank, get started.

Head aching, I returned to bed for a nap. Close the door, soft covers wrapped around… Sleep.

Clink-clank. Pieces of Lego being fished out of the pile, not a good one, let it get buried by unearthing others. Clink clank, busy boys’ hands, eyes intently following the trajectory of fingers into the pile. Clink clank… Let’s be quiet, Mom is sleeping, says one boy to the other. Boys shushing, a cluster of whispers hanging by the door but not daring to come in.

Head stubbornly pounding, I wake up… I hear them whisper, playing… Memories of teeny boys snuggled against my body, smelling sweet and having their round arms all scrunched against their soft tummies, PJs all crumpled up, hiding behind their round knees… Nestled around like little birds, cozy and quiet… Please, there will be no growing up from now on.

PortraitWhy grow up, what’s there to do, what’s there to see?… You see a lot more when you’re stopping at every step to observe the world, you’re doing that now. So stay… Was the world richer then? It was, it is still…

Clink-clank… Asleep, awake, I should not miss a moment with them. When I wake up they’ll be older… Nothing stays the same. Lego people with short-lived bodies, crossing boundaries of time and becoming astronauts a minute or two after roping a plastic cow because they were cowboys…

Clink-clank, just two minutes ago… boys were small and words were as round as their fingers pointing to things they could not call by name because they did not know the words. Laughter…Shh, Mom is sleeping, let’s be quiet. Whispers flying around like soft butterflies, boys voices…

Memories of a new baby growing inside my womb, tiredness, joy. Big brother cuddled to read a book, eyes bright and ready, mornings starting too early, but time was ours, the big secret I found out about later…Big brown eyes, seas of love enveloping all my sleepiness and making it right. Can we read, mama? I read slow, he laughs, I read it again just to hear the chuckle, and then again… Laughter hides in the creases of my heart made especially for that. Little boy laughing and smelling sweet, asking for stories, more and more… Keep asking, make me remember I should never stop telling stories, because then you’ll laugh; when you laugh, you stay, time is ours…

TimeThe rushed river of life take laughter and round fingers pointing to worlds new and fantastic, days of unexpected joy, ‘just because’ hugs and kisses… the rushed river takes them all like small boats floating to islands of unchartered self, islands I did not know of until they appeared when little boys were born. Because they had to have places to live in. Tell me again how I was when I was born… They ask of the world only I have seen, the world of them joining mine.

I doze off, clink-clank… I wake up to a sweet burned smell that snaked its way into the bedroom and lands on my pillow. The boys, they must be hungry… Something’s cooking…

The sea of Lego is still in the living room, I step carefully over boats and forts and cowboys who lost their hats… the smell, what’s the smell? Little boy lifts bright hazelnut eyes from the sea of Lego. “I helped Tony make pancakes, for when you wake up…So you’ll feel better.”
Big brother chirps in … “They may be a bit salted… and a bit burned, we kinda guessed the recipe…” Big boy, wide-eyed and smiling, surprised at his own sudden growth into knowing how, explains some more with a hug. “To make you feel better…”

You don’t cry when that happens. You are not allowed. How could you not… You can, please know that you should. Because you see, the tears, hidden as they are, are but the big boulders that will stop the mad rush of the river, the boats will be pushed into green fields to become forget-me-nots… and you will never forget this, that and all that has been…

You want to keep them there… the clink-clanks of games past and present, the snuggles, the hugs, the surprises, the little hands creating wonders and not knowing the words to name them and inventing a whole new world of wonder just for you… The worries even, you know how to do it all as long as they are there, near… not letting go.

Don’t grow, stay. What then?

FlightThere’s much to see as they grow, much to learn and then there is the time when they’ll want to break free… They won’t go far without looking back. If you let them go, never clipping their wings, if you love them enough to never clip their wings, they’ll have wings strong enough to bring them back…

I will know it when it comes. Time will be the teacher of all. Life as it comes… Fluid, beautiful, clink-clank of boats that will keep on floating down a rushed river which you’ll never stop entirely but sometimes… Go on, dip your toes, live, grow; grateful for seeing it all, for salty pancakes and for the hugs that came with it. Better?

Pancakes were salted that Monday morning, a bit burned and the most amazing I’ve ever tasted. Like in fairy tales, taking a bite, just one, keeps the magic there, keeps you there and keeps them too… Stay, don’t grow yet. And when you will, will you be back every now and then?

Clink-clank… the Lego sea. It’s a sea we’ve learned to sail for now, square waves and all, they’ve never been rounder in my heart… We should be on it for a while. Clink-clank.

Again?

Come As You Are (Because Nothing Else Makes Sense)

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On May 15, 2014

In Life Stories, Self-improvement

YouThere’s nothing like a botched haircut when it comes to revealing how we insecure we feel about our appearance. Except that the haircut was not botched. I am no Edward Scissorhands but I’ve been the master of haircuts since my boys were born.

But boys grow and as they do, so do their worries. Their eyes open to a world that judges for no particular reason. ‘Am I done?’ has been replaced by ‘How does it look?’ and the verdict is never positive.

How could it be? We live in a time when pressure to be more and better than we are actually is an everyday reality.

We’re simply not good enough. If no one says it loud enough, we know they think it. They must, we think back. We assume and assumptions grow thick as trees.  Hollow trees that is.

We grow up being as curious about ourselves as we are scared of what curiosity may reveal. We are eager to create better versions but are disappointed with being just today’s version of yesterday. Not enough.

Should we be? Self-growth is real and necessary. Adjusting as we grow, taking cues from life, people and our inner guidance system, we become, we flourish and then we collapse. Not enough. Because in the end. no matter how much we aim to grow and how big the pressure, we cannot be more than ourselves, the person that once was unencumbered by fear of being judged. The person that dared to wear mismatched clothing, had the bangs hanging sideways and was never afraid to affirm who they were by talking dreams, everyday happenings and the miracle of seeing the world. Where did that go?

In time we learn to conform and we learn to fear changes because what if they’ll bring rejection of some kind or even a raised eyebrow? Or something we cannot see but we know it’s there and we’re fearing it, simply based on the assumption that it is there… Ridicule. A word that hides a monstrous concept; a word that follows the two words we dread the most, ‘not enough,’ like a hungry predator ready to pound on prey that’s hurt already.

Children, growing, grow apart from themselves, simply because of that, some more than others… Like getting far into a forest we do not know at all, we are walking paths that take us further away from ourselves than ever. We seek to find ourselves yet in the process of it we build the tracks of a creature we struggle to recreate from bits of ourselves…

Writing's on the wall Here’s the thing though: If you’re not brave enough to reveal yourself, who will you be? Can you keep up being someone else? Will we have time to know who we are though before we will cross the point of no return?

What are you afraid of in saying ‘This is who I am?…’ That someone will say ‘Not interested’? What would their contribution to your life have been and theirs to yours anyway if it was based not on real people but fictional ones?

What is it that you’re after? To understand the reason of being here, you’ll have to see who you are, truly so.

Where to from here?Do you think yourself beautiful? Don’t run to the mirror. Features of the soul are never traced by the same pencil as the one tracing the contour of your face.

You see, I don’t know your face, the way your hair looks, or if you have any. Maybe your ears are floppy and too big, or maybe they are too small. There must be at least one part of you that you think fine and would not swap for a better one… Yet for the ones you don’t like… If you could, would you trade them for better ones? But then what will you get? Anything would be better you say?

It never is. Better applies to becoming, to growing. Better grows out of accepting the reality of today. Better can only grow from real and because we want to. Never because we’re pressured to.

Mirrors of inside and outside reflecting into each other…Which is the one you will choose to represent you first of all? If you will reject the image any of the mirrors reflects, you’ll reject both. And if you do, who will come to accept you, mirrors and all?

If you’d have a choice to be your friend, would you? Make it so. Let yourself be seen in who you are. You’ll be that much better simply because you allow for that.

You are more than your hair, or eyes or the contour of the face. There’s a whole lot of you behind every feature everyone sees.

Come as you are. Nothing else will ever make sense or keep your step balanced. That’s who you’ll carry through life, yourself. You. As you are.

 

 

How We Love, We Live And Grow

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On May 13, 2014

In Life Stories, Self-improvement

FacetsThere are different kinds of love. As you go through life you get to taste many of them. There is no how to manual on any and as for the one that can run deep enough to change your life, you’ll know it by seeing it not with your eyes but with your heart.

You’re ready to love when you’re willing to know more. Of life, of the temporary state of being, of yourself, of being weak and strong, of being right and wrong, and knowing that being right or else has nothing to do with being. You learn, you grow some more; again. And grateful.

 

OneSome people love in ways that make them reinvent themselves or forget themselves.

Some love in ways that make them want to know themselves because someone shows them they’re worthy. Someone showed them the path to themselves, and they’ll never be lost again.

That is the kind of love that will help you find yourself and blossoming as you do so.

That love that won’t let you live a second more unless you drink its cup to the last drop. And the last drop will never come because there is no end to it.

You’ll know it when you feel it. If you’re lucky.

The certainty will be astounding and humbling. Like a thunderstorm opening the skies and letting out the light like a bunch of wild horses pounding down from the clouds right into your heart, and then stopping there to let you enjoy their wild beauty. They’ve come home.

You’ll fear they’ll leave until you see them feed on the grass and drinking the brooks that you once thought were dry and the land underneath cracked and tired. You’ll fear until one day you won’t anymore. You’ll know they’re there to stay.

Forever becomes permanence and it humbles you. Do you deserve it? Don’t ask that. If you ask of yourself, you’ll ask of others and that makes many dreams crumble before they take off flying. Fear kills dreams.

To seeThere are many kinds of love. You’ll never know when and how, you’re never ready and the game has no rules other than a necessity for open-heartedness. It’s not a word, you say? That’s just it. You’ll have to invent many as you go. You’ll have to write stories of losing and finding yourself, stories of daring to believe, courage to let yourself be shaken, courage to fly high when flying low is all you thought you could handle.

Most of all, stories of being vulnerable. Of learning how to. Of learning to never pretend you can smile when a smile burns the inside of your body.

Stories of being true.

If you are ready to be true, you will find the rest. It’ll come. Just open your heart.

Many, every one different, all the sameMost importantly, never judge any kind of love that comes your way. Be grateful. You’ll grow in kindness and patience and strength. You’ll feel alive. It matters.

 

Joy In Routines? Here’s Why

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On April 29, 2014

In Life Stories, Motherhood, Self-improvement

Soon to beThe morning had no particularities unless you count the half-an-inch added to the tiny marigold plants in the front yard.

Write, get the boys up, get their lunches ready, take them to school. Come back, coffee time on the porch, back to writing.

Routines fragment the day into segments that make it feel familiar and also grow on top of each other as you approach the end of the day, giving you a full measure of where your time went.

If you’re not in a good place, soul uneasy with the action of being, routines are like heavy metal pins nailing you to a ground you do not want to be walking on.

But if you’re in a good place, where you soul resides without frowning, then routines have a magic message written all over them: Life is unshaken. Life where you are is not uprooted by any groundbreaking events. Routines mean you’re safe.

Routines change with time. Growing children, people coming in and out of your life, routines evolve, get dusty, fall to pieces and then they grow into new ones,

But their mere existence is the sign you want, the sun that guides your life with no eclipse shadowing its face. It’s a temporality we’re guilty of misplacing though.

A friend wrote today about his critically ill father. It has come down, and suddenly so, to making the best of the time they still have together. Life is fragile, he wrote. It is, I echoed. It always is.

I let it sink in.

Life as we know it could change at any time. It is not pessimism to think so. Nor is it an invitation to live in fear.

Live. With all that you have. Laugh with your loved ones, share time with them, with friends, with people who mean something to you.

Never wait. Never make concessions on waiting. You’ll always get the short end of the stick. Time, even shorter than it is, because you used it to chew your own misery, your relentless negative thoughts, your fear to connect, to live, to live fully with the awareness that you’re opening a gift with every breath you take. You are.

Still there...Life is fragile… Fluid. There is no going back.

To live without regrets is not to live mindlessly but to take each morsel of life and taste it. Mindfully present in everything you do and say, in how you share yourself with those you love and love you. Fully. No regrets, never holding back.

I thought of my friend’s dad all day. He will be on my mind for many days. Thoughts, prayers, wishes for being at peace.

Will you, when you’re sitting near that gap that divides our world as we know it from the one we don’t know? If someone will be holding your hand, will they be at peace? Or will there be pockets of unsaid restlessness, life unlived, life gifts you never got to open because you thought you shouldn’t, or you didn’t want to? You saved for later…

Later…Will it come? Would you build a home leaving holes in the walls that are supposed to keep you warm and protected… Would you add those bricks later because now you’re apprehensive, forgetful, mindless, cheeky (yes, we are,) overconfident that later is tomorrow and if not we’ll make it so.

Can you? Can I?

The solid ground I walk on today are routines. Walk back from school, chat, debate, listen, encourage, smile, hug, listen some more because things have to be said again and again, for safety and comfort. Kids’ words pearled up in colliers of worry, and you polish them to a nice safe shine. Every day, the routine of love and providing peace of mind.

Make food, eat, shoo away silliness when it’s teeth brushing time, hugs, say the soft words that you say every night, again and again, pearls of comfort and warmth.

Nighttime drapes, send the photo newsletter, remember where the photo was taken, right near that warning the boys find funny… ‘Uneven terrain, watch your step.’ They snicker, every time… Who would trip on that?

Both worldsSome would, I tell them. Some don’t need to be told, some will trip as they read the very words… Warnings we never heed. We know better when we don’t. But then we don’t know much anymore when we’re stopped mid-flight, plunging suddenly and not knowing how deep in.

We will rely on the senses we forgot to use a while ago, we’ll have them revived and sharpened by pain, surprise; we’ll be understanding the meaning of it all. Time. When we had it.

We still do. What now?

Tomorrow, routines again. It’ll mean nothing has changed. I am safe. Aware. Mindful.

You?

 

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