Sanctuary for Rent

Our super cool house is available for rent to a super cool, very responsible single person/couple. Length of lease is negotiable but we're thinking November 1 through the end of May. No smokers, please. We might consider well-behaved pets but we prefer none. We're being quite selective because this truly is a special place; it's been described by many as a sanctuary. It's on a dead-end dirt road off of Methodist, sits on 2.5 very private acres, yet is only 5 minutes from downtown and 30 from Mt. Hood Meadows. It's a 1-bedroom/1.5 bath, with a guest bed in the 350 sq. ft. loft that has doubled as my home office. Tons of windows, tons of character. Two decks. Best neighbors on the planet. We can leave it completely or partially furnished for the right person.

$1000/month plus utilities and damage deposit.

Please contact me directly if you or someone you know may be interested. Thanks for looking.

Michelle
541/490-6333

Helplessly Helpful

Yet another dear friend is facing a health crisis (actually, her son is). Trials and tribulations abound in this life. I had my share of them last year with the unexpected deaths of my friend, Christina, and my brother, Paul. Surely, I'll face more again soon enough. I realized that the hold-your-breath moments facing people I care about are just as scary and meaningful as the ones I face directly.... often times even more.

How many times have you listened to a struggling friend and thought "I have no idea what to say right now. I feel completely useless."

It's uncomfortable. Yet most of us rush to say, "Please let me know if there's anything I can do." Usually, there is not. Yet we say it anyway because it makes our egoic mind feel as if we have done something. "At least I've offered help!"

I'd argue that this feeling of helplessness is a very good thing. (I suppose it must be since that's the way it is whether I like it or not.) Feeling helpless is an excellent indicator for me to question which aspect of my M/F polarity I'm leveraging and which is most appropriate to the situation.

Our need to do something, to say the right thing, to solve the problem stems from the masculine aspect of our ego. We feel helpless and uncomfortable when our desire to fix something is at odds with the reality of our inability to fix it. But, is there really anything we can do about someone else's struggle?

Despite my very best efforts, I've learned that I can't heal someone else's heart or body. I can't make them have that big realization or make them learn. Even well-meaning advice typically falls on deaf ears. I can't stop their addiction or their disillusionment. I can't take the sometimes painfully obvious steps for them that could very possibly change the situation. Whatever their challenge, it's truly theirs to face. In the end, everyone is on their own journey.

The kind of support or comfort I can offer is temporary and doesn't directly solve the problem (give a hug, watch their child, draw a bath, cook, listen). However, it does something much more valuable...it makes us feel connected. In times of trouble, it's what we need most (given that our problems aren't solvable by anyone else).

Now, when I feel helpless, it's my cue to switch from my masculine aspect of doer to my feminine aspect of feeler. I start by admitting, "I have no idea what to say or do in this moment. I feel helpless." When I've started this way, it's softened the situation for both of us just enough to open up a space for listening...and for connecting.

My biggest personal growth is borne consistently out of my biggest trials and tribulations. If someone else really could learn for me, take away my pain, would I grow the way I have? Absolutely not. Connection? I'll take that any time in any situation, whether it solves the problem or not. Bring it on!

Musings of a right-hand "man"

Recently, I spent a wonderful evening with a couple I admire tremendously. While I could go on about why they're each worthy of admiration, I'll short-hand it to say that they make a great team. They're both remarkable AND they work well together. Yet, only one of them can be in the limelight at once.

Over and over, in big and small ways, I see evidence of their implicit trust, respect, yielding, attention, intention, space, and creativity. Lots and lots of creativity. These people do not live inside the box. Thank goodness! Noticeably, their whole is greater than the sum of their parts. They feel good to be around and I'm not the only one who feels that way. They are a wave of good energy and getting caught up in that takes me up, not down. I can point to a few of these remarkable teams, but not enough of them. So what's up with the mojo??

They've got what I'm calling "Muse Mojo".

Muse

 /myuz/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [myooz]
–noun

1.

Classical Mythology. a. any of a number of sister goddesses, originally given as Aoede (song), Melete (meditation), and Mneme (memory), but latterly and more commonly as the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne who presided over various arts: Calliope (epic poetry), Clio (history), Erato (lyric poetry), Euterpe (music), Melpomene (tragedy), Polyhymnia (religious music), Terpsichore (dance), Thalia (comedy), and Urania (astronomy); identified by the Romans with the Camenae. b. any goddess presiding over a particular art.

2.	the goddess or the power regarded as inspiring a poet, artist, thinker, or the like.

As implied by these definitions, a muse is a feminine aspect of creativity but that doesn't always mean a female. It's a supporting role (feminine aspect) to someone else in the lead role (masculine aspect). Both are crucial and creative functions. When properly balanced, this makes a really great team capable of creating amazing things. A muse honors and inspires creativity--without ego. It's the creativity and creation that matters, not the creator. To fully accept a muse into your life means that your ego can handle inspiration from outside yourself. Bravo.

If you're fortunate enough to have someone in your life who consistently makes you go "hmmm", who inspires your creativity, who feeds your spirit in a way that enables you to be more well-informed, more visionary, to shine more brightly...

Express your gratitude directly. Honor them for all the ways--big and small--they enable you to leap to ideas and manifestations you might not otherwise reach.

Or, if you're that "right-hand 'man'" to someone else...

Honor yourself for the light-inspired ways you breathe life into originality, something greater than the sum of your own parts.

The modern-day muse. Start noticing where they exist. You might be surprised to find them everywhere. And I'd love to hear about it.

To thrive or to survive? THAT is the question.

"So, what do you do?"

This question infallibly gets tossed out in less than a minute of meeting someone new. And, of course, they're talking about what you do for a living. How you make money? What you do to exist in this world? My journey over the last 2 years has shifted my perspective on this question. Not surprisingly, it's moved from a masculine to a feminine viewpoint.

Over the last 10 years, I answered this question proudly. And proudly is the operative word here. My ego was more than happy to tell you about what I did, along with how busy I was, overwhelmed, etc. etc. I was a doer and enjoyed the conversation moving in the direction of what I did; my career was interesting so that must mean I was interesting. Right? Masculine aspects at play.

Then, one day I had a sickening realization. My identity was tied up in my career. I really didn't want that to be true, but there it was. Without exaggeration, I literally couldn't tell you (or myself) who I was outside of "what I did for a living." Even worse, I had complained pointlessly about the big egos in my line of work. When I realized that I didn't even know who I was outside of my career, I realized that my ego was no different from the ones I was bumping up against.

OUCH! That was a harsh look in the mirror. So I took action.

Today, "What do you do?" compels me to reframe my answer in the hopes that people will start reframing the question. Some may argue that's because my ego bristles at no longer having a phat career to point to. I've considered that, but have decided that to truly know me is to know what makes me thrive rather than what I do to survive. Ideally, they would be one and the same. In fact, they were for a long time.

And then it simply changed. Or I changed. It really didn't matter which; all that did matter was that my career became an energy drain instead of an energy gain. I felt my way through this one. Feminine aspects at play.

I've italicized a lot of do's and did's here. Doing is important when tasks need to be completed. We all need to get things done. But, by identifying with my accomplishments--in essence, what is outside of myself--I made solid what is meant to be continually changing. I'm talking about who I am. Who I am changes all the time, as it should if I'm to stay in creative flow.

Do > Be = Masculine > Feminine. Both are great tools. Pick the right one for the job (no pun intended).

So, the next time you meet someone new, consider asking them "So, how do you spend your time?" or "What makes you thrive?" or "What gives you energy?" If they end up telling you about their job because they love it, that's awesome. If they end up telling you about their job out of habit, you can ask them again. Maybe you'll open up a whole new conversation and possibly--just maybe--really get to know who they are in that moment. And maybe that look in the mirror will give them a better sense of who they are in that moment, too.

It all started with a Brazilian....

Since nothing is linear in the feminine realm, I'll simply start here. "Here" is November 2008 in Florianopolis, Brazil. On a whim, I had my hummingbird tattoo of 20 years covered up with this:



For years, I had considered getting my trusty hummingbird redrawn to fix the linear (snicker) wings and the earwig-looking tail (ick). Several artists told me it would end up looking like an eagle. Umm, no thanks. The hummingbird symbolized my free-spiritedness, uniqueness, love of animals, music (related to my 1969 Gibson Hummingbird guitar). This is what it originally looked like:


Now that I'm solidly rooted in these aspects, I thought about what I might like as a completely different cover-up tattoo. Nothing meaningful came through....until 9 days of torrential Brazilian rains drove me and my friend, Nan, into a random tattoo parlor. The artist, Marqueno, was adorable beyond description...except to say that his energy was completely alive. He didn't speak English and I didn't speak Portuguese. Whatever. I somehow communicated "yin yang" and "male/female". Not sure where that inspiration came from but that's all I gave him. After that meager description, he motioned that he was headed upstairs to draw something. Meanwhile, I flipped through books hoping to find something that might represent male/female. The very moment I came upon an integrated sun and moon, I thought "that's it!!", Marqueno walked down the stairs with the very drawing that made it onto my belly. I didn't edit a thing, which I find amazing (as did Nan for different reasons).

Without fully realizing it then, I launched myself into a new exploration of what it means to integrate the polarities of masculine and feminine energies within myself. This is a huge deal for me. I've spent the majority of my life thriving in a career by accessing my masculine qualities:

• goal-oriented and driven
• analytical and unemotional
• assertive

Of course, I wasn't aware at the time that I was "accessing" anything other than inherent motivation. Only in the last 2 years of my career did I feel like something different was going on. I started having the unsettling experience of feeling like I was speaking an entirely different language than my male peers. Responsible for strategy and visioning work for the founder of eBay, I had spent the last 10 years doing that mostly intuitively...no translation required. As the corporate dynamics changed, so did the work process as my peers favored data-centric and process-oriented models. While data and process are important, my spirit and creativity felt like they were shriveling.

So I decided to leave my career. If that sounds easy, it wasn't. The people I worked for were far more than just employers. I adored them, believed in them...and still do. But I was being called--cryptically--to something else and I had to trust in that. Or else suffer the consequence of feeling unsettled and unhappy. Umm, no thanks.

It's been 21 months since then and I've been blissfully pursuing music, expanding my culinary skills, practicing yoga, paying into my remarkable friendships, traveling, sleeping. Not stressing. Today, I know more about what process was really beginning...My feminine aspects were rising up. In fact, I now realize that at my core, I've always been feminine:

• nurturing
• sustained by connected relationships
• intuitive
• communicative

The masculine aspects that served me so well in my career were merely overdeveloped. They weren't my defining core, which is why they stopped sustaining me and started draining me.

With this new perspective, I embark on an exploration of what it means to be a woman, a girl, a feminine sprite, and what I'm meant to do with all that. Thanks for coming along for the ride as I wonder out loud....

What's a girl to do?