Adopting the Positive

Tags

adoptee, adoption, Authenticity, awareness, Creativity, Journey, Meditation, Positivity

We know what we are, but know not what we may be. -Shakespeare
I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always

Simply taking a walk around the neighborhood can open the door to gratitude

reach my destination. -Jimmy Dean

Welcome, dear readers, to my blog. If you’ve been following me, you know that I was adopted and that I write about what it’s like to see the world through adoption-colored glasses. I’ve moved beyond feeling that being adopted is a curse, toward the realization that it is a blessing, Still, I’m always striving for new ways to re-calibrate my emotions. Recently, I completed an online meditation course. The theme: “Getting Unstuck~Creating a Limitless Life.” It lasted the better part of the month, and began with lead-in talks introduced by the supreme Oprah Winfrey and led by the amazing Deepak Chopra.

Each one of the 21 days focused on a new intention. The following ten were the ones I embraced…

“I am fulfilled when I can be who I want to be
I am never stuck when I live in the present
I embrace the newness of this day
I am in charge of my brain, not the other way around
Today I am creating a better version of myself
I am aware of being cared for and supported
My awareness opens the door to new possibilities.
My life is dynamic because I welcome change.
I deserve a life without limitations.
Every day unfolds the next step in my journey.”

Meditation is a powerful tool for keeping positive. My take-away from the online sessions is the realization that we can expand our horizons and that there are powerful tools for doing that. I am dedicating the rest of August to meditating. The process is threefold: Sitting quietly and comfortably; Holding the intention (mantra) of the day fully in mind (doing this for 20 minutes); Journaling afterwards about the meditation experience.
My gratitude to Deepak Chopra and Oprah Winfrey for making online sessions available. Thanks to them, I’ve made meditation part of my ongoing campaign to adopt the positive. You’re invited to join me. Shape your own intentions. Write them down and focus on one a day for the rest of this month. Please comment…and let us know the results!

The Goodbye Baby-Adoptee Diaries- gives an insider view of growing up adopted.

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Goofy gets the Boot

Tags

Adoption recovery, Creativity, De-cluttering, Diaries, Liberation, memoir, Purge, Simplify, Streamlining, Stuff

“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden and Other Writings

A year ago, I decided to get serious about re-purposing my old friend Mickey Mouse. I sold Mickey, Minnie and a host of other stuffed toys.  Because they were smaller, I kept Bugs Bunny and Goofy. Now even they have to go… I’m  once again de-cluttering.

Staging yet another garage sale is the only way I can escape the “too much stuff” syndrome. All of May, I’ve been walking around my house, collecting things with which I must part, labeling, pricing, and stacking said stuff in a spare room.
This personal de-acquisitioning campaign started with the publication of my adoption memoir The Goodbye Baby-A Diary about Adoption. It was so liberating to review four decades of past emotional “baggage” and then burning the diaries themselves, I realized that my too-much-stuff problem could be tackled. The late diaries went up in smoke, and that gave me courage. It was OK to get rid of something that had once been precious. In publishing my “diary book,” I’d saved the essence of those journals, which was all I needed: First the diaries, then the house and everything in it. There was no turning back.
My house is too big and yet not big enough. I have, from time to time, had grown children temporarily moving back home. Finally I gave up on having a guest room and declared that part of my home as the re-launching pad. Gone were my extra cabinets and shelves, dressers, bookshelves and desk drawers. I knuckled under and gradually removed my stuff from “their” space.
Do I get my precious storage space back? I wish! The adult child moves on but the stuff remains. This situation has forced me to take a serious look at all my now “extra” ousted-from-the-guest-room belongings. Turns out that a few friends, for various reasons, are  also being overwhelmed by possessions.  As a last resort, we’ve scheduled yet another garage sale.
This weekend my friends and I will be selling our excesses. Whatever doesn’t sell, we will give to charity. Our motto: This tyranny of things is exhausting and we’re not going to take it anymore.
Must sign off now, as the kitchen and dining room tables are loaded up with items that must be priced and relegated to the garage sale mountain.
*Use it or LOSE it.
*LESS is MORE.
*Empty is BEAUTIFUL

Join Elaine every Monday for reflections about life after Adoption Recovery.

Lazy Summertime…

Tags

adopting a new attitude, Community, Creativity, Gardening, Lost Dog, Peace, serenity, Solitude, writing

“Seek peace and pursue it.” – St. Benedict

As the Summer Solstice draws near, I’m looking for fresh creativity and new ideas.

This scarecrow works 24/7-so we gardeners can do what we love

Once I week, I drive to Frenchy’s Field, the nearby community garden where four other women and I planted and now tend four plots. This morning, while watering the rows of spinach, tomato plants, cabbage and cucumbers, I admitted to myself that Arundati, the sequel to Beast of Bengal, isn’t writing itself. It cries out for more of my time. I also vowed to accelerate the revision of Santa Fe on Foot-Adventures in the City Different.

That said, beginning in late June, I’ll be  posting every other Monday. In the fall, I will most likely go back to weekly posts.

Like most writers I know, however, I’m always writing. People at Frenchy’s Field tend to be congenial. There’s a hospitable air, and so even as I gardened, I harvested material for future plots or subplots.

The city watering hours are only from six to ten a.m. and four to eight p.m. When I approached the garden around nine, someone was already there, gently hosing the plots that she had adopted. She handed over the hose so I could water my territory, and we chatted. It turned out that she also was a writer. We talked briefly about our published books. She had a long bike ride ahead and I had four plots to water before the ten a.m. deadline, but it was likely, we agreed, that the garden would bring us together again.

Another encounter happened as I was locking the padlocked gate to go home. A tall man wearing a bereft expression was calling for “Roy,” the dog he’d lost just a few hours earlier. Having recently lost my adopted orange kitty Thomas Cromwell, I related to Roy’s owner, and I wanted to help.

“He was last seen right around here,” the man explained, giving me a full description of his pet, as well as a telephone number and e-mail address. I assured him that I’d pass along the description of Roy – brown, labrador mix, shy and gentle – to people I met in Frenchy’s park. It turned out that before I got to my car, I’d alerted several dog-walking people to look for Roy.

Gardening seems to go quite well with writing. It provides a quiet, thoughtful time. It can also yield rewarding interactions with total strangers. Like seeds sprouting under the earth’s surface, ideas grow and break through. I went home and wrote for the rest of the morning.

Goodbye, Mickey Mouse

Tags

Creativity, Decluttering, Diaries, Liberation, memoir, Purge, Simplifying, Streamlining, Stuff

Things are in the saddle and ride mankind, said Ralph Waldo Emerson…

Stacked up for the Garage Sale of the Century

*Use it or LOSE it.
*LESS is MORE.
*Empty is BEAUTIFUL.

I have decided to get serious about re-purposing my old friend Mickey Mouse. I’m also getting rid of Minnie and a host of other stuffed toys. You guessed it, I’m de-cluttering.

A good friend was having trouble selling the family home. She’d already bought a small, perfect condo and needed to make the old, now-too-big house more attractive. She had multiple garage sales, sold and gave away more than half of what she owned. The family home started looking more beautiful. In a few weeks, furnished only sparsely, it sold.

After 38 years spent living in the same home, I started been buying books about simplifying. I’ve purchased containers for organizing and drawn up schedules for downsizing. I’m perpetually “gearing up” to purge, but instead of ridding myself of disorderly possessions, I spend too many hours keeping track of them.

Truth be told, all the organizational tools undermined me. Purchasing wondrous bins, cute cubes, file cases and photo boxes ended up creating – guess what! – more clutter. But this tyranny of things is exhausting and I’m not going to take it anymore.

Writing my adoption memoir The Goodbye Baby-A Diary about Adoption gave me the reality check I needed. It was so liberating to review four decades of past emotional “baggage” and then burning the diaries themselves, I realized that my too-much-stuff problem could also be tackled. The late diaries went up in smoke, and that gave me courage. It was OK to get rid of something that had once been precious. In publishing my “diary book,” I’d saved the essence of those journals, which was all I needed: First the diaries, then the house and everything in it. There was no turning back.

I’m not selling my house,  but I was so inspired by my friend’s example, I vowed to halt this unhealthy servitude to stuff. Point one: the home office. I’m sad to report that after eight hours of dredging, I have yet to reach bottom. Only myself to blame, however. A serious office supply addiction ended up burdening me with envelopes enough to run a third world country for a year, pens and pencils that filled five shoe boxes, reams of white paper, hundreds of partially-used spiral notebooks, and three-ringed binders enough for a every grade of a school in Nepal.

Nothing to do but soldier on! I now look at STUFF as an enemy that smothers me, crowds me, muffles my creativity and keeps me from writing. I’m getting used to the beauty of EMPTY. A drawer with nothing in it. A closet with just a few hangers.

Must sign off now, as the bed is loaded up with a mountain of junk that has to be labeled before removal to the garage sale department. Otherwise, no sleep tonight…