Reflection on the Journey

It isn’t the end of the year yet, but today seems like a good time to reflect. The end of October marked the end of our focus on one Step per month. 10 months, 10 Steps. Before deciding where to go from here, I thought we might look back to see where we’ve been. Each of us has had our own journey. Here are a few thoughts about mine.

January – Step 1 – Give yourself permission to be happy.

January, the beginning of the year, a year I thought would be highlighted by my retirement. A quiet year of reading and writing, spending time at my cabin, sitting in my back yard, training for my black belt test. Then, mid-month, my daughter Mia blindsided me with the news she was pregnant. She moved back home. Everything changed. I did a lot of belly breathing! The focus that month on shadow beliefs and counter beliefs helped me stay grounded, recognizing that I was responsible for how this news affected my life. I had the power to choose.

February – Step 2 – Decide if you want to be right or happy.

This was the month of truly understanding how much I don’t know. My daughter Grace stunned me with the news that she was pregnant, too. Good grief. And grief was the word. I grieved over disappointed expectations and lost dreams. I begged the cosmos to help me learn whatever I needed to learn before my third daughter, Lily, brought home similar news. (She didn’t, and she became known as “the one who’s not pregnant.”) Dan and James, my two sons who both have autism, reacted in their own way. James had a hard time grasping that these were not MY babies. He kept saying I was HIS mother. Dan, who has a more mature understanding of the ways of the world, but no self-censorship, announced to everyone, “Mia had sex.” I let it all go and decided to be happy.

March – Step 3 – Give up the delusion of control.

By March, you can guess that I didn’t have many delusions of control. Even so, I still made some feeble efforts to direct Mia’s and Grace’s choices as they looked toward the future. By the end of the month, I gave that up, too. And it was good.

April – Step 4 – Feel your feelings.

I had plenty of feelings. Have you ever noticed that when certain feelings are evoked, they churn up memories of previous times that evoked those same feelings? So I was awash that month with feelings new and old. The focus on Step 4 helped me befriend my feelings, cradling them and looking beneath for the underlying beliefs. I gave thought to which wolf I was going to feed. I practiced transforming feelings that did not serve my well being. I made peace.

May – Step 5 – Make haste to be kind.

May was my last month at work before I retired. A career of thirty years, twenty of them at the same place, was coming to a close. It was a month of transition, many goodbyes, laughing over shared memories. It was a month of receiving kindness from others, expressions of appreciation, gifts of gratitude. It was an opportunity to acknowledge those who made my years there so successful – the skillful secretaries, the maintenance angels, the computer geniuses, the people in various administrative positions who always responded quickly to make things happen, my hero at the coffee cart who knew exactly what I wanted, colleagues who have become friends, and of course, the students who enriched my life more than they will ever know.

It was also a month to realize that how I handled this year in my family would set the tone for years to come. Kindness was the guiding principle. It’s as simple as the golden rule, treating others as I would want to be treated.

June – Step 6 – Judge not.

Judging was a theme this year as I watched my daughters grapple with the judgments of others. That was hard. I spent a lot of time in June reflecting on all the ways we judge ourselves and others, and the damage we cause by the resulting separation. I looked more closely at hurts I still held onto, grudges I still nursed, vengeance I still secretly longed for. What violence we do to ourselves with our judging. I saw a reflection of myself in every judgment I aimed towards others.

We also judge our circumstances. I renewed my efforts to be complaint free, recognizing that subtle shifts in perception would brighten my world.

July – Step 7 – Practice compassion.

Compassion was the balm poured out to soothe the raw wounds of judgment from the month before. For every judgment aimed at my daughters, there were many more outpourings of compassion. I found myself full of compassion, too, as I remembered my own youth, and later my early years of parenting.

I found guidance and perspective in the teachings of A Course in Miracles, which characterizes everything we do or say or think as either a call for love or an expression of love.

And I realized that the person most often in need of my own compassion is me.

August – Step 8 – Forgive everyone.

Forgiveness is the most challenging Step for many of us, even though most of us, I think, would agree that it’s a good thing. I was struck by the quote that unforgiveness is like drinking rat poison hoping the rat will die. Reflecting on those judgments I still clung to in June, I saw that forgiveness had very little to do with the unforgiven, and everything to do with me. The key that helped unlock the chains of unforgiveness for me was shifting my focus away from being a victim. Moving towards an even more radical perspective, I began to see the spiritual gifts of many of the wrongs I harbored resentment over.

As with compassion, I realized that the person most often in need of my own forgiveness is me.

And I saw that forgiveness is rarely a one time event, but often requires repetition.

September – Step 9 – Develop an attitude of gratitude.

What a relief to get to this Step after some challenging months. There are so many ways to focus on gratitude, and they are all fun! Gratitude lists, games, and quotes kept this practice in my awareness through the month. And how timely, since Mia’s baby boy was born mid-month. After all the months beginning with my shock and dismay in January, I saw that he was indeed a blessing of incomparable value, and brought joy beyond measure with his every breath.

Gratitude is a humbling gift.

October – Step 10 – Be here now.

The journey brings us back to where we started, where we never left, in the present moment. Grace’s baby girl was born mid-month, and once again I was there, watching a new life begin, awed by the mystery, overwhelmed by the beauty and perfection of, well, everything. More than ever, I appreciate the eternity present in this, and every, holy instant.

When I sat down to write a post for today, I didn’t know that this was what I would write. In fact, I had something entirely different in mind. But as I looked back over the Steps and over this year, each Step seemed to speak a lesson to me, a gift. So I wrote what came to me. Whether you have been reading all year or just a short time, I hope that you have found something of value to your lives in the ideas we have all shared here. If there is something that stands out for you, any reflection or idea or memory, I hope you will leave a comment.

I am going to take a few days to sit with these reflections as I discern where we go from here. I welcome your thoughts and suggestions.

Most of all, thank you for your support, your encouragement, your honesty, your kindness, and your perseverance!