Author Archives: Susan McNamara

The “Urgent Care” Of Our Lives

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I am driving down the road when I notice a new billboard. Taking up a whole half of the advertisement is an image of a happy kid hanging on a tree limb. Covering the other half are the big, bold words: Urgent Care Now Open.

How have we gotten to the place where we now advertise, using fear-based tactics, the health support and healing we all need? How have we allowed marketers to use powerful and emotional imagery to sell us something that should have nothing whatsoever to do with how slick the ad campaign is to get us in the door? How have we allowed the use of terrifying young parents about the potential, and often unlikely, harms that can happen to their child, twisting that fear into a vehicle to sell them health care? And how have we taken the sacred trust between healer and patient and turned it into the sacrilege of a commodity sold based on generating fear?

It cannot be overstated how both egregious and sadly representative of our world that this one message depicts. I believe the injustice of it all is hitting me particularly hard because I have just finished reading over 40 self-reflection papers from my college students where the most dominant theme or sub-theme is their level of fear, anxiety, stress and insecurity. And while I recognize that there are lots and lots of factors into why this is so for the generations now, one salient contributing factor, that cannot be denied, is all of the cultural messages they have received over their lives around how dangerous life is.

This is represented so “exquisitely” in the use of an image of an innocent, unsuspecting kid having fun, while right next to it alluding to the tragedy that is just around the corner. This is powerfully depicted with how the billboard is set up; giving the message that even in the most seemingly care-free moments of childhood, something bad could happen. At any moment. Oh, but don’t worry, because now there is a new urgent care location just around the corner.

We are unnecessarily terrifying parents who go on to pass that terror onto their children; training them to be stuck regularly in a kind of warped fight-flight response. Our current ways of disproportionately focusing on what is unsafe, our worse case scenarios focus, our hyper-attention to the extremes and the unlikely outcomes, along with the self-generated fears that result, are taking their toll.

The tragic results? Our children are terrified of strangers. They believe something bad is about to happen at any moment which is why they must always have a cell phone on them. They do not sleep well. They do not let down. Unless of course, it is with the help of drugs; prescribed and otherwise. They cannot focus. And who could under these circumstances? Their poor little nervous systems have been conditioned to believe that the head must be on a swivel at all times to locate and identify all the ever-present sources of threat.

Instead of living, they ruminate. They isolate. They get sleep disorders, panic attacks and G.I. problems. They are so hopped up all the time on fear and anxiety that they need far too much alcohol, faceless sex, and far too many Netflix episodes to try and talk themselves off the ledge they live on. They have taken what they have gotten from us and gone on to up the ante by seeing danger everywhere. The level of self-generated fears they have created in their own lives is both maddening and suffocating.

Are there dangerous realities to the world? Certainly. As parents do we want to protect our children at all costs? Definitely. But what has been conjured up, whipped up, and force fed to both us and our children is not keeping us safe, it is making us sick and unhappy. What if for their sake we all worked together to get a handle around what is true and untrue when it comes to the fears we hold? Want a place to start? Do a news fast for a week. Stop entertaining yourself on violence or subjecting your kids to content and conversations that are beyond their level of maturity to handle. Quit violent gaming. Stop watching the same horrific news story over and over again. Isn’t once enough?

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What We Call Things

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Have you ever noticed the places where what we would say we are doing as a culture flies in the face of what is actually and truly happening? It often feels to me like the equivalent of The Emperor’s New Clothes. Do you know that story? The one where the Emperor, the “wise” ones, along with the masses are being misled into believing, or at least acting as though they believe, that the display they are bearing witness to is finery, when in fact it is an all out duping? More to the point, that what is being represented and sold as the finest imaginable is in fact, a lie? And how in the end, it takes the integrity and honesty, along with a lack of commitment to the status quo, of a child, to name the Truth? A kind of Truth, by the way, that every adult in that moment was capable of claiming?

An example of how this goes on regularly in our culture occurred recently while I was taking my husband to an eye appointment; the kind where you need someone else to drive you because your pupils have been dilated. This meant that I was the one driving him, which meant that I found myself moving through an area saturated with enormous building after enormous building of medical offices. Row after row of factories housing our “health”/disease care system. No more fully in evidence than when I passed what is named, “The Center for Cancer Care.”

The Center for Cancer Care?? Did I read that wrong? I must have because how could we possibly have created, gone on to fund, stand behind, and elevate to a position of being the gold standard, a center that cares for cancer?! Have we lost our minds?

Why is it not “The Center For Healing?” For Hope. For Human Care & Possibility. For Human Dignity. For Getting To The Root Cause of Disease. Why is it the cancer we are caring for? Does this focus leave us spending too many of our precious resources “caring” for cancer when in fact we should be caring for people? And is this why we have such a hard time eradicating it? Because we are pouring all of our resources into the wrong place, the wrong set of beliefs, the wrong set of approaches, and ultimately asking too many of the the wrong sets of questions because we are beginning with the wrong thing? Because we are beginning with what we are afraid of, instead of what we love? With what we want to eradicate instead of what we want to cultivate? Because we have not called it and defined it by its real name?

Here’s one for you. Does it strike you in any way odd that cancer has become such big business? And that for all of the billions and billions thrown at it, remains the disease that continues to thrive despite our best efforts? Is the war on cancer the best approach, or are we defining it in the wrong terms, ultimately taking us off course for a cure?

Maybe you find what I am saying naive, insulting or disrespectful. Maybe. “Of course we are not caring for cancer, we are caring for people,” many would say. Maybe. But the words being used tell another story. The words demonstrate an unavoidable truth; the focus is on cancer. The starting point is on cancer. On disease. On the problem. Not people. Not health. Not healing. Not the solution.

What we name things matters. The ability to call something by its true name matters. The real and true name serves as the starting point, after which everything else will follow. Therefore, if we do not get it right at the start, it will never be right. It follows then that it is essential that we recognize that the words we choose carry weight and tell a story; both obvious and hidden. Words reveal powerful meaning around how we really think about something; holding all of the intentions, beliefs, attitudes and motivations embedded within the words we use, along with the reasons we use them. But only if we are willing to pay attention.

While the West does not recognize the energetic and vibratory nature of language, traditions in the East do. Sanskrit for one, does. It recognizes that sound, words, are the most powerful medicine on the planet, and therefore are to be used with great care, respect, clarity and reverence. Even the Bible recognizes this; “In the beginning was the word…”

Look around. Where do you see things not being called by their true name? What would it take for you to be more intentional with the words you use? What would it take to bring more discernment around what you are accepting as truth? And where can you step beyond your comfort zone, the need to belong to the wrong thing, along with lifetimes of fears, to call out the culturally agreed upon falsehoods that we are calling our finest, all while elevating us to our very worst.

(Inspired by Vici. Thank you dear friend.)

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Staying

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A Yoga teacher I know often says in class some version of, “Stay with yourself.” It never ceases to stop me in my tracks. Those tracks being all of the ways that my mind, chattering, obsessing and preoccupied as it is, has led me to be anywhere but with myself. Do you remember when they used to say “Elvis has left the building?” That’s what it feels like. Only, it’s me and not Elvis. And the building is my body.

There seems to be a real epidemic of “leaving” in the culture. So many ways and so many reasons to get out of the body and whatever our experience is. Take my college students and the way that they party. Recently, while working with the concept of mindfulness, the art and science of being present moment to moment without judgment, they began talking about how they use drugs and alcohol to knock down the stress. Jokingly I was calling it the sledgehammer approach. A way of forcefully busting through the stress by getting blackout drunk.

But because they have been practicing being mindful with their bodies, it has been opening up the possibility of managing the stress differently. Of noticing when the build up of tension is occurring, leaving them in a position to try something like the breath or time outside, as opposed to letting the stress accumulate unchecked. And for the ones practicing being more in their bodies, they’re finding that it just doesn’t feel so good anymore to pound down 14 beers when 3 would suffice.

But in order for any of us to make this level of shift with whatever our “sledgehammer of choice” is requires, first and foremost, the willingness to inhabit ourselves differently. The willingness to want something else other than annihilating ourselves with habits that harm. This requires three things. The space that you carve out to take care of yourself. A perspective on why this would be important for you. And a practice; something you do on a regular basis to get clear in your mind while offering a stress outlet for the body.

You might be wondering what is available should you practice staying with yourself. While I could list off all of the things I have experienced, along with all of the things students have said, I encourage you to give it a try for yourself. For this is truly the only way this one works. You cannot think about this one, or watch a video on it. You cannot wait until later. It begins in this moment and it is something you have to practice over and over again. Why? Because given how long many of us have been outside the building of our own bodies, leaving has become familiar and normal. Leaving is rewarded by the culture. Leaving has become more compelling than staying.

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Uncertainty

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I don’t know about you, but I often want to know exactly how things are going to turn out. I want some kind of a guarantee. I want a map. A good one. And I want assurances that I am on the right track. Something that says, “Here’s how to do it, and here’s how it will all turn out.” And P.S., you will be OK through it all.

This is all so very, very human. And so very, very short-sighted.

It is not a surprise that many of us would characterize the times we are living in as uncertain. Certainly, you can find lots and lots of support for this just by listening to the daily news. It might even feel as though we are living in perhaps the most uncertain times ever in the history of man. This leaves many of us terrified, stressed, angry, jaded and overwhelmed. And I think we might be hard-pressed to find too many people who would welcome, and even thrive on the uncertainty we are facing.

And yet, what if we could? What if what we need most right now is the ability, personally and collectively, to create through, and with, the uncertainty?

It puts me in mind of my daughter who called last June very upset because the house she was to be moving into in a matter of a few short weeks, had had an electrical fire. That meant that she would not be able to move in until September. At best. She was very distressed not knowing what was going to happen. Where she was going to live. What this meant for her summer plans. If the house would even be ready in the fall for when school started back.

At some point, however, she caught up to the situation, and began to embrace the reality that the certainty she had been counting on, was gone. The question then became, “what next?” Surprisingly enough, with uncertainty fully embraced, she set up an amazing experience for herself in the Northwest Territories of Canada where she lived in a yurt and met great people, all while interning for a farm whose mission it is to bring greater food awareness and security into a part of the world deficient in this. She learned a ton of new skills. She spent time in a magnificent landscape. And she grew.

Even better? Upon arriving home, not only was the house ready weeks before school started, but it had been rehabbed back into a far better condition than what she had signed up for. She described it as feeling like she had moved into a brand new place! Not only that, but she saved money as no rent was charged for several months.

Win. Win. Win.

But none of this would have happened if she had fallen into fear or despair over the uncertainty of her situation. And that’s the trick. Recognizing that when the unexpected strikes, if we can gather ourselves long enough to be open to an opportunity, something amazing might just be born out of the uncertainty. As crazy as it may seem when we find ourselves uncomfortable or afraid, this is what is available. Always. Believe it or not, it is available around political polarization, climate change, violence, job loss, illness, and any of the other personal and collective uncertainties we are facing.

This is not easy to see or to do. But the truth is, life is uncertain. Every second of every day. It’s just that we have gotten so used to a certain level of predictability and orderliness that we forget, that like any creature on the planet, we too are subject to the laws of chaos, change and uncertainty.

But what if we embraced this? What if instead of fear, despair, outrage and overwhelm, we chose to say “Yes” as quickly as we could, followed by, “What is possible here?” What if  seeing uncertainty not only as a hard and fast reality, but also as a highly creative partner, a kind of muse, became our new narrative? A force in Life not meant to tear us down, create defeat, pessimism and victimization, but instead an opening to possibility.

How then would you look at what is in front of you now? How then would you look at what is happening on the world stage?

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Purpose

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One of the most life changing things I have ever done was to see my life and what I did as having meaning. A purpose. Even when I am uncomfortable. Even when I do not know what to do or what it all means. Even when what I am doing goes against the status quo, or what it is that someone else expects of me.

It wasn’t always like this for me. For many, many years I had no sense of purpose. That meant that I made destructive, trivial and nonsensical things important. Very important. It was all that I had. That meant that things like partying, how I looked, what other people thought of me, and what degree I had were where I put all of my energies. Were what I made my purpose. These things defined me. They said, “This is who I am, and this is why I am here.”

Then I became a mother. Unexpectedly, the experience culminated in what St. John of The Cross called “The Dark Night of the Soul.” A time of total upheaval. A time when everything I believed in and valued got called into question. It was excruciating. And it was disruptive. It felt like I was being torn limb from limb from the inside out. What prompted it? A vow to value the life of my children. A vow to live on purpose for them.

This heartfelt commitment put me on the path of purpose and meaning. One far greater than I had ever known. One that while being done for another, gave me back to myself in a way that I had never experienced before. But not before passing through all of the ways that I had made the wrong things be the most purposeful and meaningful in my life. But in the end, through committing to valuing and protecting the life of my children, I came to do the same for myself. And then, for the world. I would never be where I am today had I not made a firm commitment to show up for them. Relentlessly and tirelessly.

Showing up for another is some of the most powerful personal medicine on the planet. Showing up in this way has nothing to do with being a martyr. It has nothing to do with being co-dependent. It has nothing to do with sacrificing yourself in some distorted way where you ignore your own needs. Or where your over-doing somehow manipulates the other into giving you what you need. What I am talking about here is real, healthy, good old- fashioned sacrifice.. A kind of subjugating yourself to something more than yourself. And it does not have to be big, flashy, visible or institutionalized. As a matter of fact, at its best it shows up as needed. No questions asked.

Showing up for another means just that. It is a “come as you are party.” One where you bring yourself and what you have in the service of another. You don’t need much. Or anything specific. You do not need a degree, and it is not about being perfect. Nor is it about giving to the detriment of yourself. Or to the detriment of the other by doing for them what is best done by them.

Through your devotion to another life, you will find yourself at the center of perhaps the most meaningful purpose you will ever stumble into. It puts me in mind of a wise woman who when I was in the midst of doubting whether or not I had what it took to be the mother of a very difficult baby, said to me “She already knew what kind of a mother she was going to get. This is about you being the mother you are, for you.“

And there it is. When we give ourselves over to something more than ourselves, at some point it takes a big U-turn and heads straight back for us. It’s a boomerang effect where what you receive is the equivalent of what you give. Only, that can’t be the reason why you do it. The powerful, fulfilling, and life-changing boon you will gain access to comes only when your intentions are pure. In other words, done in the service of another. Done in the service of real human needs being recognized, honored and met.

Try it for yourself. Make a commitment to show up for another. Give yourself over to it and watch. Watch how it helps you to get out of your own way. Watch how through the giving, you find yourself over and over again; beyond your self-imposed limitations, beyond your hang-ups, neuroses, failings, and self-preoccupations.

And isn’t this exactly the medicine of the day? One that considers more than our own limited agendas. One that has the power to propel us into the most purpose-filled lives we never could have ever imagined. One that prompts us to show up for another. What could be better? What could be more healing and satisfying than this?

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Being & Belonging

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Something that has been up for me for years, being somewhat of a preoccupation, is how I can be who I am while being in relationship with other people. Now you might say, of course you are yourself. Who else could you be? And of course you are in relationship with others, just look at your life. On the surface both would be true. However, I find that there is something much more interesting, and challenging, that resides below the surface of being and belonging when we are willing to look.

In the early years of life we were all 100% who we were as babies and young children. Quite literally, we knew nothing else other than being. Just being. Whatever that meant. In joy, sorrow, hunger, need, exhaustion, satisfaction, fear and trust. Then, the weighty and complicated importance of relationship began to take hold. We knew on a primal, basic, survival level, that we would not be OK without those around us, and that meant that we were bound to how they felt about us. Meaning that we had to do things to keep them interested in us, wanting us, willing to look out for us. And so, we began to make adjustments. A little here. A little there. A lot here. A lot there. In the process, we began to forget how to just be unto ourselves. Without negotiation, justification or distortion.

The need to belong began to take precedent over the need to be. And perhaps developmentally, this is as it should be. Who knows? What I do know though is that the loss of being able to just be takes its toll on all of us. For there is no authentic expression, no joy, no ease, no true fulfillment unless our lives are an expression of our truest Being. Simultaneously, there is no true belonging unless we are fully being ourselves. But this is a gamble that many of us would rather just not take.

When I was in the desert a couple of years ago, there was a small tree that symbolized the Christmas tree of my childhood. I spent one day placing little rocks underneath it that represented gifts that I so needed as a child, but never got. As you can imagine they were not things. The biggest gift of all that I gave to myself was that of the right to just be. It sounds simple. Maybe obvious even. But I will tell you, more than 2 years later I am still working on that one. And with more than fifty years on the planet, it has been a rare encounter to meet another person who allows themselves to just be.

It feels to me that while difficult to get to, there is no more noble effort than this. Than to devote ourselves to who we truly are and what it means to be with others from that place. Can you imagine what we would individually and collectively experience and be capable of if we all aimed for knowing who we really were and chose to belong from there?

If you want to check it out for yourself, watch your thoughts as you move through your day. How often do you allow yourself to be who you are, what you are, and where you are? Try making this a point of your existence, and then watch what happens.

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All Heart

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Someone recently said to me, “If it’s in your heart, you have to do it.” This represents a radical departure from how many of us live. Many of us would say instead, “If it’s in your mind, you have to do it.” Or believe it. Or be governed by it.

While our culture loves to worship the mind as the ultimate powerhouse, the heart has 60 times the electrical charge of the brain. Along with that, more nerve pathways travel from the heart to the brain than the other way around. In other words, in some very essential places, it is the heart leading the way. Once again, our biological intelligence is pointing to something we all too often do not recognize. In this case, that being, that it is the heart that is the true powerhouse. The one carrying the big charge. The call we want to sit up and take notice of. The one we do not want to deny.

This is not easy to do given the loud and insistent ways that the mind can drown out the more subtle and graceful messages of the heart. Not easy to do in a culture that has made many of us wary, shy and even downright suspicious of what the heart has to say. Some of us have even been so deeply and painfully wounded that it feels like nothing short of terrifying to imagine letting our hearts come out of hiding. And while likely we have all heard some version of “follow your heart,” it can seem like more of a romantic notion than a reality-based, viable approach to life.

For one, we don’t have a lot of good role models for this. And if we do, they are often saints, or people like the Dali Lama who can be too removed from daily life for us to feel as though we too, have access to what they do. For another, in a culture that uses fear as a sales tactic, as a way to keep us in line and that offers up entertainment based on the horrific and the outrageous, we can be left believing that to rely on the heart and its ways is childish, weak, ineffective, soft or overly sentimental. Maybe even downright dangerous to our safety and well-being.

It is anything but that. Believe it or not, the heart has its origins in courage. As in, the word courage derives from the French root “cour,” meaning heart. So beautifully portrayed in what the lion was looking for in The Wizard of Oz. But that is a child’s fantasy you might think. Maybe. Or maybe it is an expression of what we all most deeply long for. Something we all intuitively know to be a resource far greater than the insecurities, fears, shames, grievances, controls, anticipations and worries of the mind.

Check it out for yourself. Lying in bed first thing in the morning, before the mind has kicked into gear, pause. Don’t let the schedule and the demands of the day move in before you have placed one hand over your heart, and taken a few deep breaths right into the very center of your courage and wisdom. Ask your heart what it wants. And then, listen.

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Imitation

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I recently read that imitation is the basis of all social intelligence. That we are wired, right from the very beginning of life, to mimic the human beings around us. Particularly our primary caregivers; those we spend the most amount of time with. Those that we depend upon for our very survival and well-being. Those that we want to be like more than anyone else in the world.

I remember it so well with my son Jack when he was young. For a time we dubbed him “The Worker,” not only because he loved to use brooms and hammers but because this was what he told someone he wanted to be when he grew up. He was emulating my husband, his father. He took great pride and joy using his hands and busying himself with building, cleaning and fixing things. I could make the argument here that being “a worker” was less about any role or job, and much more about him trying to be just like someone he loved and looked up to.

If we take this simple example and extrapolate it out into the world at large, it calls for us, as the the adults, to be clear about what we are modeling. This is not limited to just your children, or even whether or not you have children. What matters only is what we are offering to the younger generations by way of what we are showing them is possible, necessary and desirable.

Nowhere is our lack of understanding around being a role model more in evidence then with the way we use the technologies. What it is that we are demonstrating and offering up as something to be imitated. And while many of us have marveled, or been distressed by, how quickly the children take to the screens, or how absorbed they are by it to the exclusion of other more important things, is there anywhere else to look but at ourselves? This is not easy to do. As a matter of fact, it is far easier to shake our heads in either awe or distress at what the younger generations are doing, than it is to take a hard look at what we are doing.

When we characterize our children’s preoccupation with all things screen as some new extraordinary, or scary, adaptation to the species, something only the younger generations possess, is it not folly to miss the most salient point of all? That being, that it is we who have showed them the way. We who have demonstrated to them how important the devices are. We who have acted as a model for what to want and how to be with all of this.

Because we do not have a lot of time with this one as far too many children are missing out on something worthy of their precious life to imitate, I ask you now, “Are you proud of what you are showing the children around the role that the technologies play in your life?” And while it may sting in the moment to stand in the presence of such a pointed question, this is what our children need. Now. Right now. Grown-ups who are proud of how they handle the devices. Grown-ups who recognize the central and powerful position they hold in the life of a child, and who carry that charge with respect and vision.

If we are going to elevate anything in life to the exclusive and lofty position that the technologies have achieved in such a short amount of time, should it not be of the highest caliber? Should it not be worthy of the very best in our children? For the truth is, the children are watching us. All of the time. They want to be like us. They want what we want. If this makes any sense to you whatsoever, then the only question is, “How and where can I do right by the children, and where is it that I am letting them down?”

 

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“Harmful”

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We all have things we do not like. People, situations, institutions and more that we believe to be threatening, damaging or overwhelming. Maybe it is the politics of the day. What our neighbors are doing. The traffic. The systems we engage with. A relative. A co-worker. The object of the distress is not so much the point here as the way we feel in the presence of that which we find injurious. This is not easy to see. For it can be difficult to impossible to see whatever is offending us as anything other than harmful.

Unless we open to a new perspective.

For instance, while we may feel justified in our feelings, when we look closely enough, separate from the “offending party” on the other side of us and what they do or do not do, the truth is, we are the ones left hurting on our side of the equation. Beyond that, because we hold to the belief that keeping the offender in the position of well, being the offender, we further ingrain the split leaving us to occupy the position of the offended one. Of the one who has damage being done to them. As in there is the offender and the offended. A kind of one side against the other scenario.

Whenever I find myself feeling as though there is no way out or around this kind of thing, I go to the body to see how it handles such situations. The body, as in that part of us that is not caught up in the past, conditioned behaviors or old beliefs. But instead, the deep animal aspect of us that has an inherent biological wisdom and truth built right in. A kind of intelligence that is beyond the wounds, beliefs and score keeping of the mind.

When it comes to the split around the “offender” and the “offended,” I think of the gut. I think of the communities of bacteria and other organisms, both beneficial and harmful, that inhabit the digestive tract. Many of us know that the presence of the friendly microbes is a big predictor of gut health. They also contribute to immune and mental vitality, make vitamins, digest food and more yet to even be discovered.

A big focus in this area is the role that the friendly bacteria play in keeping the gut colonized so that the harmful bacteria cannot take over. Cannot tip the scales as it were towards imbalance; creating discomfort and disease. In a nutshell, with enough of the “friendlies” around, the “unfriendlies,” those things that would bring us harm, are squeezed out.

But not completely.

For though we might want to imagine a gut (or a life) with nothing harmful being present, not only is it not possible, it is actually not even desirable. As far as the body is concerned, it’s not even an aim. At all.

Huh?

You see, the body needs the mix.The body is built to be in the presence of harm, and to know exactly how to proceed. From this biological perspective, it is not about eradicating harm as much as it is about keeping the balance. As much as it is about recognizing that the presence of “harmful ones” gives the rest of the organism an opportunity to strengthen itself. A chance to clarify its role and position in the mix of all that is happening to and around the life of a body. A kind of necessary workout to the system on behalf of health.

We could think of our lives in the exact same way. For though it is easy to believe that our lives would be better off without that which produces harm, that would not actually be true. For when we meet up with that which is capable of inflicting injury, it gives us an opportunity to learn and to grow. It offers the exquisite experience of us mutating towards more resilience, more strength, and more built-in know-how through the exercise of defining what and who we are, against that which we are not.

With that said, this approach calls for a high degree of personal responsibility for it is so much easier to paint the world in black and white. So much easier to categorize our existence in terms of the black hats and the white hats. So much easier to label “harm” as the enemy to either be fought against or vanquished by. But in so doing, we miss out on one of the most essential teachings around being alive in a robust way; the ability to evolve by transmuting “the harm” we come in contact with in the service of evolution to a higher order.

A lofty idea that is made real by trying something basic. The next time you are up against “harm,” ask yourself the question; “If I were to suspend being the one who is harmed, what would be possible here?” What might I see? Learn? What balance might be brought to my life through exposure to that which I find offensive?

 

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A Witness

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For many years now a car full of Jehovah Witnesses have made their way every so often to my home; taking the 3 mile trek down our dirt road to knock on my door. A section of the road, by the way, which has less than a dozen homes. Not much bang for the buck in terms of spreading the word.

Yet, they come anyway, and for the longest time that was OK by me. I got to know one of them, Patricia, a little bit. A kind, warm, grandmotherly figure. Part of me felt like it was really nothing to give them a few minutes of my time. More to the point, I do respect what they are doing (awkward and weird as it can be when they show up at your door). I also felt for them somehow; what it took to go knocking on stranger’s doors. Then there is the part of me that had a soft spot for them as my own great-grandmother, who I adored, was a Jehovah. And then one last part of me felt like to be the person I most want to be meant being open to these visitations.

Complicated.

Only, at some point, it really, really stopped working for me. The visits that began to increase in frequency, with less and less time in between. How in the beginning I might only see them once or twice a year, but then how that began to shift to every couple of months. And then, at times, even more frequent than that. Patricia started bringing more people to introduce me to. One time they even tucked their literature into my own personal writing and reflections that I had left spread out on a table on my back porch.

It was enough.

I went through all kinds of thoughts and feelings on this one. Many reflections on boundaries, and what it means to set one. There were times when I felt angry about what was happening. At other times I felt trapped. There were the moments when what was happening pulled up other boundary violations and troubles from the past. And then, my own “personal favorite,” the moments when I felt as though there was something wrong with me that I couldn’t just be OK with this.

By the time they showed back up again, I had done a lot of work on this one. When the boundary I needed to set with them came out of me, it came out clear and kind. It came out effortlessly and with grace. It came out in a way where she and I were actually on the same page; with Patricia already having recognized that this was no longer working for me.

In the end, it seems as though beyond all of my struggling with this one, I just needed to name it with her. I just needed to say out loud that it no longer worked for me for them to come by. The whole exchange was so natural that as we parted, and I have no idea which one of us initiated it, we both reached into the space and clasped hands.

I cried afterwards. The reason for my tears was the recognition that a big part of my struggle with this was that I actually and genuinely liked her.

It is so much easier to draw a line when we do not like someone, or when we are absolutely fed up. But oh how difficult to choose for ourselves (and ultimately the other) when we like someone, or when the mind keeps saying, “What’s the big deal, it’s not really harming you.” 

This is what we are left to decide in the day to day with loved ones and others we encounter. Those times and circumstances where sure, we could let it go. We could put up with it. Sure, we could tolerate it for all of the reasons the mind will come up with. But at what cost? At what cost to the Truth within, and between us?

I do not know where the line is for you, but I do know one thing; clear boundaries set the stage for a sense of personal wholeness and well-being, which translates into more harmonious and satisfying encounters with others. Even if that means doing something that feels hard. For whatever the reason.

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