My internal emotional settings are stuck on Drama Queen, and my therapist is on vacation for another couple of weeks.
Sound familiar? I’ll bet it does, and I hope you’re having a little chuckle now, because I sure am! That’s what hanging out together once a month in these blog posts is all about. We’re a tribe and our commitment to each other is to be real and vulnerable, while at the same time being positive and forward thinking. When we think, speak, or write into this community space we have together, the heavy parts of life get lighter.
Transformative COURSES & WORKSHOPS that make integrating peaceful living, health and wellness easy, fun and affordable.
That’s my focus for our time together today. I want to make a heavy thing lighter.
Here goes:
I’m not a mother in the traditional or biological sense, but I am a woman, and it is my belief that at this time in history, it is my job to play a part in the mothering of the world. I have a very full life, and my hands are not free in the day-to-day sense, but they are in the big picture way.
I have lots of room to think about the things we do as a global women’s community to support not just our own wellness, but the wellness of the world. I also have lots of time to work towards creating actual change. At the heart of all the things I do in my own career space, is my dedication to making daily personal change effortless. That’s the only way change can be effective. It’s the only way we can get out of just thinking about change, judging others about the changes they need to make, and making the global “they” responsible for executing this change.
To say that again more directly:
The only way that big picture change happens is if that change, at a personal and individual level, is simple and effortless. It sticks – and further develops – when we can see the results of those changes, in our own hands-on experience, or better, in the healthy experiences of others. Quite literally, the things we do in the grocery store – on all levels – ripple out into the community around us. Our choices matter a lot.
Imagine this in its most basic description of grocery shopping. Heck, we can even put it into a list!
- We need food to eat.
- We go hunting and gathering at the grocery store.
- We put our choices into bags and take them home with us.
- We feed ourselves and our families with this food.
That’s the basic detail list that we all share, and now take a moment to imagine the ripple out of all these choices. My personal favourite is to watch how much more confident and friendly the cashier is when they interact with the next customer, because I consciously choose to treat them well. Where I shop, the cashiers are mostly women, and the customers are mostly women too.
We do this all the time, but in reverse. We notice how the choices made “above” us in the food chain affect our lives, and we judge the cogs in the machine for not speaking up to make a difference to our lives. But what if we broadened our egos’ horizons and saw ourselves as the giant cog that is the consumer, saw how critical this cog is to the machine, and chose to be empowered? Remember, we’re not talking just about groceries here; we’re talking about all of the ways our choices in the grocery store add up. Suddenly, the ripple out becomes a tsunami.
We are not just a single cog in the machine. Together we are the driving force in our collective future.
How did we get here today? Well, I’ll be honest, my knickers got a little knotted at the grocery store the other day. It was real-time research! It’s not complicated, and it’s not political. It’s part of my creative process.
Everything that happens between the decision to make art, and actually getting my butt in the chair at my torch table is a part of that process. That’s really where the work is done, and the value of my art to me, personally, increases exponentially. This is especially true since the beginning of Covid, when time to make art was limitless, and yet like so many other people, I had so many excuses or reasons not to be enjoying that creative time. I see that in so many people – whether they identify with being an artist or not. In fact, if we do not label ourselves and recognise our own thoughts as the foundation of a changed future, one that we are creating in every moment of exchange, we can suddenly understand these thoughts as the most beautiful offerings to each other. It suddenly becomes an excuse to make art!
We’re just coming to the end of almost all restrictions here in Canada, where I live. People are excited to get back to normal, and the grocery store is full of mostly unmasked faces. There’s extra smiling, to push that good energy past the boundaries of the social distancing we are naturally continuing. It feels pretty amazing – to be chatting happily to each other, most of us enjoying the slower pace of the Summer. I love grocery shopping, and I was there to stock up for a weekend of solid time sequestered in my studio. I have an art show coming up and I want to try a few new things, so I was in kind of a state of bliss standing in the check out line, watching the cashier ring my items through, and wishing the previous customer a good day when it came time to move to that position at the counter. It was kind of like happy clockwork, when suddenly the next customer bustled in behind me.
He was out of breath from rushing, so breathing hard with no mask on. He was irritated by having to wait in line with only one item, and he just couldn’t slow himself down. The cashier and I couldn’t move any faster either. We still had to finish the transaction, and we still had to pack the bags.
I had to ask him to move away from the debit machine so I could make my purchase, and then again, because he couldn’t stand back long enough to let the transaction complete. My state of bliss was certainly interrupted in the moment, but so was the ripple out. I just couldn’t stop seeing the image of him breathing hard into my personal space. This is a part of the new normal we can’t control, and it was clear he also wasn’t intentionally trying to upset me. He was just in such a rush, that he was out of control. It was a bit funny too. He would have paid for my groceries if I hadn’t stopped him.
I’m sharing this as my wellness offering this month, not because I want us to dissolve into a flowery rant, but because I want to point at the real and vulnerable position both of us were in at that moment. Me, because I was feeling threatened by his proximity, and him because he sincerely could not slow down. I also want to connect this directly to the powerful driving force a community like ours can become, because of the exact reason we all opted to connect our conscious choices in the Busy Mom’s Tribe.
Let’s bring this awareness home. We cannot completely control our exposure to Covid, because we cannot control how other people respect or value us. We can, however, definitely control the energy present in that exchange – overwhelm and moving too fast, doing too much.
Can you use your next trip to the grocery store to begin to show yourself that kindness? Can you begin to enter into an exchange with yourself where slowing down and being present to the choices you make in every moment, translates directly into a food you feed yourself?
Can you make a list of how that ripples out into your own life?
Can you make a list of how that ripples out beyond you, and to whom?
Can you make it effortless for someone to follow your example of how to mother the world?
In only a few weeks, the world around us will have returned from Summer holidays, ready to get back to work. When we’re all back to normal, who will you choose to be?
ADRIENNE YEARDYE
Welcome! I’m Adrienne. I am a skier, a Homeopath, and a glass artist. Life itself is my first love.
Wherever I am, I am governed by a thirst for experience, fearlessness, exploration and the incredible feeling of freedom. That place travels with me. In fact, I am pretty sure it is me. Or, maybe it is just my pleasure to give this cocktail of energies big legs and a giant smile.
