Central Mexico Cities, Feb. 2 - 16, 2013

 Mark and I have been coming to Mexico for over 35 years, but always to coastal spots and more recently, the Yucatán. This year we decided to join a tour and learn about the historic interior. We will visit 6 cities in central Mexico: Mexico City, Morelia, Guanajuato, Queretaro, Puebla, Oaxaca. 

We started with 3 days in Mexico City…and barely scratched the surface!  

First day and walk through central plaza 

View from hotel breakfast room with two volcanoes in the distance. This is a massive, bustling city with population of 9 million and the greater metropolitan area of over 20 million.

WAKING UP HAPPY: Tell It with a Story

THE PROFILE:  Your Pain Won’t End Until You Tell Your Story: Wisdom from Adam

From my first experiences with AA, I was riveted by the stories. Many people’s narratives were heartrending, yet at the same time their wisdom awed me. How, I wondered, did so many ordinary-looking people grow so wise? How did they manage to reach so deeply into my heart and capture what I thought was mine alone? And how did these people find such a sense of joy and hope?

As I listened and gained the courage to tell my own story, I found the experience incredibly healing. I saw that sharing tales of hard times -- and of experiences that made me feel guilty -- lessened the pain and shame, while poking fun at myself with anecdotes, laughing at my failings, gave me a wonderful sense of release.

All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story. . . . 

  – Isak Dinesen

THE KEYS:

1. There’s nothing like a story to make an unforgettable point. That’s why support groups, mentoring programs, and coaching are such potent ways to produce lasting change. Stories point up the common ground we all share, drawing us together. People who attend support groups say that as they listen to stories unspool like soft yarn, they often feel they are hearing their own words in another voice. 

2. Keep telling your stories. Stories from your life help others learn important lessons. They also help you create your own mythology, turning your life from a struggle to an adventure, becoming the hero of your life rather than a victim. It’s all in how you spin the story!

3. Keep memory alive. Tell stories about your family’s heritage. Serve food made with old family recipes, and if there’s a story connected to a recipe, jot it down, and pass it along. A feeling of connection to the past gives us all a rootedness that keeps us strong during the storms of life.

4. Clarify, articulate, and recast hidden family stories. We all walk around with our family stories under our skin, invisible as air, weightless as dreams, as Elizabeth Stone tells us in Black Sheep and Kissing Cousins: How Our Family Stories Shape Us. Those tales are all the more powerful for being shrouded, unacknowledged, and intangible. They send clear – even if subliminal – messages. Some examples:

• You will care for your parents in their old age (or feel guilty if you don’t).
• You will have a large family (or the reverse).
• As a woman, you’ll stay home to take care of the family. As a man, you’ll earn a good living and spend most of your time at work.
• You’ll stay close to the place where you are born. (Or, the message I received in my family: The smart ones move as far away from home as possible!)

Every family has its own “family traits” – for instance, hard-working, adventurous, aggressive, or rebellious. In my family, almost exclusively Pennsylvania Dutch stock, I knew that we Obrights were stubborn, and for a long time I viewed my own stubbornness as a good thing, a sign of pride and high-minded principles, as well as a badge of belonging to a long tradition. It was only when I saw this trait mirrored in my daughter that I began to see how self-destructive it was and let myself abandon it as a positive strategy. What helped the most was that my husband was able to joke about it and tease my daughter and me when we butted heads. The more I saw myself from his perspective, the more I understood how I had sabotaged myself through my inflexibility. Indeed, a light-hearted look at the consequences of family traits is a good way to start demystifying family legends.

Families all have their “black sheep,” too – those who broke the rules – and anecdotes about them serve as cautionary tales. But these stories can also provide comfort, as they did for me, proving that it is possible to move outside the lines and survive. Among the black sheep in my family was my cousin Jeanne, the only woman in our family at the time to get divorced. She was also a successful artist, which made me admire her, so when I followed in her footsteps, as the second divorcee in the family, I didn’t feel like a complete misfit.

Give yourself permission to move beyond old family stories and create new ones for yourself. Give others that same license. You needn’t give up the traditions completely, but be flexible in shaping them to meet your needs. Use them as an inspiration rather than a straitjacket.

5. Help your loved ones find, live, and tell their own stories. Help them break free of rigid roles by becoming aware of expectations embedded in old stories. Remind them that they can paint the same picture in innumerable ways. They can go beyond the stories they’ve been telling themselves and remake them into tales that fulfill their needs.

6. Always put stories into context. Whenever you tell a story, don’t stop talking when you reach what you may think is the end. Ask your listeners what the story means to them, what they’ve drawn from it, and how they might use it in their own lives. Underline the fact that every story has multiple messages, and they can take away one that’s most meaningful for them. If the message is negative, help them see how they can turn it into a positive.  For instance, stories that paint ancestors as failures and sufferers can be refashioned into tales of courage, vigilance, and survival in the face of hardship. Likewise, “odd and different” can be seen as “unique, special, and distinctive.”

ACTIONS TO PRACTICE:

1. Make a commitment to talk to your parents and other relatives and ask them to tell you stories about your family, your ancestors, and what they remember about you as a child. It can be especially helpful to talk to relatives who are estranged or have moved a far distance away. They may have stories they’ve been dying to tell and were only waiting to be asked. In my case, when I made the effort to talk to relatives I had never even met, the stories I discovered gave me entirely new perspectives on my life and changed everything for me. I also discovered that my mother, who deflected all my questions as I was growing up, became eager to tell family stories in her last years. I was amazed at all the stories that poured out of my private, secretive mother and how those new tales helped me make sense of my life.

2. Make a list of family traits and messages that were passed on to you, either explicitly or implicitly. How can you build on these themes in a positive way? If you consider the messages negative, how can you reframe them in a more constructive way?

3. Set up a time to meet with your children (or other loved ones) and discuss family stories. Have everyone write down a few stories beforehand to read aloud when you get together. It may be enlightening to have everyone tell the story of a shared experience. You may be surprised at how differently you each remember what happened – and what different meanings you attach to it.

4. If you have advice you’d like to pass on to someone, take time to make up a story whose moral sums up what you want to impart. Stories are a wonderful way to pass on vital lessons in a form more palatable than lecturing or seeming to give advice. The story can come from your own life experience, or you can pretend the story happened to someone you know. (Stories don’t have to be literally true. The magic of stories is that, by being more metaphorical than literal, they’re often more useful than the facts would be.)

5. Some of the best stories describe mistakes that turned out to be learning experiences. Think of a mistake you made, and turn it into a story that will help people laugh and learn.

6. Write the story of your life in the third person, using “he” or “she” rather than “I” to describe what happened to you. When you see yourself from an objective distance, it’s easier to feel compassion for yourself and what has happened in your life, and it may help you rework your story to better advantage. We’ll discuss this exercise in more detail in upcoming blogs. 

For more exercises, take a look at WAKING UP HAPPY, which includes “365 Steps on Your Journey” (an exercise for every day of the year), “What Works and What Doesn’t” (a discussion of conventional change methods that don’t work and surprising ones that have been proven to lead to true transformation), over 30 memoirs of people who have changed their lives and concrete steps to creating the same changes in the lives of others, along with a table of contents so that you can find an exercise for whatever problem you’re wrestling with today. For more info, email Jill@NonprofitWorld.org or see www.WakingUpHappyBook.co.

Please contact me with your own stories, strategies, insights, and any questions you may have, as well as an answer to this question, if you’d like to reflect on it and send me your answer:

What story has shaped you more than any other? Has that story changed throughout your life?

WAKING UP HAPPY: Tap the Power of Ritual

As the days grow shorter and darker, I’m drawn to the idea of rituals. I’m inspired by my friend Marilyn, who taught me how rituals make even the simplest moment special. As she says, “That’s what life is, really – making as many moments special as you possibly can.”  (Marilyn’s story is in Chapter 7 of Waking Up Happy, wakinguphappy.co.)

I learned from Marilyn that I already practiced countless rituals, such as drinking coffee from my favorite mug every morning, brewing a cup of tea in the afternoon, and attending exercise class twice a week.

With her help, I learned to do these things more mindfully. I’d never thought about planting my flowers in the spring or raking leaves in the fall as rituals, but just that small shift in thinking added more meaning to my life. These rituals made me more aware of the way life and death weave through everything, and I became more comfortable with the idea of death – a huge step forward for me.

Now that the darkness of winter is descending, I add rituals such as focusing on a candle flame as I breathe slowly and mindfully. Sometimes I follow Marilyn’s lead and treat myself to a celebration of brilliance, turning on all the lights and basking in the glow.

Marilyn and I also share many winter rituals, such as going to the Holiday Art Fair together, meeting for an Indian lunch where we exchange gifts, and talking on the phone every December 31 to discuss our plans, hopes, and dreams for the new year. Having such rituals has strengthened our friendship through the years into an unbreakable bond.

THE KEYS:

1. You can perform rituals alone or with others. They provide a sense of continuity while honoring what’s important to you. No matter how much chaos surrounds you, you can perform a comforting, familiar ritual in the morning, in the afternoon, and in the evening. It might be eating an orange with your full attention, repeating an affirmation to yourself, writing in your journal, or listing some of the things you’re grateful for.

2. Ritual can restore balance after devastating loss. During dark times, the simplest of rituals, such as getting up in the morning, eating three times a day, combing your hair, and brushing your teeth can be life-saving. Little by little, they’ll restore you to the ongoingness of life that, eventually, conquers despair.

3. If your life has been impacted by addiction, you may have fallen into unhealthy rituals. If so, perhaps you need to leave behind old rituals and create new ones for yourself. It may help to perform a letting-go ritual, as I described in earlier blog posts, such as “Remaking Your Life” and “Holding On, Letting Go: Like Ash on Water”  (scroll down and you’ll find the earlier blog posts). For example, write down what you’re leaving behind. Then shred or burn the paper on which it is written.

4. Rituals knit families and friendships together. Children love rituals. If you’re lucky enough to have youngsters in your life, share some old or new rituals with them – baking the same cookies your grandma baked, decorating the house for the season, gathering evergreen boughs and pine cones.

ACTIONS TO PRACTICE:

1. Commemorate any beginning or ending – the winter’s first snowfall, the end of a love affair, a move into a new home. Your ritual might include dancing, chanting, or singing, or be as simple as lighting a candle and saying a few words.

2. Set up an altar. A space the size of a scarf will do. On the cloth, arrange objects to represent the four elements that make up life on this planet, as defined by the ancient Greeks: air, earth, water, and fire. For example, you could use a feather to represent air, a stone for earth, a seashell for water, and a candle for fire. Add other things with special or symbolic meaning, such as photos of loved ones. You can meditate or pray at your altar, or just use it as a comforting way to honor your deepest self and your place in the universe.

3. On a date that is memorable for you (your birthday or New Year’s Eve, for instance), write a letter to the person you’ll be next year at the same time. Then read the letter you wrote to yourself last year. This ritual will emphasize how much you are changing and growing.

4. Find a morning and evening ritual for yourself. For example, you could do a few deep-breathing exercises when you get up and write in your gratitude journal before bed.

5. Choose a weekly practice to calm and restore you. Once a week, for instance, you could attend a tai chi class, spend an hour in a church or other sanctuary, walk in nature, sing in a choir, or volunteer in the community.

6. Create a ritual to welcome each season as it arrives.

7. Plan a celebration of the winter solstice on December 21. Invite your friends if you like. Light candles and play music to welcome back the light. Or decorate cookies to represent the sun. Create an altar with holly, mistletoe, or other evergreens and call in the sun's warmth. Reflect on the things you love about winter and breathe in that positive energy. Consider what you dislike about winter, and come up with rituals to help make those things more positive, comforting, and fun.

For more exercises, take a look at WAKING UP HAPPY, which includes “365 Steps on Your Journey” (an exercise for every day of the year), www.WakingUpHappy.co.

Please contact me with your own stories and any questions you may have, as well as answers to these questions, if you’d like to reflect on them:

What rituals do you perform every day? Would you like to add new ones?

What life passages are coming up that you could commemorate with a ritual?

WAKING UP HAPPY: When Your Loved One Is Here But Not Here

A question I hear often from those who care about an addict is, ‘How do I stay strong for the one I love?’ What they really mean is, ‘How do I take care of myself?’ People rarely phrase the question in that way, but it’s what they’re asking. After trying with all your might to help someone who is drowning in addiction, you are depleted, miserable, and exhausted.

           

And no wonder. It’s hard, hard work to love and try to help someone who is resisting you all the way. How do you hold yourself together?

           

It helps to know that you’re dealing with a special type of emotion. Pauline Boss dubbed it “ambiguous grief” in her groundbreaking Ph.D. thesis at the University of Wisconsin. Loving someone with an addiction creates ambiguous grief because your loved one is both here and not here. The person you once loved feels lost to you, but there is no clear-cut way to mourn that loss.

           

An even more difficult situation occurs if the unthinkable happens and your loved one dies as a result of the addiction. Such a death may be direct, as when the person takes more drugs than the body can handle or in a combination that the body can’t handle, and dies (as happened to my granddaughter’s boyfriend, a heroin user, and to my sister, an alcoholic who died of cirrhosis of the liver) or indirect (as happened with my father, who committed suicide after many long battles with addiction). When addictions or mental illness are involved in a death, many people are unsure how to mourn, what to say, or how to help. Friends may stay away, not because they no longer care about you but because the situation confuses them and makes them uncomfortable.

           

I found a surprising source of strength in Pauline Boss’s book, Loving Someone Who Has Dementia. Her advice for those who love a dementia patient translates almost perfectly for those of us who love an addict. Like Alzheimer patients, our loved ones may act like strangers. We must mourn the loss of those we loved and create new relationships with the people they have become. 

THE KEYS:

1. Realize that your mixed, complicated emotions are to be expected. You aren’t to blame, and you needn’t feel guilty. Look for ways to find meaning and hope, to reduce your stress, and to become more resilient so that you can grow stronger despite the pain. It’s vital to take special care of yourself and to find a community that will accept you and help care for you.

2. Speak your truth. Ambiguous grief is often hidden and invisible to others. You’re unlikely to receive sympathy cards. But you do need the support of others. (See my earlier blog “Just Connect” about ways to build a wide network of support.) Letting others know what your life is like will help educate them and reduce the stigma surrounding addiction and mental illness.

3. Understand that there is no perfect solution or answer to what you’re going through. Some things in life always remain ambiguous, unresolved, and incomprehensible. When you accept that fact, you can stop searching so hard for answers and let life unfold around you. You can live the Serenity Prayer and stop worrying about the things you cannot change.

ACTIONS TO PRACTICE:

1. Think of some simple rituals you can perform on a regular basis. There aren’t any socially sanctioned rituals for people mourning ambiguous loss. Yet rituals are an important tool in dealing with emotions related to loss. If possible, perform these rituals with at least one other person, because loss and grief are more bearable when acknowledged by others. The simplest act can become a ritual if you do it mindfully. Examples:

·         Light a candle.

·         Recite a prayer, affirmation, or poem.

·         Sing a song.

·         Walk a path.

·         Let a balloon sail off into the sky.

·         Meet a friend for a chat.

Don’t let go of rituals you already have. For instance, you may be tempted to cancel Christmas, Thanksgiving, and other family gatherings. A better idea is to change those rituals, perhaps simplifying them or adapting them in ways that make them more bearable for you. Brainstorm ideas with friends and family. Be flexible.

           

2. Become comfortable with “both-and” (rather than “either-or”). Doing so will help you find meaning and hope in a world of ambiguous grief. Come up with some both-and statements. For example:

·         My loved one is both here and not here.

·         I can both love someone and feel angry at him or her.

·         I am both sad about my lost dreams and happy about new hopes and dreams.

·         I am both sorry about what my loved one is going through and able to take care of myself and make myself happy.

·         My relationship with my loved one is lost – and it also still exists.

·         I can both hold on and let go.

Write down a few other both-and statements that are true for you. Share this exercise with others who are in the same boat as you.

3. Create a virtual family for yourself. Choose anyone – living or dead, someone real or a character from a book, TV, or the movies – whose qualities you appreciate and would like to emulate. Keep your new family members in your mind to turn to when you want advice, comfort, or the courage to change.

4. Learn to forgive yourself for your feelings of anger, loss, and other complex emotions. Look directly into your eyes in a mirror and tell yourself you’re a worthy person and you love yourself just the way you are. Tell yourself you’re doing the best you can. Forgive your mistakes and banish thoughts of regret. Continue to give yourself positive feedback while looking into your mirrored eyes.

5. Join (or start) a cause related to the issue you’re dealing with.  Google the issue of concern, and find others eager to connect around a movement, a charity, a new law, or other ways to create meaning around whatever is causing you pain. It’s a great way to make sense out of something that is, in many ways, senseless.

5. Take a class. Learn to make jewelry, paint, work with wood, sew or weave, do yoga or anything else that appeals to you. Involving yourself in something new will help you look toward a brighter future. It’s essential to find new hopes and dreams if you are to stay strong.

For more exercises, take a look at WAKING UP HAPPY, which includes more than 30 memoirs and concrete steps to creating a joyful life, www.WakingUpHappy.co

Please contact me with your own stories, strategies, insights, and any questions you may have, as well as an answer to this question, if you’d like to reflect on it and send me your answer:

What one thing can you do this week to lower your stress and other effects of ambiguous grief?

WAKING UP HAPPY: The best cure – words from your heart

There’s no better remedy for whatever’s bothering you than to write. We’re not talking about polished prose here. You don’t need to write in complete sentences or worry about grammar, spelling, or punctuation. Just let the words flow, and you will feel your heart grow lighter.

You can write in a beautiful journal, on scraps of paper, or on your computer. You can draft a few words or dozens of pages.  You can write twice a day, once a week, or just when you need an outlet.

You can also keep a journal by talking into a digital recorder or video cam. But even if you do, it’s still a good idea to get into the habit of jotting things down. If writing feels foreign to you, keep penning a few lines every day until it feels more natural. It’s a practice that will benefit you throughout your life.

There are no rules, but you can use the following tips:

• Start by jotting down a few tetherings – the date, what’s going on in the news or in your life, whatever will anchor your words to a specific time. When you look back on your writing, these hooks may give you insights into why you were feeling the way you were.
• If you don’t know what to say, begin by answering questions such as these:  Where are you in your life? How did you get there? Where would you like to go next? What do you wish you were doing? What’s the most important thing in the world to you?
• You needn’t restrict yourself to words. Draw your ideas. Doodle. Paste in photos, cut-out pictures, objects from nature, or anything that will remind you of special moments in your life. Print out the lyrics of your favorite songs, and use those as springboards to clarify your feelings. Make collages, or sketch or paint. Tinker with colors and shapes. Let the creative child within you come out to play.

 If you have a loved one with an addiction, you could give them no more helpful gift than a journal. As my friend Cecilia Farran notes in Nature’s Pathways, there’s no lack of gorgeous choices. Embossed leather-bound journals by Oberon will last a lifetime. Paper Blank journals have beautiful covers and sport a “secret pocket.” There are journals for recovery, such as “A New Day, A New Life: A Guided Journal.” Anything that coaxes a troubled person to turn to writing will be a great boon.

                       

THE KEYS

1.         If you have a traumatic experience, wait a few days and then write about it. People who do that, according to research, recover more fully from any distressing event. Don’t write about it too soon, too frequently, or too long (set a timer and quit after a certain time – say, 15 minutes or so) but continue exploring feelings on paper every so often until you’re able to put the trauma behind you.

2.         Writing helps you relax and stay in the “now.” It offers a way to chart your progress. It’s a safety valve, letting you explore your emotions and move beyond them. It will reveal to you, like magic, things you didn’t even know you were thinking and feeling. It will expose voids in your reasoning that you didn’t realize were there. I especially like gratitude journals, where you end your musings by listing one to three things you’re most grateful for that day.

3.         Journaling is most therapeutic if you simply write from your heart without thinking, judging, or worrying. Let the emotions spill out without censoring them.

ACTIONS TO PRACTICE

1.         Share the first key above with any loved one who has had a traumatic experience or is wrestling with addiction (which is, in itself, a traumatic experience).

2.         Every few months, look back over your journal. Certain patterns will become clear – threads that occur and reoccur – and give you insights into your truest self.

3.         Write your life story. You can make it as short or long as you wish. If possible, share it with someone you trust. Consider writing it in the third person rather than first person (using “he” or “she” rather than “I”). Imagine it happened to someone else. Viewing yourself with a more objective eye is a good way to see yourself with more clarity and compassion. Challenge your loved ones to do the same.

4.         Write a journal for each of your children, viewing them with as positive an eye as possible. Eventually, you can give these journals to them as presents, and it will be invaluable for them to see how important they are to you – and to have a record of their life to look back on.

For more exercises, take a look at Waking Up Happy, which includes “Things to Do Today” (at the end of each chapter) and “365 Steps on Your Journey” (an exercise for every day of the year), www.WakingUpHappy.co.

Please contact me with your own stories, strategies, insights, and any questions you may have. I look forward to hearing from you!