Inspiring Women: Belle Pirri: Gratitude

A post from Kind Over Matter, pointed me to Belle's gratitude list blog, which was then called Good List Daily, succeeded by We Love Gratitude. What a great idea, I thought, and after lurking and posting as a guest for awhile, I joined the site.

The daily practice of a gratitude list, which I strive at, and which is always incomplete for me, teaches me no matter how bad something is in my life, on balance there is so much is that is good. Furthermore, it is the result of what is before me, around me, how much bigger life is than me, what I take for granted, that I cannot control. There it is for me, the question: What are you grateful for today?

Especially gratifying is encountering a supportive cast of similarly grateful people, complementing each other in our gratitude and offering encouragement as our paths change and turn.

And it is amazing to see Belle’s evolution from her doodles to her discoveries about changing her attitude through practice, and ultimately her gratitude upon giving birth to Ava.

I had the good fortune to meet Belle several months ago when she and Marc, her husband, took a vacation trip to my part of the country. It was great to see she was not only the gal in the picture and also very much the person she presents in her writing and artwork, grateful, inquisitive and open-hearted.

Recently, Belle launched Creative Spiritual Women, another site to inspire and encourage her community of friends by sharing her life lessons and discoveries of wonderful things. What stands out for me right now is Belle emphasizing that it is not so much the things that happen to us as the stories we tell ourselves about what happened and what is. Gratitude (or as Belle writes, “radical gratitude”) goes a long way towards reframing these stories. And courage, as Belle writes here: “It’s an act of trust to yourself to tell the truth.”

I cannot be grateful enough for Belle living in the world.

Two for the price of one

Traveling and with limited computer access this weekend I have not set aside time to respond to the #Trust30 challenges from Lachlan Cotter and Ash Ambirge on fear and surprise. One asks is do not doing the thing I fear worth sacrificing what I want and the other questions how I surprised myself in the past by doing something I couldn't and how will I surprise myself now.

If there is a strong wish in me it is to know the truth and to be honest with myself and others. I believe writing helps me pursue this, especially as the words that come out prove to different than what I imagined or what is revolving in my mind, the endless chatter of fantasy. For I have found it so easy to deceive myself, thinking I am honest, when I have left something undone, not paid someone I owed, not acknowledged someone who did me a courtesy, and I go about thinking I am conducting myself well.

However, I surprised myself once when making a driving mistake, getting in the way of another driver who honked at me furiously. We ended up side by side on the street and I rolled down my window and he rolled down his and we looked at each other for an instant. At another time I might have been frightened and avoided him. However, I looked into the man's eyes and said to him "I'm sorry." He curtly nodded. The light changed and we drove off and I will probably never see him again. For once, I took responsibility and did not act out of fear. Can I do so again and not once but every day? I admit I know too little.

What right now teaches me is to accept who I am and see how I can change for the better and become more honest and responsible to myself and others. Part of that is owning my own story. I look back on mistakes and accept this is the kind of person I was and did the best I could with what I had. I looked on others' successes and saw only my own failures. I can get beyond that now. So much is helping me. I learn from Victoria's post on experience not being wasted, necessary to bring one to where one is. Or as Brene Brown writes in The Gifts of Imperfection, which I have finally begun reading, "Owning our own story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it." I am similarly inspired by Marjory's story about connecting with her soulmates and living the story of their bodies together. She and Julie wrote the words describing their bodily experience on each other (love the smiles and laughter in the pictures.) "We wrote our precious word messengers on each others chests to let them sink into our hearts." Further on Marjory writes "Your body needs to know that you will hold its story with tenderness." Or it is captured for me in this sign, courtesy of insightful and courageous Carolyn.

So I continue to pursue honesty, aiming to be like the monk who says to his disciple "I am close to not being deceived about myself." "But master, how can that be?" asks the disciple. The master replies, "Talking is easy. Being is not."

The thing I'm afraid to do

Make someone angry. Or do I have that power? It is someone else's feeling or reaction, not mine, isn't it, as Mastin demonstrates with one of his quotes. And then I remember what Maya Angelou said, "people won't remember what you said, people won't remember what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

So I am afraid to tell someone close to me that their negative look is drawing me downward. I am upset by the catastrophe that we are in together, that we share, and I've done what I could. I'm powerless over the situation and I'm powerless over her. She won't change, she is who she is and she becomes more and more resistant to help, even after some progress. While I acknowledge her right to feel what she is feeling, she probably will not be satisfied unless I am feeling what she is feeling. Why do we have to feel the same thing? Why do we have to agree?

Sometimes I see the realtor's sign for a home that will soon be sold, it says "under agreement." And then I think if the deal falls through a sign should be put up which reads "agreed to disagree." So why can't we agree to disagree. Because the one closest to me sees it as an act of disloyalty. I don't have the stomach for this fight and I've demonstrated so time and time again.