Inspiring Women: Christa Gallopoulous: Journey with pain and fear to a beautiful now

Christa describes Carry It Forward as “A journey from here to there, pointing out little pieces of good along the way...”

What’s astounding for me, though, is following Christa’s journey from launching her site to acknowledging a painful personal history, as well as physical pain, to opening herself to what she’s experiencing right now:

“And I’m much more concerned with my own thoughts than what others think right now. I can’t tell you what a 180 that is. I’d be happy to give up a lot to just paint and write all day. Once upon a time, that would have scared me to death. …

I want truth. I want courage. I want bared souls and open hearts. …

And that wanting is somehow remaking me. I live with fear now, all the time. Maybe I always have. Now I greet it, pretty much 24/7, with open arms. I stretch my body and welcome its stories – the tales it has held for nearly a half century. I’m clearing it all out, taking a look, sorting what stays and what goes. I’m continually surprised, after years of doing my “work”, at how much is still there.”

(Looking at Christa’s tag cloud, fear appears but not as often as “a different way,” “hope,” and “incredible gifts.”)

She has an incredible eye for beauty, as you can see from her pictures that accompany her posts and also her gallery. The same openness about her experience Christa also manifests towards others she encounters upon her journey, especially with hard-wrought words of encouragement.

I’m grateful for Christa in my life today, she teaches me so much about fear, courage, resilience, acceptance, love and beauty.

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.

Run Like Hell

I am thinking of the Pink Floyd record Run Like Hell. It's not one of their best, IMHO, I'm more of a Dark Side of the Moon kind of guy or even Piper at the Gates of Dawn even though I have slightly terrifying memories of the latter. Run. Get out. I guess Updike wrote a whole book on this theme though I never got very far in it, last I remember the policeman was discussing with Rabbit why he could not engage in the activity of drinking with his wife.

The pendulum swinging between fear and trust. Both and. The people I know may know what I need better than me and I am an expert on myself, knowing things that are only part of my experience. (I think of the Johari window.) The terror one might feel upon discovery that someone one trusted is not who he or she seems to be, does not have the same interests, we are working at cross purposes, the rules of the game were not apparent. Maybe it is like that in divorce and raising children subsequently. Someone has everyday insight but may be too close to the situation, or may have primarily his interests, his secrets, his squalor, his inability to admit difficulty and accept help. The other may not have the courage, a condtioned response not to argue and say the truth, quickened by fear, tossed about by multiple perspectives, trying to decide what's fair rather than assert what he wants.

I don't know. I cannot reflect. This hasn't been very specific. I am thinking of an early Monty Python episode where John Cleese plays the cliched version of a cowboy and tells the ineffectual Michael Palin character "There's a time when a man has to stop running." Then there's the amazing story I heard at the Monti in Durham, NC last year, listen to the ending.