Category: Marriage

Family, Marriage, Meditation, Parenting

Listen, this is important…

Posted on by kosanford

photo (11)As anyone who has been in a relationship for any length of time knows, there is a big difference between hearing and listening. In the early days of any relationship, romantic or otherwise, we listen very carefully to the other person when they speak.  As we become more familiar with people we may hear them but not with the same attention.  I can recall with incredible clarity what Colin and I talked about on our first date, despite the eagle-sized butterflies in my stomach. I was as present and aware of every detail of the day as I have ever been.  If you asked me the details of a conversation from this past weekend I would have a harder time.  It is not for lack of interest.  I still think that at any given moment Colin is the most interesting person in the room, it’s just that familiarity makes it easy to confuse hearing and listening.

 

Hearing is what happens when I ask my children to empty the dishwasher and they don’t move.  They have heard me…but they aren’t listening.  Listening is what happens when you calmly tell them several hours later that ignoring my requests makes me feel rotten, and emptying the dishwasher and making beds is just being a part of the team.  Listening makes change, but in our family for people to listen to each other, voices can’t be raised and eye contact is necessary.  Yelling, snipping, or coming from a place of exasperation pretty much assures that no one in my house will listen to you.

 

Thich Nhat Hanh, a well known contemporary Buddhist scholar, talks about “listening deeply” or “listening skillfully.”  These are practices that one develops through meditation.  By learning to listen to the rhythms of our own mind we are better able to listen to other people.  We learn how to listen by being quiet and practicing non-judgmental awareness of what comes up in our own minds.  It is the same when we are talking to a friend, a stranger, a family member, we have to see that person as they are, not as we wish they were, not rush them through to express our opinion, or in the case of loved ones, without the layers of history between us.


Skillful listening is something we can all develop.  At one time or another it has come naturally to us: a friend in crisis, a new love, a child’s first words, but then we relax back into hearing rather than listening.  These days I am working on really listening deeply, giving those around me my total attention.  When I listen with my whole heart I am a better wife, mother, or friend. Like any practice it starts by noticing when you aren’t doing it, and gently drawing yourself back into the present moment.  Eventually it becomes easier, replacing the old habit of hearing, with a new habit of listening.

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Family, Marriage, Meditation, Parenting

A theme for the year?

Posted on by kosanford

Around the new year, there is always the discussion of resolutions and change. People set intentions and try, at least for a brief period of time, to be the best version of themselves possible.  I took a class recently with Nina Wise, a local meditation teacher, who said that she doesn’t bother with resolutions anymore because she felt like they had a built-in element of self loathing.  The idea that we need to change something doesn’t seem inherently like self loathing to me, but I understand how, for some people, making and breaking the same resolutions year after year might contribute to a lack of trust in themselves.

She suggested choosing a theme for the year, things like health, honesty, work or family.  Rather than setting goals that include specific elements, having a theme for the year just makes you more conscious of one aspect of your life.  For example, choosing family as a theme may mean that you are more inclined to arrange gatherings, are kinder to your relatives, or more mindful of the small gestures that matter like phone calls and notes to check in.  If your theme is health maybe it is more yoga and meditation, but also more time with friends who make you laugh, more massages and sleep.  Health doesn’t have to mean that you are in the gym three times a week for the month of January and never again.  Health as a theme means taking care of yourself as a whole person, and over a year that could be life changing.

She also spoke about honesty as a theme which I loved.  She suggested developing the habit of asking yourself whether or not your actions support your theme.  In the case of honesty, the questions look something like this:

Is this not true and not helpful? Don’t say it….

Is this not true but helpful? Don’t say it..

Is this true but not helpful? Don’t say it…

Is this true and helpful? Wait for the right time, and say it

The idea of being this mindful of speech is exciting to me. I know that I often speak out of habit, or boredom, or nervousness.  It is a discipline for me to hold a space in loving silence, a discipline that I have worked hard to develop.  My nature leans more toward giggly chattiness rather than thoughtful silence. I hope that this year I will learn how to wait for the right time to offer advice, or to collude with a friend.  I hope that my words will have more power if they are chosen with greater care. Mostly, I just hope that I am helpful.

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Family, Marriage, Meditation, Parenting, Yoga

You can always change the station….

Posted on by kosanford

This weekend, after our new kitchen rose to the occasion in a huge way, churning out meals and snacks for our whole family, I felt so full (literally and figuratively) and happy.  Being all gathered together in our new house felt exactly as I had hoped it would.  The sweet spot that lies between abundance and excess. On Saturday after the festivities wound down, I headed to a daylong yoga and meditation retreat. The day itself was grey and rainy and it felt so good to know that I would spend it quietly on my mat with no greater task than to listen.

 

There is nothing I love more than gathering with family and friends but I have learned that to do it well, I need to build in some quiet time on the back end. I can be completely present to those I love if I can practice that silently on my own. Too much silence and I get a little wacky; not enough, and I get even wackier.  Like anything else, I need balance between external merriment and a quiet internal landscape.

 

The workshop was great, a duet between two smart teachers. They skillfully wove yoga, meditation and dharma talks in such a way that at the end of the day, I was ready to go home because I was satisfied, neither stuffed or restless. Like a well-made meal, a workshop should be a good blend of spices and portions; too much and it’s like drinking from a fire hose, too little and you are left feeling empty.

 

During one of the meditations, our teacher Wes Nisker suggested that we view self-criticism as a misguided form of self-care; the idea that the internal voice that releases a steady stream of worries, critique and doubts is actually trying to help you. I thought this was a brilliant shift in perspective on that particular characteristic we all share. My favorite writer, Annie Lamott, calls the self criticism station in her head “k-fucked” radio. It’s the voice that makes it hard to try new things, or is convinced that at any moment everyone is going to find out you are a fraud and it’s curtains. We all have it, and for some people it’s louder than others. Learning to see it as a form of self care seems to make it easier to reconcile it. Rather than resent it, or try and control it, I love the idea of seeing it as a misguided form of self preservation. By thinking of it this way, it seems easier to shake it off. When some familiar worry or self doubt pops up it seems easier to smile and ignore it rather than feel like, “seriously, you again? Get lost..” Instead it becomes a worried, well meaning friend who can’t help themselves. You smile at their efforts and don’t listen to their advice.


We do ourselves no favors worrying about what could go wrong. Instead, we should be focusing our energies and attention on what is actually happening. Like so many things, it’s way harder than it sounds. But, maybe learning to see “k-fucked radio” as just one of our many channels, we will see that we can always change the station.

Family, Marriage, Meditation, Parenting, Special Needs, Yoga

Love is not a limited resource…..

Posted on by kosanford

One of my earliest memories is of  standing in the grocery store with my mother and looking at a total stranger, keeping my eyes on them until I felt like I loved them as much as my parents.  I remember playing this game in stores, restaurants, and on the highway, staring at strangers until I felt the sensations that I associated with love.  A feeling of warmth in my chest, a kind of tingling in my arms and hands, a sense of connection even though the person wasn’t someone I knew at all.  I guess from a very early age I was interested in how my mind could influence or create sensation in my body.

 

What I didn’t realize was that I was practicing my own form of a Loving Kindness meditation. Love is a virtually unlimited resource, it is what gets us up in the morning; it is what sustains us through our darkest hours and lifts us to our greatest joys.  In my own life I define love as a sense of connection and a generosity of spirit that makes me feel safe and expansive at the same time.  Sometimes when life is busy, or we are feeling run down, that sense of connection to others can feel out of reach.  Practicing a Loving Kindness meditation for just a few minutes a day can shift our whole sense of what interdependence feels like.  The formal practice of this meditation requires you to find a quiet place, and sit with eyes open or closed.  Start by visualizing someone who you love unconditionally.  Focus on the image of that person in your mind’s eye until you can feel the sensation in the body that you associate with love.  Often you will find that you are smiling.  You will send that person the message:

May you be happy

May you be healthy

May you be safe

May you be at ease

Repeat these phrases in your head a few times as you hold that image of your beloved person in your mind. Then the practice dictates replacing the image of that person with an image of yourself and sending yourself these very same messages.  From yourself you move to an acquaintance and eventually to someone with whom you have conflict.  Each time you repeat the same phrases, sending these messages of love and generosity out into the world.  The very last part of the practice is sending these messages universally in the hopes that they reach all who need them.

The formal practice of Loving Kindness meditation is intensely powerful, and I encourage everyone to explore it. Recently, I have found myself returning to my own made-up version of it from childhood. Practicing not in a quiet room away from the world but instead in the hardware store, or the library, focusing my attention on someone (usually their back, so it isn’t weird) until I can feel a sense of loving them.  There is something about this practice that makes me happy, that makes me feel like I have tapped into an amazing source of good feeling that exists all the time.  Whether it is practiced formally or informally, working to spread love and kindness in today’s busy, intensely complicated world seems like an awfully good use of one’s time

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Family, Marriage, Meditation

On any given day……..

Posted on by kosanford

mae every dayI have a very dear friend who lost both her father and beloved uncle in a very short period of time.  For years afterwards, when she was talking about any situation that was disappointing or inspired any feelings of sadness, she would start the sentence by saying, “I know no one is dead but…”  It was as if after the immense pain and trauma of the initial loss she felt she was never entitled to feel sad again.  I understand this; in the years since Mae’s diagnosis, the tsunami of disappointment and sadness that we wrestled with made any daily disappointments seem trivial.  For a long time I would fail to even register irritation of any kind, even when I started to return to myself.  I would dismiss annoyances by reminding myself that I had a child with Autism, and therefore this broken car mirror, or internet that won’t work, or any number of other minor bothers weren’t worth my time.

In some ways, though, this is problematic. After my wedding, a very joyful day, I didn’t imagine that I would never feel equal happiness again.  Nor did I compare everyday moments of contentment to the major rush of happiness that accompanied our wedding.  Imagine if after a long, delightful day at the beach with our family I turned to Colin and said, “Well that was fun. I am happy —  I mean not like wedding happy — but happy.” I am not sure he would feel like it was a positive assessment.

We don’t wear our happy experiences like armor to protect us from future happiness, so why do we feel that our painful experiences should protect us from future discomfort?  There is no amount of perspective that will make you immune to the ups and downs of an ordinary life.  Every day is filled with opportunities to feel virtually every emotion available.  In any given hour, I can have my feelings hurt, I can laugh, I can be embarassed, I can be in love.  That can go on all the time every day. It’s exhausting just thinking about it.

I think that perspective is only valuable if it doesn’t prevent you from really feeling everything, both good and bad.  It is okay to be annoyed even if it is just because your pedicure was smudged.  I can also be inordinately happy when Mae’s very expensive almond milk yogurts are on sale.  Yesterday, I was practically giddy because while I was walking the dog she expertly pooped in a mouse hole of some sort, which meant I did not have to bag it and carry it home.  It was thrilling.  I decided the dog was a genius, and my days of picking up poop were over. By the time I got home I had forgotten about it completely because I noticed that the molding under the door was loose and I was immediately absorbed in how to fix it.

It is unfortunate that we can never be inoculated against sadness, embarrassment or irritation. There is no quota on disappointment in life, some have more, some have less.  By the same token we have endless opportunities for joy; there is no limit on what can bring a smile to your face even in the darkest of moments.  I am grateful for the perspective that being a special needs parent has given me, I am empowered by it.  I never wonder what I am made of and that is a very good feeling.  At the same time, I have to remember that just because I have perspective doesn’t mean I should deny or ignore the ordinary bumps that come up in a day.  Some days are great: you get married, you have babies, you see old friends. Some moments are great: you laugh hard, your daughter speaks, your children are swimming together, your dog poops in a hole.  Some days are awful: your daughter is sick, you have crazy medical bills, your car won’t start, you have hurt the feelings of someone you love…Sometimes it can all happen in the same day, because life is like that. Just the way we would never say that a balanced meal is made up entirely of desserts a balanced life is filled with every emotion.  The important thing is to allow yourself to really feel, to really connect to the life that you are having, because up or down, it is the one you have.

 

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Family, Marriage, Parenting

I owe an apology…

Posted on by kosanford

photo (16)I owe an apology to every friend I have who has undertaken a house renovation.  I now understand that it really is all-consuming.  When you would talk to me about counter tops or which kind of door you should put on your bathroom, I was as bored as I appeared.  In my head I would be thinking that you should be grateful for the house you have and wish that you would stop talking about faucets.

I am sorry, I get it.  As we undertake the never ending project of this house I find myself compulsively reading magazines with titles like “Best of Kitchen and Bath” or losing myself for hours on www.remodalista.com I am on Pinterest so much that Colin was teasing me that I needed a pintervention.

It is of course a totally escapist pursuit.  We can’t help but imagine that the right flooring will lead to total familial bliss; the right arrangement of cabinetry and furniture and lifelong happiness will ensue.

Being able to organize or reorganize one’s space is a sense of control that in our chaotic always almost-slightly-out-of-control life I rarely experience.  Intellectually I know that there is not a renovation under the sun that will cause my child to speak, or make any one of us better or happier people.  We will just have a nicer more functional kitchen.  That knowledge, however, doesn’t make the planning less consuming.

The next time a friend asks me to admire her counters, or wants to discuss faucets I will do it with enthusiasm.  I will make every effort not to be impossibly bored but instead will recognize that the kitchen, living room or bathroom in question represents more than its four walls.  Right or wrong, it feels like an opportunity to shape your family’s experience of their day.  It is a luxury beyond measure to even dream of these things. It can feel ridiculous when many people in the world don’t have access to clean water to realize that you are falling asleep wondering if brushed nickel was the right choice for your faucet.  It’s important not to lose sight of that.

Like anything it is about keeping it in perspective. It is about remembering that your fixtures are probably not a subject of universal interest, while at the same time enjoying the process of creating a space for your family. I will not miss the tangerine walls of our current family room, or the crumbling cabinetry, but when it’s over and I have created what feels like the perfect space, I know I will miss the dreaming about it.  I will miss the possibility for improvement that these ugly rooms represent.  They are problems with solutions.  When I have solved them I may be forced to address the more complicated, less straightforward problems in our life.  I will miss the conversations about oak vs. pine when I am hiring a behaviorist to potty train my 6 year-old or I am sitting through tension-filled school meetings. But every time I put my hand down on my counters I will know that there is one problem I was able to solve; every time I see my family gathered in our kitchen I will smile and know that in some small way we have won that round.

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Family, Marriage, Meditation, Parenting

Can we ballpark it?

Posted on by kosanford

photo (16)I love routines.  I can happily eat the same breakfast for months, run the same route for years, and in so far as it is possible make each week similar to the one before it.  When I first met Colin I was fascinated by his disregard for routines.  He actively avoided creating them.  He would wake up at different times and some days eat breakfast and some days skip it.  He might exercise once a week or not at all.  The thought of living without routine exhausted me.  How do you know you can fit everything in? The reason Colin was able to live happily without routine was that he wasn’t especially concerned about fitting everything in.  He knew that each day would contain some meals, some work and some sleep and beyond that things could happen or not happen and the world could continue to turn.

This summer we have been in constant motion and maintaining my routines has been impossible.  We have driven across the country twice, the first time in two and a half days, and definitely a situation that does not lend itself to long runs, healthy breakfasts or quiet meditation. In the whirlwind of moving and traveling I have had to let go a little bit of my regular approach to life.  I remember once reading an article about a guy who ran two miles every day no matter what.  This meant that he had done laps in Newark airport, and would sometimes wake at two in the morning to fit his run in.  Clearly for him this had enormous value but I can’t imagine how tightly gripped he would have to be around the daily run to make it happen regardless of circumstance.

We are starting to settle in our new house, the kids will go back to school in the next few weeks and I will be able to return to some of my regular patterns.  There is certainly a part of me that is craving a return to an organized day — to know before it starts that there will be a time for play, rest and work.  On the other hand, I have learned a lot this summer about just going with the flow of each day.  I have taken some of the Colin approach: some days there is time for exercise, some days there isn’t.  If you don’t make it to the grocery store on Saturday morning, or wash the sheets on Sunday, it’s OK; the world will continue to turn.

Families need structure, Colin’s more free form approach was perfect for him before we had kids, but after kids it led to enough “tardies” that we got a note home from the school district.  When it comes to structure we have to meet in the middle.  Were it not for him I would probably be unabashedly running in Newark Airport or doing down dog on the train platform.  He has learned that when it comes to our kids the schedule can’t really be ballparked.  If school starts at 8:20 that doesn’t mean any time before 9….

In Buddhism we talk about the middle path, “not too tight, not too loose.” I think this is the perfect approach to the rhythms of our new life.  We can fit everything in, but we can also fit in some space.  Somewhere in the middle of my highly structured tendencies and Colin’s free form is the middle path. The middle path means that there is time for work, time for play and time for rest.   It just doesn’t have to be the same time every day — except for the 8:20 part.  They aren’t kidding about that. If you are too tightly gripped around your routine it becomes a crutch, you may be fitting everything in but to some degree you are just checking boxes.  If you are too loose, threads get dropped, kids are late, dogs go un-walked, and you can actually lose time scrambling to fit in the basics. So we are hoping to steer our family on the middle path, not too tight, not too loose.

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Family, Marriage, Parenting

There might even be cake…..

Posted on by kosanford

IMG_5216Almost five years ago today we flew home with Mae from China.  It happened to be my 34th birthday and as we chased my birthday around the world I turned 34 over a seemingly endless day.  The night before we left China we went out for a festive dinner.  We had so much to celebrate.  We had officially adopted Mae and received her visa that morning which meant that the years of chasing paper were over.  We sat around a giant round table, me, Colin, the boys, Mae, my parents, my brother and his then-girlfriend, now wife.  I remember there were some toasts made, and presents exchanged.  My brother, who lived in Beijing, even arranged for a birthday cake and candles to appear.  It was a perfect evening.

The thing I remember most clearly about that night was the sense that this is what a family looks like.  We had two new additions Mae and Sarabeth both of whom I now cannot imagine our lives without.  But that night as I looked around the table, at my parents whose faces and presences are some of my most beloved and familiar, at my sweet boys who were only 3 and 5, at my patient and incredible husband,at my beautiful daughter, at my brother who is also one of my dearest friends and his joyous girlfriend who I knew was the real thing, I was unbelievably happy.  The little room with this giant table and all of these people I loved was the only place I wanted to be.  We were laughing and eating, and reveling in being together.  We had, over the last few weeks, been on an enormous journey.  From the moment we boarded the plane in Newark with the fear that if someone on board had swine flu we could all be quarantined, to that moment in the restaurant a lifetime of things had happened.

By that evening, I knew in my heart that Mae had some sort of serious condition.  I didn’t know if it was permanent, or what we were up against, but I did know that I loved her with every ounce of me. That night was a celebration of so much, it wasn’t really a celebration of my birthday, or Mae’s adoption, it was a celebration of our family.  A family that was in the process of growing and changing as we sat in that very room.  A family that had over the course of the previous two weeks experienced every emotion possible.  Joy at meeting Mae, sadness at understanding how sick she really was, fear that our paperwork would not come together as planned.  We were exhausted, and it was also extremely hot and humid in China which is never a value add for us. But we had made it through the two weeks. We had this incredible new little person in our lives and could not have done it without everyone gathered in that room.

As a family we adopted Mae, as a family we have met her challenges, as a family we have been through a lot since that dinner almost five years ago. We have been reminded that no matter how much you love someone you cannot wave a magic wand and make their pain disappear, and because they are your family you cannot look away either.  So much has happened since that night, in five years we have experienced enormous joy and plenty of heartbreak but one thing I absolutely know is true; we are a family with so much to be happy about.  This coming weekend we will all be together again.  We will gather around a big table, together for the first time in quite awhile. There will be lots of laughter and tall tales and hopefully cake. But the best part is that I will be able to look around the room and know that there is no place else any of us would rather be.

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Family, Marriage, Meditation, Parenting

Grateful for champagne problems

Posted on by kosanford

photo (11)My new favorite phrase is “champagne problems.”  A friend of mine used it recently to describe the intense angst that people she knew were experiencing about their bright, healthy, normal kids not getting into competitive private schools.  We both have special needs kids and would like very much to have our greatest fear about our children be that they won’t get into a top tier college.

Yesterday, in the middle of a beautiful day, I found myself with a free hour.  I decided to sit outside and read my brother’s book.  First the Fed Ex guy came, then a garden crew showed up at the house next door, the the propane guy came to fill the tank.  Each interruption made me more irritated.  I was feeling cheated out of my quiet hour in the sun.  As my blood pressure started to rise I began to feel sorry for myself that my one quiet hour of the day was being ruined, I heard the phrase champagne problems in my head and had to laugh.

Sometimes it’s important to have champagne problems.  I can’t walk around all the time thinking about world hunger, climate change, or what will happen in my own future and that of those I love.  I am not sure how much fun I would be having if I walked around all the time intensely focused on all my fears.  We should be mindful of the realities of our life, and of the greater world.  We should live in a way that aligns with our values: recycle, be kind to others, do your best, but also give yourself a break.

Trouble arises when we can’t tell the difference between champagne problems and genuine heartbreak.  We all struggle with real problems and real insecurities, but it’s easy to distract ourselves with superficial ones.  Perspective is being able to separate an irritation from a crisis. Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference because our bodies respond to them similarly.

The gritting of teeth, the tightness of shoulders and the elevated heart rate are the body’s way of sensing and dealing with danger.  The trouble is that a driver in front of you going slowly, or a quiet afternoon being ruined by noise are not danger.  They are irritations or champagne problems.

I am learning that I need to spend some time each week on a walk or a run reflecting on how I am responding to the unexpected ups and downs in my life.  If we aren’t careful we can form habits that turn everything into a calamity when really very few things are. A champagne problem is one that I can catch and release quickly, I can be disappointed or irritated for a few minutes and then let it go.  I know I need to conserve my emotional resources for the moments that matter both good and bad, because life is certainly filled with both.

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Family, Marriage, Meditation, Parenting

Why is cynical cool?

Posted on by kosanford

I really, really have tried to love the show Girls.  I think Lena Dunham is smart and funny.  She has written things in the New Yorker that have caused me to laugh out loud.  The movie she made right out of college; Tiny Furniture was clever and witty.  The other night, Colin and the kids were gone and I decided that I would watch Girls.  I downloaded a bunch of episodes really wanting to find myself in one of those glassy eyed, zoned out states that occasionally feels really good.  I applaud the use of regular bodies, and I do remember feeling and creating situations that were dramatic during that stage of my life.  I think it attempts to be honest and accurately portrays that strange in-between stage that well educated women in their twenties can have.  They are smart and motivated, but not totally sure what they should want.

The thing that makes it almost un-watchable for me despite my best efforts is the cynicism and the sarcasm.  Being cynical means that you fundamentally believe that people are completely motivated by self interest.  It means that you live in a perpetual state of distrust.  It is the combination of distrust and lethargy that weaves through every episode that makes the show unsatisfying to me.

Distrust and lethargy are the antithesis of an awake and calm mind. Part of being able to really see and accept what is around us is trusting that the ordinary is extraordinary.  When we approach things with cynicism we start with a closed door and don’t believe it can be opened. When you are in your twenties, the world is filled with possibility.  If you approach it with cynicism you miss it.  Girls does not seem like a coming of age show to me because the girls all seem so world weary already.

There is one character, Shoshana who rather than approaching things with the Eeyore like attitude of her peers is made into a cartoon.  Her optimism and sweetness seems to make her a punch line, an innocent fool who somehow managed to sneak into the cool crowd.  Edgy and cool seem to only exist at the expense of generosity and kindness. I can’t think of anything edgier and more dangerous than living life wholeheartedly, allowing yourself to be vulnerable.  Instead, nudity and tattoos is passed off as groundbreaking.

I have learned that the more difficult life becomes the more important it is to greet it with an open mind.  Things can get very hard: children get sick, parents get older, financial situations change.  If we greet these changes as if we expected them, then we don’t really learn from them.  Instead we are bulldozed by them. Periods of calm and good health in life are a gift if we respond to them with anything but appreciation we are cheating ourselves. The expectation should never be that the good times will always roll.  They most definitely will not.  In every disappointment there is a chance to grow and learn and change but only if we don’t live life protecting ourselves with cynicism and lethargy.

Being cynical does not protect you from life’s disasters big or small, but it does prevent you from seeing and delighting in the ordinary.  When we stop connecting with the happiness of an ordinary day then a kind of spiritual paralysis sets in. Girls is the kind of show that perpetuates the notion that to be smart, cool and urban you have to be totally self interested. I refuse to believe that’s true, I believe that you can be intelligent and funny without being cynical and mean.  I think that waking up every morning and expecting that people are doing their best is a much better outlook than deciding that everyone I meet is lame and a liar.

These days I think that life’s challenges are best handled with optimism and humor. It is both more effective and more fun than the alternative…It just may not make for good television.

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