I don’t have a secret treasure chest of fairy tales, beloved since my early years. Disney was just getting started back then. Mom was fond of Betsy & Tacy, which is a Minnesota thing, and of Little House on the Prairie. When I started reading on my own, Nancy Drew was a fav buddy. She had questions, for sure, Also answers! I liked them both!!!
Just now, as I’m causing these words to appear in my laptop, Leonard Cohen is singing Hallelujah across the room. (Well, not literally Leonard Cohen!) And, just between us, there are tears gathering in the corner of my eyes, as there often are when I hear those words.
Translated from the Hebrew, they mean something very close to praise the Lord! It’s all pretty much about trying to make it in this life and still have thanks to give.
And my #Filters are all a-twitter!
What to let in… and what to leave outside my awareness, like static, or the sound of falling leaves. And, yes… I’ve been watching the news, too, which means that a whole bunch of the stuff coming at me has been, shall we say, less than encouraging!
Fortunately, that’s not the only stuff I’m letting in! For example… fairy tales! Really!!! Not the what, so much, though that’s cool, but the why. The ancient tradition of using fairy tales to help beloved Littles begin to engage notions that they have neither context, nor brain maturity, to grasp, and to engage them safely.
Let’s admit it… it’s hard to learn new things when we’re just trying to survive!
Here’s kind of a roundabout example… Names!
The way we’d always done it, about names, was that women grew up with their fathers’ names and, when they married they became known by their husbands’ names. And that all seemed normal to me until I got divorced, as a very young mom, and tried to sort all the paperwork. Bank accounts. Birth certificates. Nursing School application forms.
Did you know that it wasn’t legal, in most of the United States, for a woman to have a checking account in her own name until 1974??? And, even after it was legal, it wasn’t easy. In fact, for most of her life, my widowed grandmother needed her bank accounts and property to be in the name of one son or another to be legal. (Yep… a bit of tangle, that… which I had no clue about, growing up!)
Let’s just say that gaining rights and autonomy is hard. Losing them is even harder. (And that story about Gramma is a huge #Filter for me. One that keeps me on the road!!!)
I’ll bet you have examples, too!
And, somewhere, even in the midst of all the chaos, I’m convinced that there’s a place where you feel called. A place that matters enough to edit old #Filters and add to your strategies and – you know – actually DO the next right thing!
Back in the day, when I was just beginning to learn all this, I kind of just bumbled along the survival path, noticing and wondering, until some new things got conscious. And I began to share those new things with coaching clients, engaged couples, church folks… learning more every step of the way – sorting and practicing. And NOW is the time! This world needs as many of us as possible on the road to the places we are called. We really can’t cave to the Big Bad Wolf!
YOUR next right thing, if you’re still here, is simple… and not even scary! Take a deep breath.
Check out all the details. A bit more backstory. And see yourself – place yourself! – in the circle that’s forming!
ps… YES! You get to paint, too. And this would be an awesome place, curious heart, to dip your toe into the magic pool of Intentional Creativity®. New artists totally welcome!!!
