Furry Wombat

The title of today’s post is the little benediction I say to myself at the end of each practice.

I flew back from Cali today. A good visit with some honest conversation at the last minute. It’s always at the last minute — who wants to ruin a perfectly nice visit by discussing difficult things. We do have such fun together and yet we have created for ourselves a geographical impasse that we need to figure out. I am reassured that we will.  Channels of communication are back up and running and that is the most important thing. Open heart, open heart, open heart…  Even typing that, my shoulders relax.

H observed the disconnect between my compassionate, sweet, talks to animals self and my professional, competitive, social dominant self.  Perhaps one day, these selves will be better integrated but, boy, they sure can cause each other trouble.  I find it continually surprising that I have a social-dominant self.  I learned over the years to project a confidence that I didn’t necessary feel and, as a result, have mean-girl potential that I was unaware of.  When I was growing up, my initially shy but evolving social-worker mother taught assertiveness training groups.  There were books around the house called “Don’t say Yes when you want to say No”.  I wonder if the effect of this on a little girl who perhaps didn’t really need assertiveness training was to make her a little too socially dominant? Kind words, kind words, kind words….

We went to visit my folks in LA for the weekend of the 4th.  They called me a few days before because when they cut a trip short due to the sudden death of a dear friend.   They needed to be home to help their newly-widowed friend through the first few days.  This called for a visit, so we did.  And we walked on the beach! And we cooked!  We made sticky buns, Thai curry, and a patriotic sponge cake with fresh fruit and cream.  I’m glad we went.