Your best interest at heart...

A dear friend, mentor, colleague and protector of mine, "D," died just over one year ago.  When I learned that she was dying - from a terribly painful battle with pancreatic cancer - I was in a state of shock.  She was in her early 40's and she was someone I looked up to and who, to me, was the closest thing I would ever have to a big sister.  As the oldest sister myself, I spent my life worried about and on the lookout for my little sister but spent much of life without much protection for myself.  I never really learned - despite the many, many challenges in my life as a child - to be careful about who I trusted.  I was given a kind of innate naivete that has been a gift in life because I find myself in states of awe and wonder often, but at times it has also caused me to trust and believe some people who did not wish the best for me.

While my journey with this particular karma has become a great learning lesson, it has also caused me a fair bit of pain.  I am someone who still believes the best in people until they prove me wrong - but sometimes at the expense of something dear to me, like my heart or my trust.

I am reminded today of the guiding words my dear friend D. said to me often.  I spoke them just over a year ago at an event I hosted for 120 people.  She had passed away the night before and I woke the next morning with a heavy heart and I held her with me throughout my day and during my morning speech.  D. said to me years earlier and on quite a few occasions something along the lines of, "Amy, not everyone has your best interest at heart.  You have to find the people who do and be aware of those who don't."  It was not until the first time she said this to me that I was ever really consciously aware that people could be careless about the way they would treat me - or worse, be out to hurt me.  Yes, I had been hurt before but I had spent my life operating from a place of love for others and I assumed that everyone else did as well.  I was wrong.  And I was grateful that she cared enough to help me navigate some situations where people did not have my best interest at heart.

So I choose tonight to share her advice with you.  Be sure to always take care of yourself and look for the individuals in your life who do truly have your best interest at heart. If you can't tell, check your gut.  Pay attention to your dreams.  Ask those you trust for what they see.  There may be only a very few who have your best interest at heart.  Or there may be many.  But until we heal the pain and fear that exits in humanity, you must protect yourself from those whose intentions are not what is best for you.  And when you figure out that someone is betraying you, my advice is to send them loving kindness and wish for them that no one does them harm because they are coming from a place of being hurt.  ...But their hurt should not become yours.  So please, as My friend D's words and her face and her mannerisms linger in my mind right now, let me give this energy to you to use and stay safe along your journey in life.

Look for those who have your best interest at heart 

and let go of those who do not...

Thank you for watching over me and may you be at peace wherever you are, dear D.

Terrible at saying goodbye...

"If I could define enlightenment briefly 

I would say it is 'the quiet acceptance of what is'."

- Wayne Dyer

Maybe it's because Mom has just left and the weekend has only just begun.  Maybe it's because she was here for an entire week.  And maybe it's because we had so much fun together and she lives so far away that it's so hard for me to say goodbye.  And yes, all of these things are true but they are not the only reason it's hard for me to say goodbye.

I've always been bad at saying goodbye.  In fact, it runs in my family.  My grandmother takes the cake, though.  If there were a contest for long goodbyes, she'd win the blue ribbon AND the grand prize. It's nearly impossible to say goodbye to her on the phone - just as you've said your goodbyes and said several I Love You's, another important point (or, as is more often the case, something entirely irrelevant serving just as a reason to stay on the phone one minute longer) comes to mind that puts conversation back on the table (or on the phone line, as it were).  And we're all just as fabulously talented at it because we've learned from the Queen of Not Saying Goodbye.  We just don't like letting go.  Is it possible that a not completely unhealthy form of codependency runs in the genes of the women in my family?  

I think it's just as likely that it's hard for me to say goodbye because I live so far away from my family.  Mom lives the closest (329 miles away) and I see her the most - a few times each year.  My grandmother lives only 334 miles away but she can't do the 6 hour ride to see me anymore so I see her only once a year or so.  My sister used to live 4,466 miles away but she has recently relocated so that we are now only 2,401 miles apart.  Still, I'm pretty sure if we lived a reasonable 20 miles away we'd still have a hell of a time getting off the phone - all of us.  

Since moving 329 miles from where I grew up some ten years ago, it's been hard for me to adjust to not being around my family.  Because of circumstance growing up (my sister and I shared a room and occasionally a bed on and off throughout childhood - and my mother insisted that we room together at camp and girl scouts and sleep overs at my best friend's house), the four of us women spent an awful lot of time together.  In the same space.  For many, many years.  And then we all parted.  My sister 4,446 miles in one direction and I 316 miles in the opposite (I've since moved, adding 13 miles and a few dollars in tolls).  

I've always envied families who have the fortune (or misfortune as some might say) to live in the same area code.  Or families who have so many members that you can afford to lose one or two to distance while still keeping family mayhem in tact between the holidays.  I've learned, slowly, to allow friends to become like family but it's still always been hard for me to say goodbye, even to them.  

It's not that I need them around all the time - in fact, those who know me know that I need a good amount of time to myself to think and grow and meditate and do whatever the heck I please.  But it's still hard to let people go.  One of my very best girlfriends remains amazed at my ability to have faith in love and romantic relationships primarily because I remain surprisingly optimistic about love despite past indicators but also because it seems that I haven't always said goodbye when said indicators suggested that I should have.  Yup, I hung on longer than I should have - personal information, yes, but I know I'm not the only one.  Thankfully, I've lived and learned that lesson but saying goodbye to those I love remains difficult. This doesn't exactly line up with my spiritual way of seeing the world though so I'm trying to balance it all out.  

I happen to believe - in a very deep part of myself - that when people leave they are still with you in whatever capacity you carry them with you, be it memory, thought, prayer or simply by loving them from afar.  I don't believe in needing someone else to fill a part of yourself that needs to be filled (if you're empty anywhere, that's your karma to work on in this lifetime).  So if I don't need someone else,  if there's no dark shadowy part of me I'm trying to fill, and since I like to be alone to regenerate every day, and I happen to have lots and lots of friends, why has it been hard for me to say goodbye?  I've certainly gotten better at it and I'm getting better all the time, but still.  It's not my strong suit.  

Buddhism and the Dalai Lama teach us that attachment to external objects causes suffering.  He also says that love, compassion and inter-connectedness are the natural "needs" of all living things.  I suppose I have the kind of love and inter-connectedness with my mother, my sister and my grandmother that just makes it hard for us to say goodbye to one another - one obvious reason is because next time is often an unknown point in the future.  But I do believe that we are all connected all the time.  And because so many spiritual leaders speak of peace coming from acceptance of what is in the present moment, I will just accept that we are all terrible at saying goodbye and simply love what we have.

Or might it be that there's just something very human and sticky and inter-connected about saying goodbye to another human you are completely and unapologetically yourself with?  

Whatever the reason is, I will end with this:  To Mom, Gram and Suz, I accept the fact that we are all really, really bad at saying goodbye.  

I love you.  

Goodbye.  

Talk to you later.  

Are you going to comment on this?  

If not now, then later, right?  

Okay, Love you.  

Bye bye.  

Suz, have Mak call Auntie after nap time.  

Or Zoe.

Or maybe we can Skype?  

Okay, let's Skype.

Okay.

Love you.  

Byeeeeeeeeee.