Losing Mom ~ The Co-Active Way

 

I am Helen.

Losing a parent isn’t supposed to be easy.  If they’ve loved you well, or if you’ve done your work about how they didn’t, the loss can feel unbearable.  When we’re in pain we often default to our most toxic behaviors.  When our mom died recently that was definitely an option.  As I grieve my mother’s death, I also sit in awe of my siblings, sisters-in-love, and that rising generation of my children, niece, nephews, and their loves.  We could have put all of our tools in the closet and forgotten what we know.  We could have set aside what we teach and preach and become lesser versions of ourselves.  It’s always an option.  We are creatures of habit ~ and choice ~ after all.

We could have.  And we didn’t.

Instead, we experienced the beauty and power of what we teach profoundly.

I could outline every bit of each of CTI‘s models – The Co-Active Coaching Model, The Co-Active Leadership Model, and the Co-Active Leadership Map – and give you point by point examples of how we lived from them in the weeks leading up to and following Mom’s death.  Since that would be overkill (!) I’ll point to those that keep whispering to me in these days since everyone’s left the cocoon and entered back into ordinary time.

Dance in This Moment:  We thought she had longer.  Every time we came up with a plan, the circumstances changed.  Staying fluid, flexible, and willing to both have a plan and throw it out the window at any given moment proved to be vitally important.   People die at their own pace.  We can’t slow it down or speed it up.  It just is what it is.  We must be willing and able to dance in each moment and choose again and again what to do and how to be.

Ask for what you need:  Because things change, and there are things that are vitally important in our lives that we mustn’t miss, it’s so crucial to not fall victim to our life’s demands.  We asked for help, we urged each other to act, we got replacements, we let go of short-term needs, we waited a little longer or came a little sooner.  We moved things, cancelled things, and let our Naturally, Creative, Resourceful and Whole world be okay while we moved through this vital time in our lives.  Because we also fail at this, we are forgiving ourselves and each other for where we didn’t do this enough or where the impact was not a good one!

Design a Stake ~ Align Around It:  In Leadership we say every experience or event you lead needs a stake.  Imagine a wooden stake pounded into the ground holding the Big Top securely to handle anything the crowds or winds throw at it.  A Stake is a core concept or idea – a belief or imperative – that the leaders are tethered to.  It’s that idea that, no matter how wrong things sometimes feel like they’re going, remembering it helps you find your way back to center.  Our family designed a stake for how we’d be together in the days after Mom’s passing as we planned the Memorial Service and sorted her estate.  Together, we came up with “When we let go and let God, Magic and Integrity happen.”  This was co-created and co-held.  Again and again we found our way back to our center and to each other by remembering our stake.  I believe most of us are still holding it even as we’re finding our way back to life in a post-Mom world.

Listen from the Heart:  This was key throughout the process.  We turned up the volume on it each morning after she died by passing a talking stick in her living room.  A Talking Stick Ceremony is used in many indigenous traditions as a way of having every voice be heard, grounding our words in community, and putting our hearts in a place of receiving and being received.  Each morning we gathered and passed the stick sunwise (clockwise).  One by one,  we each stated our name, spoke from our hearts whatever was present in that moment, and the rest of us listened fully from our hearts. When the words of each person were complete, they said “I have spoken” or “These are my words”.  It’s common for the group to respond with “Ho”, which means essentially “My heart has heard your heart”.  Sometimes, in honor of Mom, we threw in a “Thankka God!” for good measure!  These daily ceremonies grounded us, made way for heartbreak and humor, were a place to share the wild dreams we were having, and  could be thought-filled, teary, blah, frustrated, or whatever.  There was room for all of it with no judgement or care-taking.  This was my children’s first go at a talking stick ceremony, and I must say they added considerably to the experience.  These were some of my most sacred memories from our time together.

Create from Self, Other, Nothing, and Everything:  Yes.  All of it.  Do this.

Honor your Truth ~ Be true to who you are:  In Leadership, we have a powerful typing system called “I AM” Typing.  The purpose is to find that most authentic, impactful, engaging, innate leader within each of us.  Though not quite EVERY member of my family has done CTI’s Leadership Program (though 5 of us actually LEAD it!), I experienced every member of my family being fully who they are and being honored and appreciated for that.    I think every type was represented.  Family roles were respected and honored, but not defaulted to.  Needs didn’t trump wants nor the other way around.  Egos were in check.  Honesty and Love both had room.

Co AND Active – Be AND Do:  There’s so much to feel when a great one dies.  There’s also so much to do!  It’s easy to get lost in one or the other.  Really easy.  It’s rare to be in such an intense experience and have so much room for BOTH to be fully honored, respected, and have space made for them.  The daily talking stick got the CO side of things, or Being side of things, firmly established up front.  By taking time for this, when it was complete each day we could all feel the urgency and desire to get ACTIVE or get Doing.  There was MUCH to DO… and without the Being having full permission, the doing never would have been so manageable.

STAY… and Stay some more:  The Co-Active Leadership Map has “Stay” on it twice because it’s so important!  It says “Stay”… then “Level 3″… then “Stay” again.  There were so many times when I wanted to GO… to run… to not feel… to eat or drink or disappear into numbness.  It continues as the days and weeks go by.  And yet, STAY we must!  I must stay with this process, stay with my stake, stay with myself, my family, and with the empty hole left behind by my mother… I must listen into the “level 3” aka the environment, the energy, the calling of Mother Life… and I must stay some more.  The next URGE is on the horizon.  What I need and what the world needs will be calling soon… if I don’t STAY, I’ll never hear it.  So stay we did, stay we must, and stay I will.

There are many stories of family discord, disaster, and resentment driven separation in the wake of loss.  My hope is that if even one part of this process was meaningful to you, that you’ll carry it into your next time of intensity.  Lead from whichever part of the experience you’re called to lead from, and make it different from what Life’s default settings would ask it to become.  Let’s plant the seeds of change in whatever system we’re called to lead in ~ family or otherwise ~ shall we?

These are my words.

Margo House bedecked in seed packets of forget-me-nots, daisies (Marguerites), and bursting with the blooms of the seeds of change she planted throughout her impactful life.

Deathwatch and Mediporn

I’m dying. Every day I’m a day closer to being dead. Cells die off constantly throughout my body. And if I’m lucky and intentional enough about it, old habits, rules, ideas, and useless behaviors die along with those cells.

I’m being born. Every day, new cells in me are created. Every day new life emerges in this very body bringing me more alive all the time. New ideas emerge, new thoughts, relationships, and neural pathways are born bringing me ever closer to the Light we all strive for.

I’m living. Each day that my heart is beating, my lungs are doing their job, and the neurons keep firing; I am living. Each moment that I seek new learning, share with others, or engage in anything that lights my fire – I am very, very ALIVE.

Which part of me are you going to interact with? The dying part? The being created anew part? Or the living part? They all matter. They all have relevance… a particular role to play in this cycle of Life.

When I asked my client today, “What are the conversations you’re avoiding?” he replied with, “I don’t talk to people who are on deathwatch any more.” When I asked him to elaborate he described those people who don’t know how to deal with the fact his illness is terminal, they don’t know how to relate to him as a living being, but rather because they’re so distressed by the idea they’ll lose him one day and that they won’t know how to handle that themselves; they seem to be just waiting for him to die. They’re on deathwatch.

When time is in short supply, and the energy one has to share with any given person in a day is limited, the last thing someone who is dancing with an illness needs is to be the caretaker in a conversation – the one making it okay for everyone else that they happen to be dying a little faster than the rest of us probably are.

I asked if he was tired of people resorting to asking for report outs about his current physical state. After chatting about how we all tend to let our curiosity be about ailments, effects of medication, and have an incessant need to know why this or that happened, he blurted out “Mediporn!”

Have a Healthy Co-Active Summit 2014!

On April 10^th, 2014 about 650 people from around the world will be gathering for CTI’s Co-Active Summit 2014. This is the 2^nd ever Summit. The last was held in Marco Island, FL in February of 2011. I am beyond excited about this Summit!  And to be perfectly honest – a wee bit nervous.  You see I spent most of the last Summit in my hotel room, in bed, with a burning fever, launching myself into the transformational ride of my life. Many of you came with me on that journey in one form or another. Since from ‘Me to We’ is the Summit theme, these ideas are my contribution to keep the ‘me’ of myself and the ‘we’ of us all healthy.

If you won’t be attending the Summit in person, these tips may still apply to both how you can support a healthy Summit for all, and they could help keep yourself healthy in those intense life moments.

1. Come well rested. So often we head into travel already exhausted. People are coming from around the world. Many will be road weary and jet lagged. The more rested the whole of us can be, the more the individuals can rest into knowing the experience is well held when others need to catch up. There will be plenty of energy for all when we lean in together.

2. Everything is nothing with a twist – Begin with a breath… 
   I love this image! To me it illustrates moving from the self, me in the center, into the larger whole. When I twist that ‘0’ into an infinity symbol, it leads me to my breath. As I breathe in and fill myself up, I must exhale and expand into the space. As I empty myself, I must then refill from the space before I offer myself to it again. We can start anywhere on the infinity loop… we just have to begin.

3. Support the Leadership.   This will be an amazing experience that will fill us all up, as long as we support the leadership in every moment. From every corner of the room, from every seat in the house, Leadership is emerging. The more we can support, celebrate, champion, and take it when it’s ours, the more filling and less draining this will be.
4. Nap! In Embodying Well-Being, author Julie Henderson writes that napping helps you learn from whatever you’ve just been doing. Even if you take a 1 to 3 minute nap, it will help incorporate the learning into the system. I believe we will be learning A LOT at the Summit. So, we will need a LOT of little naps so our systems don’t get overwhelmed and can integrate all that juicy learning.
5. Listen to your body. Always. What does it need? Water? Sunshine? To breathe more? Move? Rest? Hugs? Good food? Less wine? Listen… it’s telling you.
6. Stay in the flow. If you’re receiving too much, give. If you’re giving too much, receive. This connects with #2, only it goes beyond the breath. Most of us lean more in one direction than the other – either we give more than we receive, or we take more than we give. In a Summit environment, we can maintain our equilibrium by balancing these out. If I feel overwhelmed by all the attention coming my way, I need to let it pass through me, then shift and give to others. If I’m feeling drained from giving too much, I need to breathe in what’s there and lean into what others can give.
7. Tend the coals. Passion gets ignited in an environment where people on purpose come together to learn, grow, and shift consciousness. It’s easy to turn a small fire into a blaze and have it burn out. Instead, we need to build a strong ‘bed of passion’ as in ‘bed of coals’ so that we can sustain a long-burning fire within
8. Hydrate. Being in Napa, it’s easy to think drinking wine is hydrating. Um, water folks. Don’t forget to drink water too
9. Ask for help. BEFORE all else fails, remember to ask for help as needed. Being a Leader does not mean you must do it all alone. Me to We. We do it together.
10. PLAY!!  Have a BLAST!!  Don’t hold back!  This is our one chance for THIS moment. Don’t regret not having living, loving, and playing FULLY!

 

What tips do you have to add?  I always appreciate your comments and the chance to interact with and learn from you.

See you at the Summit! I plan to be in good health before, during, and after. Though falling ill last time grew me tons, I’ve “been there done that, got the T-shirt!”, as they say.   This year, let’s ALL have a Healthy Summit!

Love,

Helen

Coaches: Market to Awakeness

For 17 years I’ve been coaching clients and keeping my private coaching practice nicely filled ~ in spite of not having a website, not having a declared niche, waiting 13 years to get a business card,  and never attending a single official networking event.  In reality, I do network like mad because I lead workshops that train people to become Co-Active Coaches and Leaders, I lead and attend retreats and conferences, I go to exotic places (like the grocery store), and Facebook is a 24/7 networking party begging participation.  In the last few days, I’ve been linking random thoughts to share with you as a way to think about things to make getting clients natural and easy.

Believe it or not, my thinking starts with a little iPhone app called ‘Sleep Cycle’.  This is the most fascinating thing!  For those of you not yet enamored with it, here’s how it works:  Set the alarm for when you want to wake up and choose a window of time prior to your wake-up time within which you’d like to be awakened.  I like 30 minutes.  Then place the phone face down on your bed, under the sheet, and fall asleep.  Feel free to fall asleep to the sound of waves or rain and such if you like.  The phone feels the vibration of the bed and determines how deep your sleep based on its sensing system.  It graphs this for you and gives you a nice little read out of your sleep cycle.  The coolest part is that it determines when you are the MOST awake in that 30 minutes prior to alarm time and ever so gently wakes you up right then.  It doesn’t rip you out of your deepest sleep, but rather it whispers you awake when you’re on the verge of awakening.  It’s hard to wake up crabby when sweet bells are chiming and cheering my nearly awake self on!

The next thought is inspired by something I’m studying that I’m totally not qualified to teach or explain just yet!  Rather than give you the language or try to share the teachings, I’ll give you my very over-simplified language for it.  (The terms have been changed to protect the innocence of the true brilliance of the teachings from the newbie I am!)  People can be divided into two basic categories: those who are walking the Earth but not yet awake… and those who are WIDE AWAKE or fully conscious.  Let’s call the first group the ‘Sleep Walkers’; those who go through the motions of life, but have not yet awakened to the full potential of life and their role in it.  ‘Awake Humans’, on the other hand, are wide awake and understand that they are part of something larger than themselves… perhaps Divine in nature.  They pay attention and know the path they’re on is one of evolving consciousness.

So…. I was thinking…. as coaches we need to be looking for those ‘Sleep Walkers’ that are the most ready to awaken and just give them a gentle tap… a whisper… a simple ‘chime’. Too often coaches market to those who are in their deepest state of sleep by marketing always to the ‘need’ or ‘lack’ in people. They wonder why it’s hard to get a yes. (Think of how hard it is to awaken a child from a deep sleep… it’s nearly impossible!)  If we catch folks who are on the brink of moving from ‘Sleep Walkers’ to ‘Awake Humans’, and we catch them when they are at their peak of wakefulness in their sleep, they will hear the call!  If we whisper or chime the bell in the ears of those who are in their Awakened Humanness already, and again we look for when they too are most primed and ready, they will heed the call.  And man-oh-man, are they fun to coach!

If nothing else, I say it’s way more fun and satisfying to look for awakeness in the world than try to awaken people from their deepest sleeps.

What say you, oh wise ones?  I’m always eager to dialogue with you!

Psssssst, are you AWAKE?

Peace,
Helen

Assumed Blessings

The day we met - 9/26/91

It’s natural to assume that a mother being handed the most beautiful baby boy imaginable would feel blessed.  Add to the equation the fact the mother couldn’t bear children of her own, and of course this is an extraordinary blessing.  One by one, people showered their well wishes and gaped in awe at how lucky we were.  They brought the cutest little clothes and said things like, “You must be so happy” and “Amazing!  What a miracle!  How fortunate you are!”  Trouble is, a part of me was miserable.

Misleading Previews

Imprisoned by my own thoughts and feelings

It’s time to change the movie trailer in my mind.  For far too long, some of the images that I’ve carried around just don’t support the truth of who I am and who I’m becoming.  The painting above is a great example of that.  This is a mixed-media piece I did back in about 1987.  For lack of a better title, and since it reflected how I felt when I painted it, I called it ‘Self Portrait’.  If this were an image in the previews to the movie of my life, imagine the film that would follow.

Though most previews intend to lure one in to want to watch a film, the movie trailer in my mind to the film of my parenting life is loaded with all of my most horrific parenting moments.  Every metaphorical explosion, chase scene, stinging word, monster mama bits – all those snippets run over and over again in my mind and remind me of a film I’d never want to see, let alone star in.

Love Changes Everything

Many years ago I got to see Michael Ball sing this on Broadway in Andrew Lloyd Weber‘s short-lived musical ‘Aspects of Love‘.  Though undeniably schmaltzy, the song stuck in my head, like any classic Broadway show tune does.  Though the musical was one of the biggest flops in Broadway history, every now and then some life or love thing happens that sends me digging in my CD pile so I can give it another listen.  Tonight, when this randomly got stuck in my head again, I turned to YouTube.  Each version seems sappier than the one before it, yet if you listen to the words, they capture an essential truth I’ve been experiencing.

A couple of days ago I got to share stories with a favorite client from years ago.  He shared his harrowing tales of a month in the ICU and I shared mine.  His story was so different in many ways, and I felt grateful that my journey was so short and simple in comparison to his.  He fought for his life with every fiber of his being.  He was young, just getting started in his career, and full of possibilities when a skiing accident left him literally shattered.  He shared that he used to dream while on the ventilator of what he could do with his life if he could just get the use of one finger and a thumb.  He fantasized about the paintings he’d paint, the feats he’d accomplish, the difference he could make… if only he’d get to be a quadriplegic.  And the thing he remembered most from all of it?  The Love.  The incredible Love that was