I had an aha moment as I was walking down the hallway at work the other day on a little scenic route past Flare Magazine‘s steamers, stylists and clothing racks — the novelty of which remains untarnished, especially because I’m a huge fan of MTV’s….

On the recommendation of Caroline Dupont and Oprah, I’ve been reading Geneen Roth‘s bestselling book Women, Food and God: an Unexpected Path to Almost Everything.

The book came so highly recommended that I just had to make sense of it. And I’ve been working really hard to apply the great lessons in this book to my life; but, in the meantime, I’ve been eating when I’m not hungry and, mostly, the wrong foods. It made sense to me that one’s relationship with food could be, as the subtitle of the book says, “An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything,” but only theoretically. I couldn’t quite pin down how it could apply to me practically.

But here’s the thing. You know how I’ve been waking up 2 hours early every day to do my rigorous Ashtanga yoga practice — sweating it out on the mat and pacifying the Rascal, pushing couches out of my face while in shoulderstand (seriously), or tearing growling, screaming cats and dog away from each other while trying to breathe deep, long ujayii breaths in forward bend? Well, you know, some things just don’t work. As much as I wanted to do everything right, to practice real, authentic yoga every single morning except Saturdays and “moon days”, it just wasn’t feasible. Waking myself up every morning to basically restrict myself for 2 hours was doing harm. And it was causing me to lose control in other areas. I was eating more. Running to Starbucks a sweaty mess, straight from the hot studio. Can I please have a grande soy no-water tazo chai? *glargh*

It was the food, that dang chai addiction, that showed me what’s really going on with me. A sweet, cinnamony looking glass….

Walking down that long hallway past the pretty people and posters and amazing clothes, I realized: The more I restrict myself the more out of control my diet gets.

So the yoga was getting too hard. Too forced. Everything, motherhood, was getting too hard. Too forced. And the old ways were coming back: the TIRED, the chai lattes, the cookies…the cookies.

Then I realized, just as I passed the fashion rack — AHA! The “doorway” that Geneen Roth talks about isn’t that one eating meltdown. No. It’s the patterns. The fall after fall after fall off the wagon. When do they happen? What’s going on when I fall?

When I eat poorly — really poorly — it MEANS I’M RESTRICTING MYSELF TOO MUCH. It means it’s time for a break. Time to crawl back into my shell and give myself permission to rest.

REST.

So, instead of trapping myself on the mat for two hours first thing in the morning, I’m waking up a little later and going for a walk with Betty White. I’m taking the kids for hikes, which are usually colossal epic FAILS (for another blog post), but beautiful….

I’m going to the yoga studio (two yoga studios — one for rigor and one for…rest) to practice when I can, and fitting fun yoga into some afternoons. It’s healthier for my kids to see me actually enjoying this healthy passion of mine, rather than struggling to get through it.

My eating is the key. The “doorway.” It tells me when I fall into those patterns of restriction, when I’m being too hard on myself, when I need to take a break, sit back, and enjoy life…. Enjoy life. #Concept.

So, as Roth recommends (read it!), I’m going back to my body, becoming aware of my breath and giving myself permission to chill. Oh, man, PERMISSION. Allowing Permission herself to melt over me like a like warm glinting maple syrup….. Mmmmm, syrup…. I don’t have to do anything. Anything. I don’t even have to please you right now….

But, love….

Tonight I made a lentil soup and this fabulous green bean dish (recipe to come). I tasted everything, and I felt something warm and bright and ray-like in my belly — happiness?

Love!

xo Haley-O

Rascal said the weirdest thing to me the other day from the backseat of the car. It was too weird, too funny, too sacred to pull over the car (screeeeeech) and tweet.

I’m driving. I’m driving. And all of a sudden I hear a quiet voice in the backseat. Before I tell you what this quiet voice said, let me remind you that he’s TWO AND A HALF.

So, I’m driving. I’m driving. And all of a sudden I hear a quiet voice in the backseat, just loud enough to pierce through his sister’s dialogue with her doll:

“Mama,” he said, “AM I WEIRD?”

“Am I weird?”

“Am I weird?”

It sounded more like “weewd,” for the record, but I heard it.

“Am I weird, Mama?”

If I were a different kind of blogger, or maybe if I were feeling less tired, less sick (this cold…), I’d sit here analyzing it. I’d contemplate its origins, possibilities. I mean, I’ve always thought I had to censor my little weight preoccupation for my daughter’s sake — but never my weird….

Am I weird? Yes. A lot less weird than I used to be, alas. But I still have my quirks. I have a dog named Betty White (who could really use a groom, now that you mention it — she’s booked for next week)….

I’m not into tarot cards anymore, but I do love crystals. I really really love crystals. I’m usually wearing one on my neck or carrying one in my pocket. I’m not quite as advanced as Spencer Pratt or anything….

But I love my crystals. And to calm the storm that is Rascal’s general state of mind lately — with the constant crying and screaming — I got myself a really pretty pink quartz necklace, and I got him an agate dragon skin stone….

Don’t laugh! He loves it….

If he’s wearing it, I tell him to hold it up and say “DRAGON WARRIOR” when I sense him slipping into tantrums. Recently, though, he replaced the crystal with a giant triceratops doll that he loves….

…He loves to jump around with it, saying, “ribbit. ribbit. ribbit.” Weird?!

I’m not who you thought I was, now, am I? I might just be more than a little weird for you. A total Internet kook! But, sadly, it feels like my quirks have all but vanished in my extreme busy-ness and the emotional storms of toddlerhood. Aside from The Crystals, I pretty much go to work, come home, play with my son, pick up his sister from camp, make dinner, work some more, read in bed and go to sleep.

Then I wake up disgustingly early, and I practice yoga for 2 hours….Weird? Or just crazy? Or the smartest, most normal thing one could ever do to keep up with life without totally losing oneself, or even one’s weird, in the busy-ness, in speeding time (so fast — have you noticed?).

As for my son? I don’t know where the question — “Mama, am I weird?” — came from. And I’m not going to analyze it. I’m simply going to bask in the weirdness of it. And keep laughing.

Love!

xo Haley-O

Once we have reached the desired end, we think, we will turn back to purify and consecrate the means. Once the war we’re fighting for peace is won, then the generals will become saints, the burned children will proclaim in the heaven that their suffering is well repaid, the poisoned forests will turn green again. Once we have peace, we say, or abundance or justice or truth, or comfort, everything will be right. Well, it’s an old dream.

It’s a vicious illusion. For the discipline of ends is no discipline at all. The end is preserved in the means; a desirable end may forever perish in the wrong means. Hope lives in the means, not in the end. Art does not survive in its revelations, or agriculture in its products, or craftsmanship in its artifacts, or civilization in its monuments, or faith in its relics.

– Wendell Berry

Forgive me, Gorgeouses, for I hath ingested NO CHAI LATTES in two whole days. In fact, I have not had a stitch of sugar, nor a drop of caffeine.

Forgive me, Gorgeouses, for I hath exhaustion, anger and frustration — all the usual “evil” emotions that come-out-come-out with detoxification, with withdrawal.

Forgive me, Gorgeouses, for I hath posted LONG QUOTE (above) that I totally want you to read. It came to me today via iPod, via him, as usual. Which wouldn’t be such a big deal, if I didn’t ALSO get an email from her with a similar message — reminding me not to focus so much on “goals,” dietary and otherwise, but instead to make “one self-supportive choice at a time”:

What prevents you from doing things for yourself is not a lack of goals or intentions as you probably know. What would it be like to simply be kind to yourself? To rest, to eat nourishing food, to take your body out for some fresh air and movement, to allow yourself to feel your emotions, to make space for quiet time, to pray…? To trust that wholeness is already here, and not something you have to create or find? (Email, Caroline Dupont)

To think, I’d get such similar messages in two days — two days sans chai latte. So I’m DONE with GOALS, the “old dream,” “vicious illusion.” We are now, officially, all about the means (even though this, too, can become a goal if taken too seriously). It’s like a total sea change for someone as goal-oriented as I am — my entire life.

One self-supporting choice at a time.

Am I wrong? Or, could many of us use this beautiful, sage reminder?

Tomorrow is Josh and my 7th wedding anniversary. SEVENTH. Will I have a chai latte? Probably. Because if I don’t, I might be as miserable as I was today….

Or I may make the ostensibly more self-supporting choice and have a cleansing swamp smoothie…. Or or OR…, maybe for tomorrow — my SEVENTH anniversary — cake and chai lattes are self-supporting, and definitely spouse-supporting, choices?

For our anniversary tomorrow, Josh and I are taking a staycation. My parents are bravely taking the kids all day and overnight, AND they set us up in a five-star hotel in the heart of downtown Toronto — breakfast and a “special package” included! We are going to relax, enjoy, savour, indulge, hold hands, see ALICE IN WONDERLAND in 3D….

So, anyway, yes, I’m taking all the sage advice that came barreling in, welcomed, these past couple of days.  I’m thinking about my exhausting, habitual, annoying goal-making — a habit that’s even stronger, to think, than the chai latte. Without creating another goal, I’m going to simply recognize this goal-making energy, the striving, reaching, the insatiable aiming high, and to gently rein it in, rein myself back….

Kind of like this blog….

Forgive me Gorgeouses, for I don’t always know why I blog here. And I do think about this often. I don’t know where this blog’s going, for how long, to what end…. And that’s finally okay. I may lose readers and gain readers, as the game goes. Yet I plow on. To no end. With no goal.

And, so, I. I put away the arrows. I stand on this ground. Being with what’s here. Like it, or not.

Love!

xo Haley-O

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As you may have noticed in my last post, I’m on a bit of a spiritual kick. And, I know, that doesn’t explain a thing about WHAT THE HELL that post was, but that’s the point (or the non-point). Maybe “spiritual” isn’t the right word. And hopefully this isn’t a “kick.” Because, as I said in that last post, I’m happy — happy not trying to be happy. Because trying to be happy presupposes that I’m not happy. And if I step outside my bumbling brain for a bit and look at things as they are, I’m damn happy. Yeeaahh.

“Spiritual” is definitely not the right word either. I’ve sort of been-there-done-that, and it didn’t stick. It was definitely a “kick.” I don’t even really care if the psychic across the road from the big bookstore I frequent is really psychic or not, or even if I have a “spirit guide,” and what his name is, or if my dead cat is communicating with me when I’m sleeping. Because, at least for me, it doesn’t matter. Matter.

Regular yoga practice is teaching me this. How good practicing yoga makes me feel doesn’t matter. Matter. What matters is what’s here, what’s clear. My cat sitting on my lap, purring, now turning to me with stinky wet kisses, the click-clicking of the keys under my fingertips, my daughter upstairs serenading her dad: “it’s not my fault, the police gave me a ticket once because it’s not catching up to you, na-na-na-na-na” (#wtf?). Time passes quickly, and I’m done squandering my life.

So there are things to let go of. Me, the clinger. Addictions, fears, desires, anxieties. This doesn’t mean I plan on repressing or transcending these things, or never-ever-having-a-Starbucks-soy-no-water-tazo-chai-ever-again-EVER. It just means watching, noticing, observing the patterns, the wanting, the cravings — human stuff that we all get sucked into, stuck in. Not caring where it all comes from or why.

This is all a little something I’m learning from him (ignore the old caption — try)…

…and through him (who happens to have been my best friend when I was around 4-6 years old — so, kind of kismet)…

One day, I’ll have the guts to go to Michael Stone’s studio, maybe take a class, maybe let him know the impact he’s had on my life and, so, the lives around me….

Don’t worry, I’m still loving The Real Housewives. Just dancing more to the beat of my own drummer. And maybe even to a little Alicia Keys, because…

…because that’s what my girls are playing because we’re going to NYC — Blogher ’10 — this summer with a whole bunch of other fabulous people whom I genuinely love. Come with us!? God help me, my family’s coming, too! But they’ll be staying with Josh’s sister and husband in Brooklyn. Yes, it will be quite the roadtrip. And I expect to overhear many a backseat conversation, such as this little nugget from today:

TANGENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All that matters: my amazing family, good friends, authenticity (but not the cliche kind), the world, this earth, “this ground.” What doesn’t matter: “big bloggers,” stats, twitter followers, fame, what-if’s, what so-and-so thinks of how my kid behaved in the restaurant, or what so-and-so thinks of what I’m wearing (again)…. None of it matters. Too much squandering. Squandering.

So, basically, while I’m not going to give up squandering altogether (you’d have to PAY me to give up Housewives right now, and, hmmm, twitter), I’m a little more focused on what matters, on what’s real, here, and now, on this earth.

One more tweet for the road – because it came out of nowhere last week and is, dare I say, très apropos….

It’s about being here and now and balanced within an extremely unbalanced society, ecology, economy, etc., etc….

Kind of like this wonderful boy, my blog friend (and fellow T-Dot book clubber) Sandra Diaz‘s eight-year-old son Zachary, raising thousands of dollars for assaulted women, and volunteering any way he can for other important charities. He was honoured at Disney on Ice the other night. That’s yoga — as opposed to “blissing out” in hot pink lululemons. I got to take a picture….

Though it’s a fabulous workout and great for the nervous system, the heart of yoga is in the here and now. In not escaping but being present and active anywhere that you’re needed. Most people don’t realize it. Most people don’t realize how enlightening it is to really be in the here and now — through yoga, meditation, and even just reading (maybe even a blog post?) about it.

Bottom line in 140 characters or less? I don’t care about small stuff anymore. Dunzo. (Okay more than 140 characters.) I will continue to wear my flaws on my sleeve. But I’ll let them be. I’ll go with the flow and focus on what matters. Really matters.

It’s a work in progress…, of course.

People ask me about yoga and yoga books/dvds all the time. So, basically: Michael’s books (he has three of them now) — Cheaty RECOMMENDS.

Love!

xo Haley-O

“Oh, I’m sorry! My name’s Nick. I’m a reporter out here in Santa Monica, and I just finished up an interview with Julia [Child] for our paper out here.”

I was really going to have to get my phone number unlisted.

“I’d like to get your thoughts on some things. Because I asked her about you, and frankly, she was kind of a pill about it. Is this a bad time?”

“Oh. No. It’s fine.”

When I hung up the phone five minutes later, I felt numb.

…I sat on the couch beside Eric…. “That was a reporter from California. He just interviewed Julia. He asked her about me. She hates me.” I giggled, like I do in these breathless situations. ”She thinks I’m not respectful or not serious or something.”

…Eric put his arm over my shoulder. “What is she, ninety?”

“Ninety-One,” I sniffled.

“See? She probably doesn’t have the first idea what a blog is.“

…”I don’t know. Maybe she thinks I’m taking advantage or I’m — I’m not –” I was taken surprise by a sudden rush of tears. “I thought I was — I’m sorry if I –”

And then abruptly I was wailing….

–Julie Powell, Julie and Julia, pp. 333-334

So there was a Simon Fraser University Masters thesis written extensively about me and seven other “mommybloggers” (grrr…). I heard about it yesterday, of all places, when I was sitting at Podcamp TO, listening to a panel discussion, of all things, about what happens when social media goes wrong. My heart started pounding when I heard — my face turned beat red, palms sweating, hands shaking.

I’m used to people responding to my individual posts in the comments, on twitter, even on email. I’m definitely not used to someone reading my blog from start to finish, making gross assumptions based on posts here and there, and then publishing these gross assumptions and frustrating misreadings in a thesis — both offline and on — and not telling me about it, even after the fact.

At first I was furious. And I definitely (over)reacted on twitter:

I got really upset that The Thesis wasn’t in fact about the “works” themselves or the genre of blogging, as indicated in The Thesis’ abstract, and that, rather, it was about our lives, our income, whether or not we love that our children are away (for 2.5 hours, hello) at preschool, and so on. When Danigirl sent me the abstract (which was all I could see for hours until I got home to open the pdf file that contained The Thesis), I was a little flattered and excited. To be studied in the context of Bakhtin’s Dialogic, for example, and to be categorized as “Canadian Women’s Literature,” was so cool. Bring it on!

But, when I opened the document and searched my name…, I was floored. All those assumptions about all sorts of irrelevant stuff. It hurt. Bad.

I think the thing that bothered me most was when The Thesis writer suggested that I may have contrived how I started blogging in the first place. I told the world that Ali Martell introduced me to blogging when the Monkey was 8 months old, and that’s the truth — no questions asked. But, according to The Thesis writer, I “contrived” this bit in order to appear flippy and erratic or whatever. In another post, she ingeniously discovers, I mention that Jennifer Lawrence, who happens to be the author of the blog MUBAR (which no longer exists), helped me out when I was clinically depressed while pregnant with the Monkey. (And, by the way, an article was written about my prenatal depression and published in some major psychiatry journal — APA? — and, you betcha, the author asked my permission even though they used an alias and I’d never find it in a million years!). Yes, Jen Lawrence helped me, but it was OVER THE PHONE. I didn’t know she had a blog, or what a blog was.

Why does this bother me? Because it’s an insult to my integrity as a blogger. SURE, I might exaggerate things — for entertainment’s sake — here and there, and less so these days. But I would never flat-out lie. I would never “contrive” something. To me, that’s the ultimate insult to a blogger.

Somewhere, way out yonder in the internet ether, there’s a great old email conversation in which Ali reveals to me, “I HAVE A BLOG,” and to which I reply, “WHAT’S A BLOG???”

Anyway.

Whatever. I’m really okay now. I’m flattered that I’m in an MA thesis, even though the reading of “me” is false and unflattering for the most part. As you can see on twitter, I felt beyond violated and uncomfortable when I first read the thesis. But, I haven’t looked at it since, and I’ll never look at it again — and I feel better. And I can laugh at the broad assumptions, as I’ve also done on twitter:

And, this one….

Oops, how’d that tweet get there? (Disclosure: CONTRIVED.)

Here, see I can make light of The Thesis writer’s totally unfounded statement that I am the most “affluent” of all the bloggers (if she only knew!?):

Should the student have contacted me? It would have been the nice and, I think, scholarly thing to do.

Do I blame the student? Do I “hate” her SORT OF like Julia Child hated Julia Powell? No. I’ve done a Master’s Thesis, and I know how difficult that can be on several levels. This writer wrote the thesis in 2008. She’s obviously young, likely not a mother. There I go assuming, though….

As with all controversies surrounding “mommyblogging,”  people are now taking the opportunity to troll thoughtful posts on the subject and preach about the ethics of “mommyblogging.” We’re putting ourselves and our kids out there for scrutiny and misinterpretation, so apparently we should just suck it up, not react, and just plain expect this. But, surely we’re allowed to “giggle” or “wail.” On twitter?

Know what happened to me today? I went to Starbucks (shut it — I’m not affluent — I got a card for Valentine’s Day). Rascal and I sat beside a woman who was typing on her mini laptop. When she got up to leave, she said:

You know, I’ve been watching you, and you’re a wonderful mother. I see the way you talk to him and look at him, the way he looks at you. And I don’t see that all the time, unfortunately. It’s amazing to watch you. And I’m a therapist….

That compliment, that observation of ME, was so beautiful and so welcomed given my current frustration. And, so often, my readers and fellow bloggers, whether in comments, twitter, or email, make me feel THAT good with their genuine, caring feedback and friendship.

You can’t read a blog and claim to know the writer. As I stated several days ago on twitter,

You can’t judge a blogger by his or her blog. It’s not a novel. It’s its own genre. One absolutely worth exploring at an academic level.

If you’d like to see a copy of The Thesis, just contact me — which is easy to do for the record….

Love!

xo Haley-O