self-expression Archives - Everyday Integrity

January 18, 2021February 12, 2022

News from Jules | 01.18.21 | Detox Your Soul

The hallway was completely dark except for dim light at the bottom of the stairs. The top step was large enough for two people side-by-side, but I stood alone, in front of a large door. It seemed slightly ajar. But, as I started looking closer the light went out below. Before my eyes could adjust to the darkness, the walls seemed to be closing in. I held onto the fear for a prolonged moment before opening my eyes.

Phew, I was still safely wrapped in a blanket, sitting on a cushion on the ground, criss-cross-apple-sauce, as the sun rose.

During the second week of my annual detox, I added daily meditation prompts from Mark Nepo’s The Book of Awakening to my 15-minute sittings. The day’s prompt was “Seeing into Darkness.”

Relieved, I recognized the feeling of being constricted and compressed. I was scared of being conformed. I was scared of losing my sense of self—only recently recovered—or worse, of actually losing myself. The discomfort was familiar. And got me wondering more about the root of this fear.

As I woke up from a dream yesterday morning, I put two-and-two together. Is this my fear—or is this a fear I have taken on?

In the dream I was overservicing the needs of others—anticipating, attending to, taking care of everything—except for myself. Interestingly, I was wearing a green- and red-flowered apron that I made for my Mom in a sewing class when I was 7. The same apron I wore last month while baking Christmas cookies for my neighbors. Just like my Mom did.

Loving my Mom so much I paid close attention to her while I was growing up. I saw her struggle with self-care, as I imagine she may have also observed with her mother.

Just because we act in a way that’s based on what we know, what we saw, doesn’t mean it is who we are.

I pondered the details of the dream as I made my morning lemon water and sat down to meditate. Reading Sunday’s meditation reflection and daily prompt made so much sense: “Still, the cost of not being who you are is that while you’re busy pleasing everyone around you, a precious part of you is dying inside; in this case, there will be internal conflict to deal with—the friction of being invisible,” wrote Mark Nepo.

In one of my favorite photos of my Mom, Kathy, she’s on a mountain top with my Dad back when my parents were mountaineers. Polarized sunglasses lowered, she’s looking right at him taking the picture and sticking out her tongue. Playful, energetic, fun. In her late-20s. Before three kids. Before stepping behind the camera until we all finally left home for college and Kathy fully reappeared. This is the way I remember her before she unexpectedly passed away 18 years ago.

Just as I can’t ask her about her actual fears and struggles, I may never understand my own. But, every day I can choose to hold on or to release them.

Especially right now.

During cold, dark winter.

The fourth and final season in this growth cycle. A natural time for acknowledgment and release, for getting rid of toxic or unhealthy substances—of all the fears, ideas, beliefs, habits that no longer serve us. Is this actually me—or is this something I have taken on?

Detoxing your soul.

From here, from clarity, from curiosity, we can confidently see into the darkness.

May you stay true to yourself this week.

Love,
Jules

I share a lesson learned about integrity every Monday. Sign up for delivery right to your inbox. Want more? There’s lots more lessons learned here on my blog, so have fun exploring and commenting about your own insights!

December 14, 2020February 12, 2022

News from Jules | 12.14.20 | Getting Everything You Want

I thought I bought a Yin Yang sticker on Etsy, but when it arrived, I realized it was a decal—meant for a car, not for paper. Oops. The black side was actually white and the typically white side, well, didn’t exist. Double oops.

I wanted to cover up some random text inside a circle on the cover of my journal. It was regifted from a best friend, as I recall a find from her previous San Francisco China Town thrifting days. A circular Yin Yang symbol seemed perfect to represent this year’s theme: Balance.

But would the decal even attach? First, I needed something to go underneath.

My sticky fingers smooshed the tissue paper so that it wrinkled, no longer smooth but textured like paper pulp with flecks of gold leaf, which made the text beneath illegible. Then, holding my breath, I peeled back the two sides of the decal and slowly adhered the Yang and narrow outline of the Yin sides. The faded journal immediately went from dingy to delightful. I found two rhinestones randomly in my craft basket and stuck one on each of the elephant’s foreheads as a bindi. It was b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l!

When first gifted the journal, I totally judged it by the cover. Then by its square shape. It did not look like my favorite journals at all. I considered Goodwill. But, the thought did count and I put it in with my extra office supplies.

Everybody knows I love to write and reflect. Most people know I’ve journaled since I was 15 years old.

So I have received hundreds of diaries, journals and notebooks in my lifetime. Most of which I never used. Some went in my office supplies crate to maybe use someday, many were regifted, the rest sadly went to Goodwill.

I have a very specific size, cover, lined width, weight of paper and brand that I prefer.

So when I finished the last page of my favorite journal during my first year of Buy Nothing in 2016, I had an “Oh sugar” moment. Would I go months until the end of the year without journaling, without writing anything?

The unthinkable became the inevitable. I used one of the journals I already had. The first of several since I continued Buy Nothing for three more years (from 2016 to 2019). A poignant lesson about one’s perception of scarcity because only one exact thing will do. When in reality there’s often abundance all around us. And all that’s even needed is sufficiency.

Around the time last summer that my most recent journal was running out, I received the square one from my bestie.

Just when I needed one!

The universe provides.

And I used it, even though I still didn’t like the cover.

Last weekend, as I admired the newly embellished journal, I realized there were only 15 pages left. Oh no! It was too beautiful to be finished. My first thought was to not write, to save the paper, to make it last longer.

I felt attached.

But in clinging to it, I would deprive myself of doing something I love, of joy, of self-care.

The irony made me laugh. It was too perfect. Nonattachment is one of the many lessons about Balance that I need to learn this growth cycle.

I thought attachment meant literally being attached—the grasping for, the clinging to—so nonattachment just meant NOT being attached. But when I looked up the Buddhist meaning, it was actually about desire. Not wanting things at all.

Because desire causes suffering.

I have come a long way in my relationship to money, to stuff, to resources, to other people, to myself, but this is hard to imagine. Not wanting anything, not needing anything at all?

What if it’s not the wanting that causes suffering? What if it’s the rejecting, the not receiving what’s actually being provided, that causes suffering?

The unmet need or want that festers.

Instead, letting needs and wants be met, fulfilled, satisfied.

Getting everything you want. Everything you need.

And if not, letting it go.

Once again, in balance with what is.

Maybe that’s nonattachment.

May you allow all of your needs to be met this week.

Love,
Jules

September 1, 2020February 12, 2022

News from Jules | 08.31.20 | This Wild Ambition

I have a vague memory of a mouthful of thick, chalky dust. But, I was 4, just about to turn 5, that summer of 1987. So, the photos are much clearer than the memories.

After a week camping in the woods, I hiked 6 whole miles beside my Mom down from a lake in the Wallowa mountain range. My first hiking personal record. Of course, with those little legs, it probably took six hours, or more! And then in the home stretch, my tired legs tripped on a root. I face planted on the trail. In the photo, I am covered in dust from head to toe. No smile. Just a hardcore hiker’s stare.

As soon as I could hold my head up, I was in my parents’ pack and outside — rain or shine, hot or cold.

Growing up in the outdoors, I knew it wasn’t easy, it took work to be out there. Bugs, cuts, splinters, sunburns, fatigue, rain — a lot of it sucked. And then there were breathtaking rewards like lakes, wildflowers, mountains, fresh air, space. All together, it added up to adventure. Or so I thought. But, I was missing the point.

It wasn’t just about the adventure, the thrill and the challenge of outdoor recreation. I was being actively raised to have a relationship with nature. What I now see as one of the greatest gifts a parent can give, besides life, safety and love.

And in this relationship with nature a connection to my own spirit, and thus my own sense of spirituality.

Just as my parents had grown theirs after they uprooted from Boston and transplanted to Oregon in 1972. Immediately falling in love with Mt. Hood and everything at the next level, they spent the next six years before kids seeking their highest potential — physically, mentally and spiritually.

They may have felt the same awe as I do now:

Being dwarfed by giant Sequoias and Redwoods in old growth forests.
Seeing Mt. Rainier peaking out from the clouds in the distance.
Sitting beside the lapping waves, always ebbing and flowing as they touch the rocky shore.
Watching hermit crabs tickle an anemone while crawling around a tide pool.

This profound thought has echoed with me for weeks: Nature just knows. It just is. It just exists. None of it has an “identity.”

None of it is studying career and life discernment workbooks, wondering how to live out its calling. This “enlightened” human thing some of us do. It makes this thing we hold so sacred, our individual identity, seem well, mundane.

Yes, every part of nature has beauty, purpose, meaning of each its own, though its significance is not in simply being, but in contributing to the greater whole.

Today is my birthday. A day some cultures see as an opportunity for a fresh sense of identity. More than a marker of years, it represents a self-identified mastery of being. Just so, a few years ago I started using my favorite nickname, Jules, all the time.

Personal, loving, connected. It felt more “me” than Julie ever did.

I’ve spent my life seeking personal significance through my own self-expression. Ironically, as I’ve settled into being Jules “full-time,” I’ve released some of the need for a distinctive identity.

Today I am humbled by the bigger quest: Becoming one with all — mind, body and spirit aligned within. And without. Not just relating to nature, but being as an equal and raising our children to live this way from the start.

This is where my heart is at as I enter a new year: with wild ambitions of living more deeply in harmony with nature, with all others, and with my own nature. And intuiting how to make these truths more accessible to all.

May you feel peace this week by treating every day as a fresh start.

Love,
Jules

July 2, 2018February 12, 2022

News from Jules | 07.02.2018 | Are We Living What Matters Most?

There will be no parades, no Statue of Liberty crowns, no plastic flags, no strawberry, whip cream and blueberry decorated pound cakes for me this Wednesday.

My resistance?

No, actually just lack of plans and still limited on mobility.

Besides, that is not what this day—this declaration of independence—is actually about.

With everything going on, one could easily justify going “on strike” this Fourth of July.

And by “everything going on,” I mean this sense of one-thing-after-another-can’t-catch-a-break inertia.

This is what I’m hearing from folks in my life.

And, so much of what I’ve been feeling personally for the last few weeks.

But, wait. The other day, I stopped and wondered:Is it really one thing after another?

Or am I just looking for the things to add to this list now?
This list of how my life, my reality and the world is unraveling?
Maybe things are unraveling and/or maybe we’re choosing to focus on the parts that are falling apart.

Brene Brown reframed the midlife crisis as a “midlife unraveling” in her recent blog post:

The truth is that the midlife unraveling is a series of painful nudges strung together by low-grade anxiety and depression, quiet desperation, and an insidious loss of control.

Ugh. That sounds awful.

And honest.

And useful.

Why? Sounds like an opportunity to me.

To assess what is. And of that: what matters most?

And then the hard question: Are we actually living what matters most?

Because this is our legacy.

And this is what the next generation (heck, everyone, but especially kids) is taking in.

Not what we say, what we do.

Show, don’t tell, we’re told as writers.

So, what is this showy, plasticy, red-white-and-blue day about? Especially if this place we claim as our home is having a “midlife unraveling”?

It’s about living what matters most.

Not just “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” No, that’s the “tell.”

Independence, self-sufficiency, innovation, self-expression, transformation, adventure, and faith.

These are the values this country was founded from.

This is what we’re celebrating.

And all of the people who lived these self-evident values into colonies, into a country, into a society.

I believe that what matters most we often take for granted.

It’s good to have a nudge to pause and name what we know.

This Wednesday is a great time as you’re mesmerized by fireworks overhead or those cool, zinger bees that buzz around the ground, to reflect on these deepest values so that we may live them more intentionally.

Live them into the possibilities that always lie within.

May your week sparkle with meaning.

Love,
Jules

Tag: self-expression

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