“No One Told Me”

“No One Told Me”

I can’t count how many times in my life I have thought this…

“NO ONE TOLD ME.” I thought, following the separation that resulted from a decade inside a failing marriage.

“NO ONE TOLD ME.” I thought driving home to Dallas from Los Angeles, after dropping my first-born baby girl at college.  

And yet again, 4 years later:  “NO ONE TOLD ME.” I cried entering my empty home after taking my last child, my son, to college.  

“NO ONE TOLD ME.” I said angrily while driving home in 2014 upon receiving a diagnosis of PMR (Polymyalgia Rheumatica).

“NO ONE TOLD ME.” I reflect today as I recognize that our country is engaged in a kind of political divisiveness and violence that lead to the storming of the capital on January 6th, 2020 and to an assassin’s bullet nearly killing former President Trump at an outdoor rally on July 13th, 2024.

NO ONE TOLD ME…

That this life would increasingly stun and humble me again!  And yet, again! Must I constantly surrender the idea that through my actions/choices today, I can safely insure the future I want tomorrow?  Must uncertainty forever reign supreme?

Was this the point all along?  

I find this both cruel AND merciful.  Maybe akin to transition labor in the birth process.  Is there no other way for us to learn?  Surely there must be, because this feels needlessly harsh.  

But is it? 

If I compare my disclosures that began this post to birthing a child, they too have all the signs of a new life.  Indeed, each of those events “schooled my intelligence to make it a soul” (John Keats). Each was a disruption of an old order, and an announcement of a new one coming into being.  Let’s hear from a young David Whyte, probably around 35 years old, when he penned the poem, NO ONE TOLD ME.  I suspect he too was on the cusp of a new epoch in his life. There must have been some annunciation which called an end to his former life or his former understanding of how to navigate his life. 

NO ONE TOLD ME by David Whyte

No one told me
it would lead to this.
No one said
there would be secrets
I would not want to know.

No one told me about seeing,
seeing brought me
loss and a darkness I could not hold.

No one told me about writing
or speaking.
Speaking and writing poetry
I unsheathed the sharp edge
of experience that led me here.

No one told me
it could not be put away.
I was told once, only,
in a whisper,
“The blade is so sharp—
It cuts things together
—not apart.”

This is no comfort.
My future is full of blood,
from being blindfold,
hands outstretched,
feeling a way along its firm edge.

And after reading President Joseph R. Biden’s July 8, 2024 letter to Democrats, the stanza immediately above grabbed my attention. It did again, after learning the assassination attempt on former President Trump. And yet again, with the 7.21.24 announcement that President Biden would not run for re-election.

I was told once, only,
in a whisper,
“The blade is so sharp—
It cuts things together
—not apart.”

Is the poem pointing me toward some kind of guidance for my troubled heart and soul in that next stanza? “My country ‘tis of thee” will you remain a land of liberty, for all?  With even the Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney Republicans concerned by our nation’s current attraction to autocracy. These knife blades of sudden change are indeed sharp. The ever present risk of political violence seems to live just under the surface of our daily round. As well as climate catastrophes of wild weather patterns and storms as well as the worldwide political upheavals and violence. As this swirls around me now, I find myself where the poet left the poem:

“This is no comfort.
My future is full of blood,
from being blindfold,
hands outstretched,
feeling a way along its firm edge.”

But here too,  is there also a kind of guidance? 

My future full of blood, (the ugliness of fear mongering, the potential of political assassinations, rumored threats with language like “revolution” and “civil war,” potentially the worst hurricane season underway as the war in Ukraine and in Gaza continue on without apparent end in sight) from being blindfold (unable to see the future) hands outstretched feeling a way along its firm edge.  That last phrase…hands outstretched… implies both a kind of agency, (I make the choice to reach out) and a kind of need.  What a paradox!  I am both in need of visible and invisible help and while possessing agency within me to move, albeit carefully along some firm edge. 

What is that firm edge? 

My abiding trust and faith in becoming.  Mine and my country’s.  Like all those other “NO ONE TOLD ME” moments in my life, I will again move along the firm edge of my true values, my soul’s code, knowing that there will be new life ahead, together, even if I cannot see how it will come to be.

“Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul?”

John Keats

To which I respond, “I do John Keats, and your words become my firm edge as I find my way.”

Let Joy Chose You…

I needed this poem, when my wise friend Amanda sent it to me on December 11th.  I would need it more each day after.  

Joy Chose You

Donna Ashworth from her book Wild Hope: Healing Words to Find Light on Dark Days

Joy does not arrive with a  fan fair

on a red carpet strewn

with flowers of a perfect life

joy sneaks in

as you pour a cup of coffee

watching the sun

hit your favorite tree

just right

and you usher joy away

because you are not ready for her

your house is not as it should be

for such a distinguished guest

but joy, you see

cares nothing for your messy home

or your bank balance

or your waistline

joy is supposed to slither through

the cracks of your imperfect life

that’s how joy works

you cannot truly invite her

you can only be ready

when she appears

and hug her with meaning

because in this very moment

joy chose you.

I had spent the last few weeks busily “preparing” for this joy-filled season yet somehow missed Joy trying to wriggle in.  The road blocks were the usual suspects,  things conceived with joy and her cousin delight in mind, but taken over by the spirit of perfectionism and its cousin duty.  Decorating my home and running errands for my favorite holiday tradition, a solstice dinner party with dear friends,  preparing for the perfect holiday road trip to Santa Fe -  where we pack all the right things to snack and enjoy,  year-end work with clients, gifts to family, clients, and friends near and far, and various holiday get-togethers and events.

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that by the time our guests arrived on Solstice night my brain was so full that joy struggled mightily to inch her way into my awareness.

It turns out, I am a limited human being and not a constantly executing machine.  A limited AND aging human, thus even more limited. I come from German, Polish and French ancestors. With that DNA comes a stubborn quality that kept me doubling down on willfully resisting these limitations.  As a result, I ushered Joy away often this month. I didn’t have time to sit and receive her, because I needed to prepare for her!  

AND YES,  I can see exactly how crazy this sounds putting it on paper, but at the time, it seemed so rational.  I ran around, bought, decorated, and prepared for JOY! And in doing so, I missed her tiptoeing in. Only in reading this poem and writing this post (after all the planning and preparation) is it obvious to me that Joy lives in making contact with the present.  She resides in the ordinary and mundane.  And like the poet claims when she says,  ”I cannot truly invite her (Joy) in, I can only be ready for her when she appears and hug her close because in this very moment, Joy chose me.”  My job was to be ready, NOT perfect with an empty To Do list.   Only with an internal stillness and some awareness beyond that endless list, could Joy have found me.  

Ironically, all of 2023 the whiteboard/design board in my office has had written on it in bold letters:

JUST MAKE CONTACT

It is true that we teach best what we most need to learn.  Joy needs me to “just make contact” with this moment, AND I desperately need that same contact. I need to touch with the world of sensory material and motion.  The world that exists outside my brain and beyond my lists and plans.  It insists on my attention, and requires me to make contact in order for me to experience it.  And without that attention and contact how can Joy possibly find me?

…joy sneaks in

as you pour a cup of coffee

watching the sun

hit your favorite tree

just right…

If you are feeling a bit estranged from even minor Joys in your life at times, as I have been often this year, it may not be about us.  I wonder if contemporary life is less hospitable to joy?  If true, maybe this poem offers a remedy we might use to feel more at home in our experience of living.  The siren song of “performing” our lives, living up to some standard, internal or external may actually take us farther from the experience of living our lives.   The poet, Naomi Shihab Nye once urged us to live so poems can find us.  This poem suggests we live so Joy might find us.

As we collectively imagine “beginning again”  at the approach of a new year, together let’s consider finding our unique way of living, so Joy (and poems) might find us.  May we all make contact more often with our experience of the ordinary moments, even the tedious ones.  And hold each one worthwhile and singular, just as we do our ideas of the extraordinary and the perfect.   

May it be so.

Nancy

For those of you looking for a practice to notice and receive the ordinary joys in your present life, feel free to contact me directly at https://www.nancywonders.com/contact

Also you can check out the 15-minute video by Rick Hanson called Taking in the Good, which has a one minute practice.  

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA3EGx46r4Q

What Mothering Truly Means

To women AND men everywhere, mothering is not gendered.  At least not to my eye. It is the quality of affirming the heart of another being, of attunement that allows another to know they are seen and valued for their being and not their doing.  Mothering means listening others into deeper contact with that which is essential and eternal and beyond the realm of doing and resume.  I know. My father turned out to have the gift of mothering.

But mothering is something else as well.  It is seeing one’s own and another’s “flaws” “defects” and “deficits” as equally essential and required for their life purpose and for their own becoming … and for ours.  This is perhaps the most difficult of the relationship experiences we humans are asked to submit to. To surrender our preferences for other people’s positive aspects (our own too) and learn to fully welcome the difficult aspects of others (and oneself) with a sense of curiosity and wonder.  To trust that the prickly parts are FOR them and FOR us too.

Just as the obstacles in life are not in the way of the path, they are the path. This is true because the obstacles turn out to be necessary to bring our hidden potential to the surface. Let’s turn toward those road blocks with expectancy, even wonder. Ask, “How is this FOR me?” Or “How can I turn this into something that is FOR me?” Or “20 years from now, when I look back at this road block, how do I want to tell the story about how I chose to met this moment?” Then let your imagination out to wander around and see what it brings home to you.

To unconditionally love ourselves or another person, especially our children is maybe the hardest of tasks to complete. To my eye, it seems to require the better part of a life to learn. Just as a human being is not fully grown (brain development is complete) until somewhere between 28 and 32 years of age, it takes a long time to truly mother yourself or anyone else. Give yourself grace. Be generous to self and others with your gaze. Because as Anne Lamott reminds us: “We are all just walking each other home.”

Each of you love someone or something enough to offer them/it this clear-eyed mercy and reverence. We are all sacred. We are of the stars. Our prickly parts too! Maybe especially those! Happy Mother’s Day to us all.

For Better and For Worse

FOR BETTER AND FOR WORSE

It is the one year anniversary of my Brother Robert G Wonders sudden death via a massive heart attack.  

I am forever changed.  My world.  Our world is also forever changed.

For Better and for Worse.

First “The  Better”:

I learned that death allows us to see a person whole; to do that thing, that is so arduous while they walk among  us … namely accept,  even embrace ALL of them.  Not just the parts we enjoy or that make our lives easier but all those  pesky, sometimes prickly other things too…for example, my brother was notorious for facing away from people in conversation. Yes, you heard right. He would literally turn his back on the conversation even as he spoke!  I believe, It was how he coped with too much social stimulation for his capacity. You might have guessed he  lived alone. You might also have guessed that It was hard to not feel he was somehow turning his back on you, and it was easy to perceive his behavior as rude or even as rejection. It was not. He loved us mightily. The depth of  his constant love has taken up residence in  my belly and this helps me move onto a landscape that includes him  only  as memory not as an embodied presence.

Yet, even knowing the truth and  constancy of his love, while he  was still living sometimes, if   I was feeling beleaguered by life, or just tired, I  found myself wishing he was not like he was and more like I wanted him to be.  But now, one year out, I take that all back.  I would give all I own to have him at the table, looking the  other direction!  Even that edge in his voice at times, what I wouldn’t give to have it back too.  Who knew I would miss those pesky, prickly parts?  Actually,  I might even miss them the most! Wild, hey?!

Poet David Whyte wrote “what we strive for in  perfection does not turn us into the lit angel we desire.”  It is his imperfections I miss the most.  That is where his humanity was most evident.

So “the Better”? Now when someone is showing up, being themselves, but those behaviors bother me, I say to myself  “I will miss this too, maybe the most, when s/he is no longer here.”  And amazingly, because this is such a real and recent experience,  I go from a small (or large) irritated feeling to a deep and abiding gratitude for this person in my life, just as they are.  

It is magic this shift from resisting reality (wishing they were  different) to a full throated embrace of them as they are. Brother Bob’s death, so recent and unexpected, is particularly potent and poignant for this psychological Ju Jitsu.  It isn’t intellectual for me now,  it is now visceral, because his absence is also visceral, which takes me to …

The Worse:

He. Is. Gone.

I will not see his hands working on some project in his work room.  And with those hands also went my father’s, his father’s  hands.   They were almost identical.  Bob reminded me/us so often of our late father.  University Math Professor dad loved to work with wood, as did his son.  And it doesn’t stop there.  My brother had so many of dad’s expressions.  The way their eyes registered delight in a story just told or the look just before they would share a joke. The way Bob would throw his head back to laugh. What I would not give to see that again and to hear that  laugh?!   

“The Worse” is the physicality of the loss of him.  I and his other two sisters, even nieces, nephews and nephew-in-laws have many of his physical possessions. His red two story craftsman tool chest is now mine, as well as kitchenware and  clothing.  His things bring him alive in memory which of course is bittersweet and also meaningful. He was mine. He was ours for 65  years and we were all his.  What  a gift and …

“The Worse” is a lifetime of small things.  He will never again open a car door for  me, or ask quietly, “Do you need anything, Nancy?”  I will never see him beam that fantastic smile when my children speak on a zoom call or tease my sister Karen or show up at my sister Mimi’s home to help out with ever so many  things, really “all the things.”  His quiet way of serving, easy to miss when he was alive, but now  impossible to not miss. 

In the play, Our Town, which touches on these matters a woman who has recently died, wrestles one day back on earth from the gods.  Oh how wonderful that would be to put our little band of four Wonders children back together for just one day.  To  smile sweetly at Bob’s turned back and to be able to share the too often not expressed,  but nonetheless deep and abiding love and regard, we all have for each other.  Cliche as it is, but nonetheless true, Love is all there truly  is. All that matters.

RIP Robert Gerard Wonders

Youngest child of Robert and Mary Wonders

You were and are so very well loved.

Looking at You, Joy!

Looking at you, Joy!

I am looking at the feathery fingers of purple Mexican Sage bush as riotous in their movement as in their beauty, a contrast to the quiet lavender shed they stand next to.  I am not looking at my recently deceased brother’s red tool chest tucked safely inside the shed, but I know it is there. 

Outside the branches are all a jumble like I have been since April 22nd of this year when sweet brother Bob died suddenly at work of a massive heart attack.  Yet, despite this disruptive and yet to be digested loss in my life, I sit this morning filled with wonder at how astonishingly beautiful my life is.  

I am looking at my dad’s rusted vice grip standing as sentry under that lavender shed window alongside an equally rusted metal butterfly that once topped mom’s beloved bird feeder.  And I am not looking at the wooden children’s table and chairs with kitchen sink and stove where I and all 3 of my siblings played for hours in our midwest basement, now stored neatly next to the red tool chest.   In the 1980’s that furniture moved to my parents’ new home where they converted a hen house on the property to a wood shed and upstairs playroom for their  grandchildren.  Oh,  and play those children did.  They colored at the table..   They taught each other and grandma’s stuffed animals,  with colored chalk on bare wood walls.  They managed each other’s unruly behavior.  They let loose their imaginations to wander and tumble much like the Mexican Sage bush I now admire.

I am looking at the shifting of the season, the last gasps of fall in North Texas, a particularly stunning display of red, golden yellow and almost fluorescent orange trees juxtaposed against the season’s low slung blue gray skies.   Solid as my children’s and  nieces’ efforts were back then, Nature clearly wins the coloring prize this year.  

AND I am definitely not looking at December To Do lists.  Gifts to procure, wrap and deliver, food to prepare for gatherings, decorations to place just so and lights to repair or discard and year end paperwork to complete.  These lists were beloved of my father and his son, Bob. Dad said “if you are lucky you die with a to do list”  I come from a people and a place that worships hard work.  And I too relish a sense of accomplishment, but mine is always more relief, than accomplishment.  

Why?

Because I internalized a message that savoring was a luxury not a necessity.  So, when lists are complete, only then can we notice fluorescent orange Chinese Pistachio trees on the corner and how they pop against an unusually perfect blue gray sky.  It is probably apparent the glitch in my dad’s approach;  by the time there is room for savoring there is little energy for it.  My dad favored his German DNA over the French in his genetic inheritance and I have followed suit.  My dear friend Dr. Liz Greenaway said to me in a David Whyte workshop 5 years ago .“Oh I see you, I do the same. Take things that are necessities and call them luxuries.”  When one lives this way it is not uncommon to be visited by the thought (maybe your soul’s whisper?) “  Is this it?  Really, is this all there is?”  

Someone once said, maybe Einstein, that there are 2 ways to live:  as if nothing is a miracle or as if everything is!  When the thought “is this all there is?” whispers to me I realize I have lost my literal birthright.  My given name is Nancy Claire Wonders.  My signature written as Nancy C (see) Wonders is both destination and path.  I was born for exactly what I am doing this December morning in Texas.  I am discovering and receiving the wonder in the life I have been given and have made.  In my own backyard, so to speak.  Spaciousness and curiosity are the gateway to wonder.  Spaciousness in the sense of being without the day’s pressing agenda.  But when I allow the tasks, responsibilities, lovely as many are ~ take over the screen of my day, I lose my ability to see wonder, much less Wonders!  Life can become a bleak gray, including the things I freely chose and value … all becomes burden,  and not a gift, under the relentless taskmaster in my mind that does not trust  “being,” only “doing.” 

In September David Whyte offered a webinar by the title Crossing the Unknown Sea, in which he suggested we might reverse the order, the cultural habit of preferring “doing to being”.  That instead of launching into my “doing” list, I could give my best and brightest time (early morning) to deep conversation where I make contact with my deep nature and what will nourish my soul that day, as well as overall.  In this context, the day’s To Do list is grounded by making real contact with my essential self.   Thus giving the “list” depth and meaning.  This essay is the result of such an encounter.   I invite you to join me in this practice of turning your priorities upside down.  Not sacrifice the “doing” for “being” , not at all.  Rather reverse the order.  Begin with “being,” with “savoring,” with receiving guidance from that which is wise and eternal within you.  Then take that experience into the list.  Ground your “doing” in your essential and true nature’s depth.

This practice of beginning my days this way, (Being/reflection first and Doing/production later) shifts my life satisfaction level, when I choose it.  And truth be told, it isn’t always easy to choose this.  There are some things between my ears that continue to shout their bad advice and I continue to listen.  What I can attest to is that when I ignore this deep bias within me to let doing become more important than my being, my day goes far better.  

In these times of so much loss and suffering, so much uncertainty and violence we need, more than ever,  to dip into the “wonders” of our daily round.  

“Every morning I awake torn between

 a desire to save the world and an inclination to savor it. 

This makes it hard to plan the day”

E.B. Whyte is the author of this deep wisdom.  He came to the same conclusion that I have, (thanks to following Whyte’s admonishment), that the only path to sustain a life worth living is to do both, savor and save the world,  and hold the tension of those two opposites.  If you, like me, have a bias to favor the culture’s dictates to worship at the altar of productivity, this I can promise you:  if you flip the script the list will still get done.   I have not become lazy or indolent.  I have become more grateful and more at ease in my  life when I do this more consistently.   I would love it if you joined me in my experiment with  this radical, counter cultural thing of Savoring first, of making real contact with what is timeless within yourself as you greet your day and your life’s demands.   This switch in priorities builds a deep reservoir of nourishment to draw from during the winter seasons of our own lives.  We still experience the losses and setbacks, but we come to see them as we see winter, just a season in the whole of our lives.  And when we can do this, we find that Joy abides with us, even in the darkest seasons of our lives.  And ” for everything under heaven, there is a season.”  

Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver