Whatever the reason, I wanted to share some things I’ve been learning about grief, because it happens to all of us, throughout our lives, losses that we have no choice but to move on from. And yet some days it feels like there must be another option, even if it’s to leave the planet so as to never have to feel that much pain again (and there are many ways we humans try to avoid pain, among them self-medicating with work, alcohol, sex, food, other people’s problems, TV, the internet, shopping…).

What I’ve learned about grief, first of all, is to notice and acknowledge the feelings. Simple as it sounds, this can be the hardest part. Personally, I am wired to bury my feelings almost before I feel them - often I only notice them when I find myself doing something inexplicable, like putting my water bottle down and walking away without it, eating food I know isn’t good for me, or snapping at people for no reason. I suspect I’m not alone in doing this. The good news is that I have been able to train myself to notice sooner. And once I notice, I have learned to stop and let those feelings come. Sit and have a good cry. Call a friend who’s also grieving so we can share each other’s burden just a bit, or someone who will just comfort me when I call. Write about it, as I’m doing now.

I’ve also learned to learn about the process. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross did some pioneering work in this field, largely by articulating and making available to a wider audience what humans in all cultures have learned over millenia. There are many others who have written or who teach about grief.

Mostly I’ve learned not to isolate, and to take time to grieve. Many of us – particularly busy business people who have lives and businesses to take care of, responsibilities to fulfill, people depending on us, families to care for – feel we simply don’t have time, try to push our grief aside and “just get on with it”. Unfortunately, I’m here to tell you, it doesn’t work that way (and trust me, I tried, for many years). Sure, you can bury your grief for a while, but it won’t stay buried forever. It will come out some other way - in an illness, or an inability to focus, or in making mistakes you know better than to make but that inexplicably, you make. And these will probably take more time (and potentially cost more) than just grieving in the first place.

My reaction to used to be to get mad at myself when my grief surfaced. I have learned that what I need is to be gentle with myself, take time to notice what’s going on with me, focus on and deal with it, even if it’s go outside for a walk with a wad of tissues in my pocket, or take the afternoon off and go do something completely different, perhaps something that honors or reconnects me with the one I lost.

Over time the pain does ease. In the beginning, we are numb of course, the walking wounded – nothing much makes sense – and we question everything (and often everyone) around us. That numbness protects us from the depth of our pain. And it may take a year or two (or more) to really start to notice strength returning, a feeling of getting back on our feet, literally.

Oh, the loss never goes away completely, nor would we want it to - those loved ones were a part of our lives, and we honor them with our tears and our remembrances. And with a primary loss come all the secondary ones and the ones we thought we buried, back again for another round - the family who never understood, the exes who hurt us, the hopes and dreams that have been destroyed because of someone’s stupidity or inability to face reality, the choices we’ve made that hurt us and others around us.

But slowly, from out of the depths, comes an easing, a lightening, a way forward that starts to make sense. With persistence, patience, and a lot of self-love, we do heal, and become stronger, and find a reason to keep on going. It may not be in our time, or in the time the world around us seems to expect, but it does come, and we will (it is true what “they” say), have grown stronger for it. I have experienced that, too.

I’ll finish with something I found in my sister’s journal after she died, something that has helped me immensely over the many years she’s been gone. Perhaps it will help you, too:

Her Dream began with winter darkness. Out of this darkness came a great hand - fisted. It was a man’s hand, powerful and hallowed by shadows in the wells between bones and tendons.

The fist opened, and in the long plain of the palm lay three small pieces of coal.

Slowly the hand closed, causing within the fist a great pressure.

The pressure began to generate a white heat, and still it increased.

There was a sense of weighing, crushing time. She seemed to feel the suffering of the coal with her own body - almost beyond the point of being borne.

At last she cried out to the hand, “Stop it! Will you never end it! Even a stone cannot bear to this limit…even a stone.”

After what seemed like too long a time for anything molecular to endure, the torments in the fist relaxed.

The fist turned slowly, and very slowly opened.

Diamonds, three of them.

Three clear and brilliant diamonds, shot with light, lay in the good palm. A deep voice called to her, “Deborah!” And then gently, “Deborah, this will be you.

I came across this quote in a book I’m reading, called “The Three Laws of Performance”, by Zaffron and Logan.  The quote resonated with me, because when I was in my 40s and trying to decide what I wanted to do when I grew up(!), I went through a creative process that has resulted in the work I do now. During that process, I had a moment when I could see, feel, and conceive the future I needed and wanted to create for myself.  It was an exciting and verdant time.

The quote also resonated because of a talk I heard yesterday by Barbara Marx Hubbard hosted by Women on the Edge of Evolution (womenontheedgeofevolution.com).  She spoke about the transformation the role of women has gone through since her youth in the ’50s, and how challenging it was for her to hear the new future she was destined to be part of, until she started to find other voices that were working on defining a new kind of future that excited and resonated with her.

We cannot always easily hear or recognize the future that is calling to us.  I heard part of it during my verdant time of creation in the mid ’90s, but more (much more!) is unfolding.  And as Barbara commented, in the early stages it can just feel like a restlessness for something different, an unspecified anxiety, even depression.  In The Bigger Game (www.thebiggergame.com) we talk about it as the hunger for something we can’t always name, but that will feed us once we’ve named it.

It’s taken me some time to hear the next piece of my future, and I’m not fully there yet.  I had some old baggage I needed to walk away from, and some family issues to deal with like the decline into Alzheimers and subsequent death of my mother.  I also needed to create (or find) a community of like-minded people within which to explore the ideas and activities I want to pursue.  I’ve found some more of that in London this past summer.

But it’s coming, it’s taking shape, and I’m beginning to hear the next piece of my future.  It’s an exciting process to be in!  So I encourage you who are reading this to take a moment to listen to yourself, your body, the voices in your head.  What are you hungry for?  What do you wish were happening in your world and the world around you?  What can you conceive of doing, even if you’re not doing it now - what problem would it be fun for you to solve?  Whatever it is, consider that perhaps now is the time to focus on it.

We can always find other things to keep us busy, but when you think about your priorities, where does the future of your world and your children’s world fit on that list?  When you then think about potentially changing a piece of that world for the better, and then about all the other things that keep you busy, what comes higher on your list?

I think we need to talk about it on both a broader and a more personal level.

We are all citizens of the world.  Whether we like it or not, want it or not, we are on a planet which is rapidly “growing smaller”; through technology like the internet, and because of the growing numbers of people with whom we share it.

This means we need to learn how to live together with the changes – be they in our economy, in our environment, in our children’s attitudes, in our own bodies – that will only continue to happen around us.

As I see it, we have a couple of choices in how we deal with these changes, both individually and as a global population.  We can close down and pull in on ourselves, try to hang on to what we have, deny what’s going on around and inside us, and hope that the storms will pass.

Or we can open up to the world, to each other, to the (sometimes difficult) lessons that our unique and individual lives have for us.  We can learn our own lessons and grow from them; we can share our experiences and what we’re learning with others around us, because it’s in the sharing that we learn it more thoroughly.

To quote a very wise spirit, (Emmanuel’s Book II, The Choice for Love), we really have two choices when it comes right down to it – to live from a place of love or from a place of fear.

I am seeing this daily in my own life.

For those who have not been tracking my movements, I am in London, talking to as many people as possible in order to generate sufficient work so I can move back here where I lived for most of the ‘90s.

I’m opening back up to the world after that most difficult first year since my mom’s death in January 2008.  This is a natural process, going inside to grieve then coming out of it, but nonetheless at times surprising, confusing, lonely.

In London I have been finding unexpectedly welcoming people, places to stay for free, and lots of people doing lots of interesting things that have me thinking “this is what I came to London to find”.

I have also been finding people who let me down, plans that fall through, and that I make mistakes when I’m striving for perfection.

And I have been finding that I only want to write when things are going well, but that doesn’t give an accurate picture, nor is it what I committed to when I started this blog.  What I’m doing is pulling inside myself in the fear that others will judge me and think less of me (which of course some will) if I admit all the moments of panic and anxiety associated with this latest adventure of mine.

In fact, when I take a more objective perspective I realize that all I’m doing is learning one of life’s difficult lessons, which is what makes life perfectly imperfect.

And, I suspect that’s when we most need to share, because when we try to minimize or hide our difficulties from each other, we aren’t giving each other the opportunities to learn and grow together, and that can be a great gift.

Certainly there’s much that can and needs to be done alone.  For me, that includes meditating twice a day, praying, reading.

It also includes talking to and building my support system.  What I find is that the more I open up, reach out, connect with those outside of me, the more I find what I’ve come here to find, and the smoother life flows.

This, for me, is a piece of the sustainability conversation I don’t always hear.  In sustaining myself, I sustain my work in the world, the initiatives I have started, and all that is left for me to do.  Which means I can then participate with more clarity and wisdom in the conversations about how we sustain ourselves on our planet.

I suspect that I (we) neglect either to my (our) peril.  What do you think?

May in Massachusetts was productive.  I found someone to rent my house for at least a year, and someone to rent my studio for the summer and take care of my cat, meaning I’m free to continue my travels.

Professionally, I am now re-certified to lead the Bigger Game Experience (www.biggergame.com), an experiential workshop that helps individuals and teams bring innovation and change into their lives and work.  I am also now a trained Shadow coach – meaning I can literally walk with my clients through their days and be their “thinking partner” as they grapple with the decision-making, internal and external change processes, personalities, politics, and myriad other challenges of being a senior-level leader.   This is work I’ve wanted to do for a long time – I’m ready!

On the spiritual front, I had a divination with a shamanic colleague, Malidoma Patrice Somé (www.malidoma.com), who confirmed that it’s past time for me to be in partnership.  In fact, it is already starting to happen – my Massachusetts days were filled with old friends and new, helping me get the house and studio ready, helping me on various stages of my journey, helping me with my cat.  And now, here in London, I’ve received unexpected offers of help and support as well.  And, my goal is to ramp that up and enter into deep, lasting partnership, both personal and professional.

The dance gathering in NYC was amazing (www.frankie95.com).  Much as we all missed him, it was heartening that Frankie received a well-deserved full-page obituary in the NY Times.  The 1700+ attendees that came in from all over the world more than did justice to his legacy of how humility and service honors that which you love (for him, the Lindy Hop).  If you ever get to see two pastors dancing in a pulpit (a first for both!) because the music and the impact of the deceased on the rest of the congregation was too compelling not to, you’ll know you’ve lived to witness an impact both amazing and powerful.  Their response to the outpouring of love for Frankie was a profoundly human response.

Now in London, I find myself in an unexpectedly appealing place (Brockley, southeast London) for my first month.  I arrived on June 10th, and am sharing a flat with a woman from a Corporate Social Responsibility listserve (groups.yahoo.com/group/csr-chicks/).  Coincidentally, a very dear colleague and one of my favorite dance partners each live right around the corner.

I’ve been offered two house-sitting opportunities (one for the remainder of  July and one for August) and I haven’t yet started setting up visits to see old friends outside London.  I had my first couchsurfing experience in Toronto, June 4th to 7th, which means I now have that to fall back on for any gaps in my schedule.

This lifestyle I’m setting up is unusual, to be sure – certainly not the settled suburban life I grew up in.  And, it works for the work I do.  I meet people when I travel, and the work develops from there.

Yes, I’ve had mornings where I get a lurch of panic, wondering if I’m crazy – the lurch of any risk-taker or entrepreneur.

However, things have come together nicely, and the work opportunities look ready to multiply.  There’s lots of good energy around this trip, lots of reasons for hope and optimism.  There’s strong local community here in Brockley, and I’m reconnecting with coaching, dance, and personal development communities.  This morning I coached a colleague and was reminded of how much I love the work I do.  I am blessed to be of service to good people, and helping him re-energized me and refueled my awareness that what I do is needed in the world.

So, I’ll close with the overview that I developed yesterday of what I offer.

What I do is help savvy leaders start and build their businesses

My services include:

1.    Coaching – Developing you so you can start, build, or expand your business

o    Shadow Coaching – being your real-time thinking partner
o    Business Artists™ – helping you identify your true life’s work

2.    Consulting – Pragmatic and tangible contributions to new or growing organizations

o    Operations – what’s coming in, what’s going out, and what’s happening internally in between
o    Business Development and Strategy – taking the business to the next level

3.    Facilitation for teams

o    Bigger Game – an innovation and change model
o    Catalysts for Change – a “by invitation only” retreat for senior-level, international executives

That’s what I most love bringing into the world.

Until next time, blessings on you, your loved ones, and your work in the world.

Deborah

—————————————–
Deborah Huisken, PCC
Dancing Star International
Services for savvy leaders who are
starting and building businesses
VoIP:  +1 617 275-5706
UK cell:  0798 521-4520
Deborah@DancingStar.com
www.DancingStar.com

Partnering internationally with executives,
entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, and other
Business Artists™ to tap untapped talent

Frankie was a dancer.  But not just any dancer – Frankie was a key architect of the Lindy Hop.  You’ve probably heard of it as swing or Jitterbug, but if so you’ve only heard a small and inaccurate part of the story.  Its true name was Lindy Hop, and Frankie was one of the dancers who brought so much excitement to it that people all over the world wanted to know about and do it.

Frankie grew up in Harlem during the time of the big bands in the 1920s.  Among other things, he was the first to throw his partner over his back in time to the music (known as an aerial and now one of the best-known features of the dance), he introduced the idea of choreographing a performance routine to perform for audiences, and he traveled around the world during the ’30s and ’40s performing with the bands for audiences that included many luminaries, such as crowned heads of Europe.

He was also a very kind and loving man.  He didn’t say a lot (unless asked to tell stories about the “old days”, which he was frequently), but if you were a friend, you’d get a Christmas card every year, maybe postcards from one of his many travel destinations, always a warm “Hey, baby” when he heard your voice or saw your face.

After the war (that would be WWII), the music changed and there was a lot less interest in the dance he so loved.  So, he went to work in the Post Office for about 30 years.  Few if any of his fellow workers even knew he danced - he wasn’t the type to blow his own horn.  He just started a new life, and from all accounts created a new community of friends.

But then in the mid-80s a couple of young kids looked him up, because they’d seen some old movies (like Hellzapoppin’ and Day at the Races) that he’d performed in, and wanted to know about this dance they were seeing.  He was reluctant, but once they got him up to the music, he started dancing again, and didn’t stop until he died on Monday, April 27 at the age of 94, just a month shy of his 95th birthday.

Doin' the Shim Sham in his '90s!

He’s finally gotten some much-deserved recognition in recent years - much has been written about him on the internet (frankieslegacy.blogspot.com, yehoodi.com) and in the obituaries of the New York Times, etc.  Dancers from around the world will be gathering in New York City to honor him from May 21st to 26th.  We had expected that he’d be dancing with us – I suspect he will be, just not in the physical body that served him so well for so many years.

I share this story because Frankie was an inspiration to me.  He taught me that doesn’t take being pushy, nasty, or self-promoting to make your mark on the world, and that sometimes what has seemed to be over with and done can resurface in the most unexpected ways.  He taught me that it is entirely possible to make your mark on the world and on future generations just by doing what you love, by loving what you do, and by being gracious to the people you come in contact with, even when they aren’t always gracious and loving to you.

Frankie at Michelson Galleries, Northampton, MA

I’m a better person for having known him, and eternally grateful for the time I was privileged to have spent with him.

I’m now considering buying a round-the-world ticket and going to Australia and Africa, too!

Traveling can also be tiring, frustrating – I’ve spoken to so many people who’ve said “oh, I can’t take flying any more, it’s such a drag” (or words to that effect…)  And sometimes I feel so drained by it all.

And yet, what’s the other side of the lines and lots of people and grumpy security folks or customs agents ?

Well, for me on May 1st it was waking up in a New England spring morning, going out into the mild wet air full of the previous night’s light rain and seeing my dinner – asparagus – shooting up through the weeds in my garden. It’s been smelling the lilacs that perfume New England in the summer, and listening to the evening peepers, after a winter in Arizona playing tennis and loving up the sun!

It was finding good people along the way back from Tucson to Montague – Jody on the plane with whom I talked about our experiences with food intolerances and learned more about my own from hearing about hers in the process.    Or the airline and security people who let all my luggage on the flight even tho my checked luggage was slightly overweight and I had an extra carry-on…  Or my transit through Dallas, getting friendly smiles from fellow travelers as they spotted my cat riding quietly in her carrier (a few of them actually looked at me not her!!), looking around to see what she could see and sniff what she could sniff.

And now, it’s sitting at the Bookmill in Montague, Massachusetts (”books you don’t need in a place you can’t find”, www.montaguebookmill.com, one of my favorite places on the planet) honoring a commitment I made to myself to start doing this blog.  People close to me keep telling me I need to do this, but I’ve resisted, saying I’m too busy, which is true.

However, another truth is I’ve hesitated because doing a blog means revealing more of myself, and I won’t always have time to make it look as good as I might like.  See, we didn’t reveal ourselves easily in my family growing up – it wasn’t safe.  So as an adult I’m relearning what should have been my birthright – being fully, easily, and freely me in the world.

Sounds simple – and who knows, with all I’ve learned and unlearned over the years, maybe it will be!!  We shall see – I suspect some days yes and some days no!   However, for now suffice to say that I’m opening my heart and jumping into the world this summer, doing what I tell my coaching clients to do by setting a goal and moving towards it, even when the “how” or the end results can’t be seen yet.

If you’d like to come with me as I explore, it would be nice to have you along.  My intention is to have lots of company and build even more of an international community on this trip, which is why in addition to the blog I’ll be exploring couchsurfing.com, and housecarers.com, and the coaching  and dance communities everywhere I get a chance.

I hope you’ll join me, (whether it’s via comments on the blog, emails, or in-person meet-ups) and let me know what you see as we go!

Love,

Deborah

It seems to me that many people I know who use Verizon have problems with their phones. That might be my bias, because every time I have had a problem with Verizon it has been painful trying to resolve it, so I don’t like them as a company.

Their loss – I have other choices, which I have now decided to exercise. I have cancelled my account, but the forwarding message was not working properly.
So I called the company and told them I had a problem with my phone. The response – from not one, but two of the front-line people with whom I spoke – was that there was no problem. Interesting response.

So I kept going, talking to first one department, then another, until we finally decided that perhaps it is something in the mass of technology on my end that could be causing the problem.

Now, maybe their forwarding message technology is so simple that they could categorically know that there was no problem on their end, and they felt there was nothing they could or wanted to do to help me with the problem on my end, including diagnosing it and helping me understand why there could be no problem on their end.

However, one thing I have learned from many years of working in the IT industry is just how deeply buried and illusive some technical problems can be, and how hard it can be to find the solutions alone, particularly to problems with complex technology. (come to think of it, human beings are quite similar in that regard. But that’s another story…).

And, all I knew when I started was that my phone, which is provided by Verizon, had a problem. As their customer, I wanted help figuring out what that problem was. I’m a former customer because getting such help has proved so irritating repeatedly.

All this led me to contemplate how much persistence it can take to solve complex problems.

It also occurred to me to think about how hard it can be to find people willing and able to stay with a problem long enough to resolve it.

So I’m curious. In your business and with your customers, how often do you walk away from complex problems that aren’t resolved, or expect clients or staff to find solutions on their own? Do you let others tell you your problems do not exist, despite clear indications that in fact they do?

And how’s this working for you?

This person’s words touched me in a place I hadn’t realized, just as some of words Barack Obama’s touched me last week, just as Nelson Mandela’s or Martin Luther King’s or Maya Angelou’s words have touched me at different times in the past. These words have stayed with me and resonated in me and worked in me when I wasn’t even aware of it.

They have lifted my spirits, and some days that is no small feat.

Then the other morning I heard that a characteristic of this Confluence Age that we are in is that everything is becoming new. That brought me a sense of hope and lightness, a hope and lightness that I also experienced when reading, of all things, Fast Company magazine. Because in Fast Company I read about some of the many bright, creative people out there who care about our planet and the people on it. These people are using their skills and talents to solve problems and bring us new capabilities that make life better, more sane.

These are not perfect people. Not one of them. Neither are the people I sit in meetings with. Neither are any of us on the planet. Some say that’s what it is to be human – to be perfectly imperfect.

And we are all part of the change, or can be if we want to be.

I mention this because I know I went through a time when I was angry at and avoided other people because it seemed that their imperfections had wounded me, and continued to do so. Maybe you’ve been tempted to do this? Get fed up with other people, withdraw and say, in essence, “screw you”?
I know I got awfully lonely, and couldn’t find anything worth filling my life with to replace the people I was avoiding, and believe me I looked – all over the world I looked. I kept finding I needed people. And I was feeling more and more hopeless.

Then I started looking at my own imperfections, with compassion. Not easy to do, and it took some time. But that allowed me to have the courage to stop hiding and let people see who I am really, because I didn’t have to be perfect any more.

Then I started to go back into my meetings and my communities with a change in me, with a belief that there is something greater than me, greater than the individuals and personalities around me. And with a belief that none of us has to be perfect, we just have to bring our uniqueness along with us, compassionately, to contribute to that greater whole.

That way, I don’t have to be anxious about other strong personalities or what other people think or what’s going to happen. All I have to do is be me, and bring what I have experienced, what I see and feel to the meeting or to my community.

And this, too, brings me hope. Because that’s all any of us has to do – in fact, all any of us can do. And wonderful things, like those things in Fast Company, can come out of it.

Pretty cool, huh?!

I participate regularly in a very different kind of meeting, and it occurs to me that incorporating some of the characteristics of my kind of meetings into business meetings could be good for all concerned. I sit in my meetings on a regular basis, usually weekly. I choose to attend them. I learn a lot from them and they help me do my work better.

They are a place where I come together with others who are focused on working towards a common goal, where we share honestly with each other what’s been working and what hasn’t been working as we’ve each been doing our work. We can get feedback from each other if we ask for it, and we learn about our own work from hearing other’s stories about theirs.

Different people lead the meetings each week, so no one person dominates. We have an agreed-upon structure, and we meet monthly to discuss that structure, to see if it’s working for us. We tweak and adapt it as necessary to make the group work, and sometimes one or another of us has to give up something we feel strongly about for the good of the group.

Some days some of us are strong, and bring good information into our meetings from which others benefit. Other days it is the “weakest” among us who, in talking about what’s going on with them, bring us all an unexpected piece of learning.

The level of honesty in these meetings continually impresses me – honesty that is there because we have agreed ahead of time that we will focus on our common goal and not be distracted from that. We have agreed not to gossip about or criticize each other, and it is up to each of us to speak when we choose to. We treat each other with courtesy and respect, even when we have something difficult to say to each other.

We have agreed to be governed by principles that, for instance, help us raise the level of the conversation above the personalities in the room at any given time – and believe me, sometimes there are some pretty strong personalities in the room.

There is a spiritual basis for these meetings, but it is up to each of us to define what that spiritual basis looks like for ourselves. We believe that it is that spiritual connection (that we are each free to participate in or not, as we see fit) that helps us be successful.

One of the things business people repeatedly bemoan is the fact that they have to sit in too many meetings, meetings that are painful and unproductive. If this is you, call me - I’d be happy to share more with you about having meetings like these that I’ve described.

Some other opportunities have come up, and I can’t do everything I want to do.

Thinking about all the things on your plate one by one, how important is each? What can you allow to slip in order to take advantage of something that has shown up in your life that may not come again, at least not in quite the same way?

I hope you, too, will allow yourself a bit of independence from the tyranny of schedules and shoulds, and take advantage of an opportunity that presents itself unexpectedly. I bet you a firecracker you’ll be glad you did!