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Moving Through Change

I love my home.  For some people the living room and dining room have long lost their original intent, but for me, these rooms are my sanctuary.  A place free from toys, clutter, mess, and TVs.  They are rooms filled with things of beauty to me—candles, comfortable chairs with reading lights, books and earthy elements of rocks, twigs, and plants—all providing a space for special moments. 

And the moments are plenty.  It is a place of stillness while I work or meditate; a place of gathering for dinners; a dance floor for when my daughters and I feel like being silly; plus, a music room when my older daughter pulls out her guitar or my younger wants to perform.  When I walk into my home I always look around with such gratitude.

But now it’s time to move.

Relationship break-ups often involve separating from more than just a partner; prompting a separation from your home as well.  This is one of those times.

And while there’s room for all emotions, the predominant one that I’m wrapping around this move is excitement and opportunity.  My daughters and I aren’t just taking a step into new possibilities, we’re leaping into the great unknown by packing a new tent and a map. 

I’ve done the hectic move from one home into another.  Emotionally and physically it’s exhausting for all involved.  This time I’m taking a new approach: a month of being homeless.  Or, phrased more eloquently: a month between homes.  So while I’m gearing up to de-clutter, sort, and store, I’m also gathering up my camping gear.  Destination? The stars, big skies, and fresh air of the West.

Instead of lining-up an intensive move, we’re gathering images of “must see” destinations.  Instead of focusing on a perceived loss, we’re having fun practicing tent set-ups and learning about aluminum foil campfire cooking.  While our belongings rest in storage, our minds can rest in the simplicity of camping.  I’m so thankful for this opportunity - a possibility that only opened because of our move.

During one quiet moment on the living-room sofa, my older daughter shared that she’ll miss the scene that surrounded us.  And I agreed.  But I reminded both of us that it isn’t the room, the carpet, or the walls that created this sacred space, it’s the tremendous love that we all share and the special items that we chose to bring into it.  I looked at her and said, “this is our home because it’s what we’ve created.  This love, this intent, goes with us wherever we go because we value it.”  And we both knew it was true.

Yes, there are moments when I fret about our yet unrevealed next address, but I do know that getting there via the West will be a great adventure—one that will land us right back in the comfort of our living room, wherever that may be.

This is the power of a parent with intent: the intent to nurture her children, even through the ups and downs of life.  I wish to instill in my girls a sense that it isn’t the “what”, it’s the “how” that matters.  How will we be dealing with our move? By singing loudly with the windows down as we cruise to new destinations.

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Mindful mom, thinker, and author, Ellen Kellner, guides parents through The Pro-Child Way^® of nurturing their child’s spirit through her intuition, discernment, and experience.  Her book, The Pro-Child Way^®: Parenting with an Ex is available through Amazon or www.TheProChildWay.com

ACIM Lesson 43: Healing our perception as a means of forgiveness

...or “how to stop hitting yourself over the head”

I am blessed to be a part of A Course in Miracles group.  ACIM is a journey through seemingly short lessons that, if taken in, can reveal great Truths.  Spirit has a wonderful way of reminding you of the validity of these lessons by correlating it to an experience in your life.  And there is no denying it - for it doesn’t “seep” in, it hits you straight in your experiential gut.  You know it’s truth because you Know it’s true.  Many of my truths, have been revealed through my experiences of divorce and relationship break-ups.  Here’s my latest lesson:

I’ve fallen in love… I’ve crashed out of love.  A typical experience that hopefully you’ve had some practice at - and I say hopefully because I’m an inducted believer in the “hit yourself over the head” method of learning.  For this “practice” leads to an awakening of sorts:  “ow, that hurt, don’t do it again.” 

I’ve had the wonderful practice of many break-ups - each one playing out an alternative ending.  The “throw the Rubix cube against the wall and watch it break into pieces” breakup when I was 16 was full of anger (and very dramatic - I was trying to emulate Scarlet throwing a vase above Rhett’s head); The “watch as your partner denies you in-front of the other woman” breakup revealed the meaning behind “Hell hath no fury…”; and, the “unrequited love” breakup had me questioning my worthiness.  And then there were two divorces, both painful in their own ways.  Welcome to my board.  They were all clever variations on the theme of “hitting myself on the head.”  And with my last relationship breakup, I stopped short in the process and said, “ow, that hurts, don’t do it again.” 

With the ending of my last relationship, I could almost feel myself standing in front of the snack dispenser, coins already inserted, selecting which “break-up” experience I was going to have.  But before I chose between the messy, hard, or crumbly choices, I withdrew my hand.  And I thought, “it’s ok, Ellen, that you didn’t see who this person was, what this relationship was, who you were, or where it all was leading… what matters now is that your perception has changed.  There is no need to choose a dramatic ending, your awareness is all you need.”  Seriously, that was my thought.  A frozen moment in time as I chose my next words.  I took a long look at all of those yummy end-of-relationship scenarios (as diving into emotion does have it’s temptations) and I decided that this time, my heart didn’t need any of them.  Walking away from the machine takes real strength. Ending a relationship without the slash and burn, takes even more.

The real revelation wasn’t so much that I discovered something new (and unacceptable to me) about my relationship; it was that my eyes opened.  What I saw before was what I wanted to see.  As the song reveals, “I once was blind, but now I see.”  Through our relationship, I was given the gift of uncovering a part of me that I hadn’t known.  I gained a healed perception of him, of me, of us.  The perception that I had of him, of the circumstances, even the perception that I had of the me that entered into the relationship didn’t matter.  The only thing that mattered was the perception, the healed perception, that I now had. 

And I loved it.  Recognizing this healed perception in me was wonderful.  Instead of the Rubix cube flying across the room, I threw love.  It wasn’t “his fault” or “my fault” or the “world’s fault”, it was simply a new level of awareness that I didn’t have before.  And how could I possibly be upset over a higher level of awareness?  I was grateful for my new awareness, and with that, thankful for the experience that led to it.  And, a great blessing was my daughters witnessing a demonstration of relationship breakup that only involved honor and love.

A Course in Miracles spoke directly to me: “Healed perception becomes the means by which [I] forgive [my partner], and thus forgive [myself].”  This truly was my experience.  It was in recognizing this healed perception (me realizing something that was there all along but hidden from what I wanted to perceive) that I was able to fully forgive both myself and my partner.  I was able to walk away from the “break-up” dispenser, because in forgiveness—which comes through understanding—I no longer had a craving for that painful experience.  To which I said, “Ahh, that felt good, do that again.”

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Ellen Kellner is fully committed to learning more about life’s Truths.  Through her intuition, discernment, and often “hit yourself over the head” experience, she’s on a quest to find mindful solutions to life’s situations.  She is the author of The Pro-Child Way^®: Parenting with an Ex which can be found on Amazon and at her site http://www.TheProChildWay.com

Seeing Another Way: a father’s journey through divorce

“Nurture Your Child’s Spirit”…  over the years, this phrase has served as a guide to me.  It reminds me, no matter the situation, to put my child’s heart first, even if it means putting my ego second.  As my journey through mindful divorced-parenting has expanded, I’ve been blessed to know other parents who are doing the same.  Their varied situations, struggles, and challenges strengthen the call: “If I can do it, you can too!”  Here is Dabis Camero’s journey through divorce and through his own struggle to nurture his children’s spirit.

Dabis’s crash course in divorce, was filled with all of the typical accompaniments: emotions over a failed marriage, a legal system that drained him - both emotionally and financially, and a divorce process that fueled reactivity.  But as foreign as this process is to most of us, Dabis had the added challenge of doing it through the ears and voice of a Colombian.  Although his advanced education prepared him well for his professional life, navigating the divorce system through your non-native language must certainly be an added challenge.

“The separation was an ugly process of legal warfare where the lawyers took advantage of two people with poor communication (at the time) and total misunderstanding of one another. The most painful part was the suffering of the little children.  When the “experts” and “rulers” decided to administer the time between mom and dad; they did what they believed was better according to their experience and knowledge; no feelings, no love, no humanism. They assigned me every other weekend and every Wednesday night with my kids. After this ruling,  I started a custody evaluation through psychologists. And, after paying enormous amounts of money the final result of the evaluation was almost the same as the first arrangement…  in other words, I wasted my time and money.”

[The experience which Dabis described fuels my championing of divorce through holistic law: mediation and the model of Collaborative Practice.  The old legal system of divorce destroys a family.  The holistic system heals.  Knowledge of this alternative will cause more families to seek it out, and cause more lawyers to become trained in the methods.  I feel that this is so important that it’s worth interrupting Dabis’s story. Links to Cutting Edge Law, The International Alliance of Holistic Lawyers, and The International Academy of Collaborative Professionals is on my site.]

Dabis continues his story with the phrase, “After all of this I came to realize…”.  To a casual reader, those words may be nothing more than a phrase of speech, but for those who have experienced the pit that powers a shift in perception, those eight words strike a deep and compassionate cord…

“After all of this I came to realize that the best for everybody (the kids, the mother and me), was to adopt a better approach to the situation. No matter what the parents are or do, the kids will always love them and by keeping a negative posture and attitude towards the other parent you cannot create anything else but an obscure psychological impact in the minds and the hearts of the children. Therefore, two years ago, I decided to totally change my approach to the children’s mother and try to communicate and help as much as I could. In this situation, what is truly important is the kids and their environment; what is in your own mind and heart; and, observing who you are and how you react to everything that goes around. It does not matter who the mother is dating, what the mother is doing, or even what the so-called “rulers” of divorce are saying.  Everything is in your mind and your heart. This process is not an easy one.  You have to pay very close attention to what “bothers” you, ask yourself why it bothers you, and pay deep attention to all of the things that condition and have conditioned you.

“After these fundamental changes, the result has been a very nice environment for my kids.  I see them happier and cheerful, a much better setting from what it was at the beginning of the separation, where you could only see those little sad faces suffering from seeing their parents morally and psychologically destroying each other. Good communication, understanding, self-observation, and universal love for the other parent will always be more powerful and effective than what the divorce experts, custody evaluators, custody conciliators and the rest of the circus have to say. It depends on you to make the difference.”

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Dabis Camero of Pennsylvania, is a father of two pre-school children.  I thank him for sharing his story, in hopes that other parents can “decide to totally change” their approach too.

Author, Ellen Kellner, is transforming children’s lives through her intuition, discernment, and experience.  Her book, The Pro-Child Way^R: Parenting with an Ex focuses on mindful-divorced parenting. http://www.TheProChildWay.com