Terror

Finding Peace Amidst Chaos

Today, while going through some old posts, I was reminded of this 2015 chant for peace—and the most beautiful Buddhist meditation/prayer for fear.

It is recited by Colleen Saidman Yee at the end of her yoga classes.
I just love it and I thought you would too.

Here are her words.

“It goes something like this: Sit down and notice where you hold your fear in your body.
Notice where it feels hard, and sit with it. In the middle of hardness is anger.

Go to the center of anger and you’ll usually come to sadness.
Stay with sadness until it turns to vulnerability.

Keep sitting with what comes up; the deeper you dig, the more tender you become.
Raw fear can open into the wide expanse of genuineness, compassion, gratitude, and expectancy in the present moment.

A tender heart appears naturally when you are able to stay present.

From your heart, you can see the true pigment of the sky. You can see the vibrant yellow of a sunflower and the deep blue of your daughter’s eyes.

A tender heart doesn’t block out rain clouds, or tears, or dying sunflowers.
Allow beauty and sadness to touch you.
This is love, not fear.”

Isn’t that beautiful you guys?
Happy weekend,
xox

Colleen’s new book:
Yoga for Life
A Journey to Inner Peace and Freedom

http://books.simonandschuster.com/Yoga-for-Life/Colleen-Saidman-Yee/9781476776781

When Sitting In The Front Row Is A Bad Idea

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I’m someone who advocates taking a front row seat in your own life, however…

A friend sent this to me yesterday.

“I’m generally a positive person and I don’t believe in worrying about something that hasn’t happened. That makes no sense to me. Last night I went to a movie, for the first hour I lived in fear that someone would come in to do terrible things. I noted all the exits and although we were in the front row (which was not ideal for my mental state) I was ready to run or get down. To calm myself, I began wishing that some random person came up to this troubled person earlier in the day and said something kind that made him rethink how wonderful the world is and change his evil plan. Sometimes that is all it takes.

That’s a horrible way to live. No one should have to live in fear.”

I agree. No one should have to live in fear…or exacerbate it by sitting in the front row of a megaplex just inches away from a jumbo screen. That is cruel and abusive behavior and I’ve always believed there should be a front-row intervention. Seriously. Those people cannot actually want that level of sensory stimulation! It’s inhumane.

To my friend: The world is a wonderful place fifteen rows behind you. Trust me on this. If you suffer from anxiety for an hour, you should get up and leave. Or buy tickets for another time when you can get a proper seat.

Another friend called to tell me about a birthday party gone awry while I drove to pick up glitter for my magic wands (because I sit in the very last row, where the world truly IS a wonderful place.)

It went something like this: Her sister and several other birthday party moms were standing around a local park late last Saturday afternoon debating the GOP convention, terrorist threats, police killings, white dresses with puffy sleeves and self-tanning tragedies while watching a dozen twelve-year-old boys systematically destroy every inch of flora and fauna in the immediate vicinity—when the sound of rapid fire gunshots filled the air.

Four of the moms hit the deck. Two peed their pants. Literally.

Turns out the gunfire was only bubble pack from a pile of discarded gift wrapping. It was being stepped on by two of their sons who got in big, big, trouble.
Wait.  
We’ve all done that.
Twisting or stomping on bubble packing is a twelve-years old’s right of passage. It’s up there with inhaling helium and singing Bohemian Rhapsody (although I’m sure the song choice has changed and that makes me sad because today’s twelve-year old’s will never know the sheer perfection of singing “Scaramouche, scaramouch, will you do the Fandango?” with lungs full of helium. It is a laugh like no other. Even though I was actually in high-school my first time, I will never forget it.)

Mistaking bubble wrap for gunfire would be funny if it weren’t so sad. Okay, it’s still a little funny.

Anyway, all this to say, everybody seems a bit edgy these days.

Fear has replaced oxygen in the air supply and we all just need to hold our breath chill.

Maybe we need less stimulation right now.
Less loud music and violent movies played at full volume.
Less front row.
Less talk of guns and terrorists and how we’re not safe in our country anymore.

I grew up as a kid practicing “duck and cover” drills which were a very clever way to dodge the effects of a nuclear bomb blast because as everyone knows, radiation doesn’t go under school desks. In the 1960’s the possibility of a nuclear war seemed imminent. The end of the world really WAS at hand and even at six years old we figured out how to cope—we still played at recess and swam and built a fort and went to the movies and waited for bubble wrap to be invented so we could pop it obnoxiously in each other faces. We had fun.

It’s gonna be okay you guys. There’s no need to be so scared. You have control over your environment and what you watch.

No one should have to live in fear. That’s a horrible way to live. And a terrible waste of time.

Carry on,
xox

Fear, Chapped Lips and Heinous Side Effects

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Hello, fear. (Said with sneering disdain, like “Hello Newman” on Seinfeld).

Fear reared his ugly head again on Tuesday.
Like me, you probably woke up to the report of yet another terrorist attack on innocent civilians in Brussels. And again if you’re like me your first response was to gird your loins.
To hunker down, plant your feet, cross your arms and close your mind.

In your body you probably felt, along with me, a nauseous gut pit, turning to sadness, then empathy and finally anger. Oh, yeah, and all of that with a fear chaser.

You know you guys, it reminds me of those pharmaceutical ads on TV and their heinous side effects. You know the ones I mean. They’re laughable.

“For chronic chapped lips try *Chaplipocine. Taken regularly, it reduces the symptoms of chapped lips in only three days!
Side effects may include (and this is said at the speed of a professional auctioneer), flatulence, headaches, amnesia, seizures, constipation, swelling of the tongue and testicles, facial hair in men, women, and babies, eventual loss of consciousness — and death.”

And it’s making billions because people are willing to suffer those consequences to get chapped lip relief!
Wtf?

But just as ridiculous and shoved down our throats even more aggressively, are the side effects of fear. They consist of paranoia, anxiety, uncontrollable security cravings, unwillingness to travel, suspicion, inability to turn off CNN, intolerance, giving away your privacy, dis-empowerment, not living your life — and death.

Seriously?

I for one, feel that’s unacceptable.

We all have a choice of how to respond.
I can eyeball the hipster next to me suspiciously while he sits there on his computer with his luxurious man-beard and wonder if he’s crafting his jihadist manifesto. And I can cancel my trip to Europe that I saved years for.
Because I could die. We all could die.
Because it’s too dangerous. The airports. Subways. Cafes. Sidewalks. Everything.

These are some of the side effects I’m not willing to suffer. How about you?

Listen, we have to be aware. We can’t and we shouldn’t walk with our faces buried in our phones or our head in the clouds. But there’s a difference between awareness and suspicion.

Don’t shake hands with fear. Please.

Girded loins never did anyone any good,

And chapped lips go away in three days regardless of the medicine you take.

So don’t endure the heinous side effects just for the illusion of being saved.

Anyhow, carry on,

xox

*you know this product doesn’t really exist, right?

Finding Peace Amidst Chaos

So…My loves,
I like to give myself at least 24 hours to process a tragedy.
As someone who suffers from delayed reaction syndrome, a name I’ve come to give my unique way of dealing with disaster or tragedy, I know my emotions will swing wildly from a deep numbness, to fear—from resignation to profound sorrow.

So I sit…and I wait. And mindlessly fold socks and eat too much raw cookie dough.

Once I run the gamut of responses and gather myself (literally gather up all the scattered pieces of my SELF), I can see beyond the tragedy to something bigger.

You see, we can get caught in the cycle of hate and revenge (because that’s worked so well up until now), or we can KNOW in our hearts that the Terrorists, contrary to how it seems, have already lost their fight. The only thing their acts of cowardice do is open the Global Heart even further, releasing a torrent of love, compassion, and grace and a renewed sense of CONNECTION—ONENESS.

No more eye for an eye or tooth for a tooth—there are already too many blind and toothless souls in so much pain walking the planet.

Then what is the answer? I have no fucking idea. Here is all I know for sure.

Love. There is Only love.

You hurt my Lebanese, Syrian, Parisien brother, you hurt me. We are connected. We are one.

But here’s what helps me. They lead me out of the fear and rage—back to where I belong—my heart.

Use this chant or the poem below to center yourselves and find your way back to your hearts.

Sending you all my love,
xox


I was reminded of the most beautiful Buddhist meditation/prayer for fear.

It is recited by Colleen Saidman Yee at the end of her yoga classes.
I just love it and I thought you would too.

Here are her words.

“It goes something like this: Sit down and notice where you hold your fear in your body.
Notice where it feels hard, and sit with it. In the middle of hardness is anger.

Go to the center of anger and you’ll usually come to sadness.
Stay with sadness until it turns to vulnerability.

Keep sitting with what comes up; the deeper you dig, the more tender you become.
Raw fear can open into the wide expanse of genuineness, compassion, gratitude, and expectancy in the present moment.

A tender heart appears naturally when you are able to stay present.

From your heart, you can see the true pigment of the sky. You can see the vibrant yellow of a sunflower and the deep blue of your daughter’s eyes.

A tender heart doesn’t block out rain clouds, or tears, or dying sunflowers.
Allow beauty and sadness to touch you.
This is love, not fear.”

Isn’t that beautiful you guys?
Happy weekend,
xox

You can catch Colleen’s entire interview with Marie Forleo and hear her say the prayer on my Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/Theobserversvoice

Colleen’s new book:
Yoga for Life
A Journey to Inner Peace and Freedom

http://books.simonandschuster.com/Yoga-for-Life/Colleen-Saidman-Yee/9781476776781

How I Remember It…

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It is ridiculously dark in a hotel room with the black-out drapes closed.

It is trip over stuff because it’s a strange room; blink, blink, blink for your eyes to adjust; bang your shin and stub your toe, dark.

I experienced all of those things on the way to answer my phone which was shoved in my purse, somewhere under piles of room service napkins, magazines and assorted other crap.

La la la la la la, my phone chimed its little heart out.

Who is calling me? Everyone knows I’m on my honeymoon and judging from how dark it is, (forgetting the drapes) it MUST be three am.

Five minutes earlier the ringing had woken me up, and I had stumbled like a drunken sailor, half asleep in the pitch blackness, to the bathroom. ‘Wrong number‘ I thought, still half asleep as I felt my way like a blindfolded mime, back to bed.
I heard it go to message. Now I was awake.
Hmmmmmmmm…that’s weird.

It started to ring again; this time I could swear it sounded more insistent.
LA LA LA LAAAAAA!

Curious, I quietly slid out of bed and started moving heaven and earth to find it, only to hear it go to message a second time.

Not even a moment later, as I was finally holding it in my hand, it started ringing again.

So did my husband’s phone, next to him on the nightstand, and so did the hotel room phone on my side of the bed. All at the same time it became a cacophony of three different rings, each one of them trying desperately at that point to get our attention.

I heard my husband’s voice behind me in the bed, “Shit, this CAN’T be good”.  He was suddenly wide awake as he grabbed both the room phone and his cell, putting one to each ear.
“Hello!” he announced tersely into both.

I had just flipped mine open to hear someone mumbling and weeping, and at the same exact moment we both lunged for the remote as three different people screamed into our ears “TURN ON THE TV!”

We were two days into enjoying our post wedding coma. Ensconced in a room overlooking the Pacific at the Biltmore in Santa Barbara, still feeling giddy from the excitement of such a magical night.
Exhausted, we had given ourselves a couple of days to decompress before we were to fly to a friend’s party in Chicago and then on to Italy to have a motorcycle honeymoon.
None of those plans would come to pass.

My brand new husband pulled open the drapes with one swipe to reveal bright sunshine; it wasn’t the middle of the night, it was after six in the morning. It must be a movie, I thought, as we both slowly sat on the edge of the bed; watching in stunned silence; as the second plane hit the tower.

I think I screamed.

Friends and family were calling; apologizing for bothering us, but wanting us to know.
That’s what family does. They share bad news.

Just thirty-six hours before, they had all been loopy from too much champagne and wine, toasting and celebrating love—now they were crying and asking me Why?

I couldn’t wrap my brain around what was happening. Everything felt surreal, like a slow motion movie.
I certainly didn’t have any answers.

My husband is an architect/builder. He knows about steel and fire and in his most serious Bob The Builder voice he didn’t pose a question or wonder aloud—he made a statement: “I hope everyone’s out of there, that building’s coming down.”

And right on cue, as he finished that sentence…the first tower fell.

Shit, shit, shit” he yelled, jumping to his feet.
I was screaming and shaking uncontrollably, “No, No, No…Oh MY GOD!”
Was this really happening?

Peter Jennings’ solemn voice said something to the effect of, “This has turned from an act of terrorism to an act of war.”

It was impossible to look away from the TV and I could not stop crying.

My mom called to tell me Pam, who is like a big sister to me, and had flown in from San Francisco for the wedding, had to deplane on the tarmac at LAX and run for her life; as fast as she could, away from the terminals and the airport, as directed by the pilot.

Really. He told everyone to RUN!
No one knew what was going on, and where the next attack, if there were to be others, was going to take place. Lee and my mom picked her up as she ran east on Century Boulevard with a whole crowd of other panicky, thwarted travelers.

Many of the woman had ditched their heels along the way, running in bare feet and business attire.

They had no idea where they were going.
How far would they run?
How far was far enough?
Where could you go that day to feel safe? I sure as hell didn’t know.
If you’d told me a place, I would have run there with you.

After the second tower collapsed and the news went into perpetual recap mode, I couldn’t watch another second; so I pulled on some sweats and sunglasses to hide my red swollen eyes, and walked like a zombie downstairs to the lobby.

My inner historian/collector had kicked in and I wanted to see if they had the newspapers in the gift shop without the headline of the event and also a later edition, with it.

The adrenaline of the past few hours had subsided, which had dropped us into a kind of numb stupor, so we also needed coffee. Bad.

The lobby was deserted. Everything was closed. No gift shop, no Starbucks, nothing. There wasn’t a soul in sight…this huge hotel felt deserted.

Back upstairs, I called room service.
It rang for what seemed like an eternity, then the voice that finally answered sounded out of breath and off of hotel protocol. She didn’t say Hello, Mrs Bertolus, (which I was loving by the way), like they had been doing for the past couple of days.

Yes? Hello, I mean, room service” she said.

Um, are you guys open? Is it possible to get a pot of coffee?”

“I’ll try my best, I’m sorry ma’am, but no one has shown up for work this morning.”

“Oh my gosh, I completely understand—it’s just so terrible…”

Yes ma’am” she said, “it’s so sad.”
She started to cry, which set me off.

Don’t worry about the coffee” I sobbed, feeling like an ass. “Just forget it, I’m sorry to bother you.”

“No ma’am, don’t be silly” she had composed herself, now the epitome of professionalism, “Your coffee will be right up Mrs. Bertolus.

Ten minutes later a young man brought up a pot of coffee and some croissants, and after some caffeine and food, the shaking stopped and I felt a little better.

The government had halted all air travel until further notice. Planes were finding a safe place to land and staying put. It was unprecedented and I was relieved.

The absolute LAST thing I wanted to do was get on a plane.
We had a lot of phone calls to make and rescheduling to do.

Against my better judgement we kept our reservations that night for a seaside dinner. The place was beautiful… and depressing as hell. Everyone seemed to just be going through the motions. I sobbed like a three-year old through the entire dinner, having a hard time forgetting those faces we’d seen all day of the people who were missing.

“How can I enjoy any of this? People lost husbands and fathers, brothers and wives and sisters. So many people died today!” I put my head in my hands, I couldn’t eat.

How can you not?” my husband whispered, resting his hand on mine.

Those people would give anything to be here, where we are right now, enjoying life. We don’t join them in death, that’s an even greater waste. We enjoy our lives. Every minute. Every day to the fullest. I think that’s what they would want. That’s what I would want.”

Damn, he’s good.

Just writing these memories makes me cry. It instantly brings me right back.

I think it’s important to tell the story. To never forget what happened.
Everything before 911 feels different, simpler, like we lost our innocence.

It just happens to coincide with my wedding. I can never think of one without the other. I celebrate the ninth of September, and I light a candle on the eleventh.
In my life they are forever intertwined.

Just like our parents had the Kennedy assassination, this is our generation’s “where were you?” moment.

Do you have a 911 story? Tell us.

much love,
xox

Hi, I’m Janet

Mentor. Pirate. Dropper of F-bombs.

This is where I write about my version of life. My stories. Told in my own words.

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