Monthly Archives: November 2013

Let’s hang out under the stars this summer!

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Andrea Scher + Laurie Wagner, your guides

With 20 other awesome women we have collected.

Our Opening the Creative Channel retreat this year was so incredible, so nourishing, we have decided to grow it into a longer, more luxurious retreat this summer in Calistoga, CA. We have booked a gorgeous retreat center in wine country for 4 luscious days of creativity, connecting, relaxing + playing.

Picture this.

  • The most delicious food you have ever eaten. (That you don’t have to cook! Hallelujah.)
  • Swimming in the pool by day + hot tub under the stars at night.
  • Wild writing + photography.
  • Storybowl.
  • Playing with paint. (You don’t need to know how)
  • Nia dancing (A joy practice disguised as a dance practice)
  • Organic mattresses + sheets (The rooms are eco-yummy. Good soaps. No tv.)
  • A new tribe of beautiful souls to make your own.

Here are the details:

When: June 8th -12th, 2014
Where: Mayacamas Ranch
What: Painting, writing, NIA dancing, swimming, story telling, hiking, hot tub under the stars, laughter around the fire pit, the most delicious food you can imagine, relaxing, creating, manifesting, sharing.
Who: The most awesome collection of women. 20 of your new favorite people!
Why: To come alive. To connect with your spirit, your joy, your voice.

Prices:

Dorm rate (limited to 6 guests): 1350-
Double rate: 1550-
Single rate: 1950-

$500 deposit secures your spot!

There are only 12 places left (The rest were swooped up by attendees from last session)

Click the register button above to pay your deposit and claim your spot!

With love + joy,
Andrea and Laurie

P.S. The balance on your tuition will be due by February 25th, 2014. If you decide to cancel at that time, you will forfeit your deposit. Which stinks! So join us. ?

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The pool at Mayacamas

Things to remember.

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Handful of seaglass, Baker Beach, SF

Don’t miss this. Pay attention. Wake up. Be kind and gentle.

The world is a manifestation of your beliefs, so believe good things. Things that empower you. Things that delight you. Stay in the light.

People will die. Remember this, but don’t let it paralyze you. Let this allow you to pick up the phone, even when you don’t want to. To put down your armor. To say I love you more.

Write thank-you notes by hand. The kind they will tuck into their wallet and will pull out years later. The paper will feel soft like fabric and their heart will swell. Except you won’t know this.

When you can, let people ahead of you in traffic. It’s kind and it will make you feel good + generous. It will make you feel powerful, that you could give this one good thing. So go ahead. Let them in.

Tell the truth. And by truth, I mean the messy kind. Like a few months ago when you were crying on the couch feeling lonely, tender, disconnected. And you shouted from the couch, “I need you to love me right now!” and it was the hardest thing + the truest thing you had said in a long time and you cried and cried as he rubbed your back.

Things to remember.

Eat cake when you go to a birthday party. I don’t care what kind of cleanse you’re on.

Learn the what-does-the-fox-say dance and dress up like one of the foxy fly girls for Halloween. Or the Thriller dance or the Cup Song. Learn something that’s been on your mental list – ukulele, italian, how to make kombucha – it doesn’t matter. Just keep learning.

Lay down next to Ben before he falls asleep. Take in his messy boy scent. Notice how he wraps all of his limbs around you in a kind of choke hold, but enjoy it because it won’t last forever.

All of this. It won’t last forever.

What’s on your list of things to remember?

 

Magic 42. The softening.

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I always knew 42 would be a magic number. I’m not quite sure why, but I always knew that turning 42 would be auspicious.

Let’s start with the basics.

I have never felt so loved as I did this week. Let me rephrase that. I have never felt so receptive to the love in my life as I have this week. It’s as if every pore in my being was open. I feel supple + soft.

I have softened over the last couple of years.

Let me first give a shout out to the Zoloft. It has been exactly one year since I started taking it and my life has shifted dramatically. There is a clear before and after – life before Zoloft and life after. I still say a prayer of thanks every morning when I take that tiny blue pill. Thank you thank you thank you.

Now that the wound-up, hypervigilent, fight or flight, oh-my-god-the-world-is-way-too-stimulating, what’s-with-all-the-freaking-noise-on-the-internet, nervous system has calmed down, there is so much more space.

I can let so much more in.

The chaos of  having two boys. The loudness of their cries and whines. The tactile stimulation, the whirl of them sprinting (literally) in circles around the house. The way they dive bomb me, knocking me down in a playful wrestle whenever I kneel toward the ground.

I have the capacity to hold so much more now.

I can hold their energy + embrace their bodies. I am like a wider, heartier version of myself – grounded, arms outstretched, willing to take them in. Where before I had an aversion to their intense boy-ness, kept them (sometimes literally) at arms length, I am so grateful for this new capacity.

And with this ability to hold the bigness of their energy also came an ability to let more love in too.

And I haven’t felt that so palpably until now. This birthday. This week.

It started with an incredible storytelling event called Journeys on Wednesday with my “joy buddies” Ellen + Sherry. (We take a course called Awakening Joy together) We heard amazing stories by the creators of Life Factory and Numi tea plus one of my all time favorite storytellers – Joel Ben Izzy. Then I went to Golden Gate park and rowed a boat in Stowe Lake with my dear friend and mentor SARK. We rowed and chatted for hours… If that isn’t a perfect date, I don’t know what is!

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The amazing SARK, in our row boat in Stowe Lake

Then Matt and I laughed for hours on Saturday night at a Mortified event in Oakland. If you haven’t seen a Mortified show, get to it! Kind of like The Moth, but everything is based on the storyteller’s junior high and high school diaries. Unbelievable. Hilarious. Genius. (You can watch the trailer for their documentary here)

But I’m getting off topic.

The point is this: I am 42 years old and what I am celebrating most right now is that I have the capacity to hold so much more of all of it – the chaos and the joy. There is something my friend Brene Brown says that has always stuck with me. “You cannot selectively numb emotion. You can’t say, here’s the bad stuff. Here’s vulnerability, here’s grief, here’s shame, here’s fear, here’s disappointment. I don’t want to feel these. I’m going to have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin. When we numb those emotions, we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness.”

And I think it worked the same way for all of those years of post-partum anxiety. With my nervous system all whacked out, I was overstimulated by everything. I had to keep life at a distance in order to shield myself.

But over the last year, a profound softening has unfolded. An unexpected gift.

It began with saying I love you more.
Then I noticed I was allowing myself to be hugged a bit longer.
I can look into your eyes now and be with you in a more grounded way.
I can hold my kiddos big feelings and let them dissolve into me.

And as of this birthday, I can see how I am finally letting in more joy. The neuroscientist Rick Hanson teaches that when you are experiencing joy, it’s good to put your hand on your heart and say, “This is joy.” Then those particular neuro-pathways can deepen.

I have been doing that a lot this week, trying to seal all the goodness in.
This is joy. This is joy. This is joy.

 

 

 

Trash Mandala

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Me in my groove, shooting Jessica Swift, Manzanita, OR

Trash Mandala

Let your fear fumble on this sand, like the kids
who race the gulls and bobble earthward, then lose themselves
in a magic carpet of shells and leave the birds
to their flying. Let your grieving meet this
shoreline so when the tides advance, they will gift you their seaweed
in exchange for yours. Let your pain become a trash mandala
you shape into a bicycle, with bottle caps for wheels and a taillight fashioned
from a felled pacifier, and look how bright and possible the beach becomes,
even in your solitude, how the castoffs sparkle, how what’s been torn away
can still steer you through the dunes toward home.
-Poem by the incredible, Maya Stein

That is what the artist does.

The artist takes their pain and makes it into something else- a poem, a song, a painting, a trash mandala.

It’s the magic, the alchemy of creativity. It’s what makes the pain of the world a bit more bearable. The way we can turn our stories into something like gifts, sparks, beauty.

I’ve been fascinated by the fox song all week since I discovered it. It is so weird and genius and catchy. And I love that the Norwegian duo of brothers that came up with it tried to write the worst possible nonsense song and then got a fancy production company (that makes videos for Beyonce) to shoot it. It’s genius. Magic. Total trash mandala.

I want to live there more. Toes in the sand, combing for sea glass and heart rocks. Taking macro photos of sand crystals glittering in my lens. Impossibly close.

I want to be lost in a whirl of paint, of crimson on my fingers and listen to music and feeling connected — to spirit, to God, to myself. To go to that place where I feel untouchable. That place where I don’t need anyone or anything. That place where I don’t need the phone to ring or the ping of a message or food or anything at all really.

Just right in the moment.

Sometimes I forget this places is the most natural to me, most like home.

Lost in yellow ochre and phthalo turquoise.
Lost in music and shapes and color and yes and this is it.
This is all that I need.