“Just park the car. Any parking lot will do,” I tell myself.
This is one of the things I need as a mom, as a woman.
To have quiet, reflective alone time.
And sometimes the best space for that is in the car, in a parking lot.
Now parked in the parking lot of a local park, I listen.
I listen within. I listen all around.
 
The Ghosts among the trees linger drearily.
I have known loss and I have known new life.
It doesn’t surprise me that this is what floats to the surface first in my consciousness.
Then something shifts.
It sounds like a drum corps.
Or maybe it is simply Life happening all around me.

Parked in the car, any parking lot will do,
I surrender into a quiet moment.

Before the demands of life start shouting at me,
I write a few inspirational thoughts down,
And move forward.

Books.
Book shelf.
Bed.
Desk. Lamp. Computer.
Is this it?
A whimper at the door,
The dog coming in.
 
February always comes
And goes so quickly.
 
It’s fascinating to me,
The birds that is.
How I’ve been drawn to 
Watching the birds like never
Before, and how others,
In other circles, in other
Walks of life,
Are also drawn to the birds.
 
My daughter calls the female 
Cardinal “Mama” or “Mama Cardinal.”
And the males, “Daddy” or “Daddy Cardinal.”
She talks to the birds, “Hi Mama Cardinal.”
Then quickly asks me, “Mama, what’s the bird saying?”
 
I have different answers on different days.
Letting her know I’m guessing
Or simply don’t know
Each time.
“Maybe Mama Cardinal wants to
Eat breakfast with you,” I say.
 
I like the way the feathers on top of her head move up and down
As she ducks in and out of the feeder.
“I like your hairdo Mama,” 
I often tell her.
 
My mom had surgery last week. 
A lumpectomy to remove cancer.
Biopsy results are back –
Margins, surrounding tissue and lymph nodes
Came back negative. 
All clear.
 
What a roller coaster of feelings,
And such a relief and celebration of joy and life.
 
Being a daughter, a mother, a sister, a wife, a friend, an employee.
The pressure of life and existence is undeniable.
But is this it?
Could there be something more?
 
The answer seems to be here –
in the in-between spaces,
Between the books, 
Between the birds,
Between each breath.

Stepping out of the hot shower,
the bathroom filled with steam,
the large mirror hanging on the wall now foggy.
And yet, 
what is that in the smudgy fogged up mirror?
Is that a hand print?
At the top left hand corner?
How did it get there?
Whose hand print is it?
It appears to be a small hand print, 
about the same size as my
4 year old daughter’s hand.
But how did it get way up there?
She must have climbed.
From floor, to stool, to countertop.
 
I feel myself holding my breath as I 
imagine my 4-year-old climbing and scaling
the arena of our bathroom.
I take a deep breath and exhale,
and find myself giggling inside.
In the moment, I feel proud – she’s
not usually so bold and daring.
 
I think about how fast she is growing,
and how in the years to come, 
far from now,
this will only be a fond memory, and
I never want to wipe clean the mirror.
I always want to remember my daughter,
the spontaneity of life,
and the miracle of a life well-lived.

Another rainy Monday morning.
I don't know when,
but the squirrels have
successfully tackled the
bird feeder to the ground
from its dangling hook
on the tree branch.
On this first day of March
the nudges of spring time begin.
The muddy season, the rainy season,
the dry season -- dependent on where you are.
Here, the daffodils soon to be pushing their way up,
sharing their bright, yellow splendor.
Daffodils and my first born daughter, Eleanor,
go hand-in-hand.
She was born in this season of the nudges of spring.
And even though she lived a short life of two weeks,
she was like the daffodils --
with a strength and courage to stay steadfast
through pregnancy
and ride and push through labor and delivery
even though many of her own kind
do not make it that far.
Her own kind being that of Trisomy 18 -
a rare, less than 1% chance of chromosomal abnormalities,
not genetic - there is no scientific explanation.
It just is.

Daffodils not only bring their bright splendor and promise of spring,
but also a swelling in my heart, in my chest,
that is full of joy and love,
and equally grief and loss.
A weighted fullness
that is difficult to put into words.
The nudges of spring enter me and I enter them.
Eleanor and the daffodils walk hand-in-hand.

​And I join hand-in-hand with Eleanor,
​with the daffodils,
and with spring,
as we all nudge to emerge.

Written by Janet Wepner. March 2021 (in Maya Stein's writing group)

Sometimes,
I am the "mommy cart horse."

There are tiny claw marks
on my breast, happening
while breastfeeding my 7 month old baby.

In a morning stupor of "mommy brain"
and sleep deprivation, I almost
gave the baby a glass of water
meant for my older daughter.
​
On most days,
it's not uncommon to find me
pouring coffee from a french press
and squeezing every last drop
into a mug for myself.

I have been caught red-handed
            Being my true and authentic self.
 
You got me.
 
Sinking my hands and feet into the earth
            Always gives it away.
 
My intention to live a true, unfettered life
More and more uninhibited,
Finding my soul’s path,
Saying yes to self-care, so my soul has
            Space and freedom
            For
            Movement and expression.
 
I’ve been caught red-handed
            The clay still under my finger nails.
The water looks so still
            And then I look again and there is movement.
 
Life is moving and changing,
            Even in our isolation, even in our aloneness.
 
We need to remember,
and reminders of,
Our true passion in life
            Our true joy
            Our inner Magnificence,
Which then offers a rudder in these ever-changing waters of Life.
 
What if you are Magnificent?
What if today you come home and say yes
            To your Magnificence,
            And to the ground of your being?
 
And for God’s sake,
            Don’t do it alone!

Find common-hearted souls.
Share the Journey.
Let the beauty of who you are and what you do
Ripple out
Untethered.
The world needs you and me,
To be caught 
In the earthy
Red-handedness
Of Inner Magnificence,
Truth and Authenticity.

“The Not Yet”
 
There’s a place where the ocean wave
meets the sandy Shore
The moment before the rush,
The not yet.
 
You’ll know it by the feeling of unease,
Discomfort and excitement,
Ready and not yet ready.
 
Untether your soul to sit in the not yet,
Free your wild nature to be in the moment
Before the rush.
 
All of life is in the not yet.
Wait there,
Poised and ready,
To ride the next wave.
 
 
Written by Janet Wepner
(inspired by Maya Stein’s 10-line poem “the neither space")

With the summer solstice approaching, I feel our current season, as well as this season of my life, and I find myself being called towards coming fully alive; just as the fullness of summer calls the berries to come to fruition. In addition to this soul calling, I have felt ‘under water’ so to speak, in the day-to-day stresses of working, keeping a home and a happy, healthy 2.5 year old. Thanks to some quiet time away, and thanks to my loving husband who helped to create that time by caring for Eliza, I have been able to feel my aliveness and creativity flowing again.
 
As some of you know, when my 1st daughter Eleanor passed away in March 2015, our dear friend Peg Kotlewski wrote a poem as it came to her while gardening. I did some rough sketches of images as her written words spoke to me, and had hopes of finding an illustrator and then creating a book. I began the process and found an illustrator, and yet as I tried to plan with her it didn’t feel right. Nothing was clicking or igniting inside myself with her. And then I found another illustrator who felt right, and I absolutely love her art and inspiration! But time slipped away and it wasn’t the right timing for her. This all felt okay to me. I wanted this to be a fluid, organic process and I was not attached to who or when or how my rough drawings would begin to take a fuller form. 
 
When I completed my very first rough sketches three and a half years ago, I showed them to some friends within my community of the Hero’s Journey® Foundation, Jim and Edrianna Stilwell. They live in Asheville, NC. Jim is a professional artist and encouraged me, “Janet, these are great! You could do the illustrations yourself. You just need to add color.”
 
I had a million reasons why that would not work. “I wasn’t skilled enough. I wanted it to look good and I would only mess it up and do it wrong.” 
 
He continued to gently encourage me, “Really Janet. You can just use some watercolor pencils and then add water with strokes of a brush. Do some testing to see how it works and then you’re good to go to keep creating.” These may not have been his words verbatim, but it’s how I’m remembering the conversation in my mind at the moment.
 
While nodding my head, I was pretty sure he was crazy for thinking that I could be the illustrator. And yet, he is such a generous man, a few weeks later he also mailed me a little box and within that box contained a box of new watercolor pencils, a new large sketchpad best for watercolor, and a new small set of different sized paint brushes.
 
“How very kind,” I thought to myself and set it aside in the basement. And that’s where it stayed until recently. This past fall, two years later, something struck me deep inside. Maybe I am the one who needs to illustrate the book. After wrestling with it for some time, I remembered my conversation with Jim. I remembered the box of supplies in my basement. I retrieved the box and began.

I felt immersed in a new way and completely taken with the fun of adding color to my drawings! I did one page, which took some time, and then set it aside. Since then I have picked it up occasionally, and then set it down again. I feel taken and It takes me. I have to let it take me or else it doesn’t work. In that regard, it requires a significant amount of time for me to shift out of the busyness of my day and into a centered space of allowing creativity. It’s a significant project and investment of my time; time that I don’t really have in my life but rather fleeting moments. And yet, I’m committed to finding time as I can.

When I say “centered”, I don’t necessarily mean at peace within. I just mean centered with what is happening inside. Because every time I begin a page, within minutes of my first pencil strokes I’m fairly certain I’ve messed it up. To the point, that I almost put it to the side to start on a fresh page. But then I say to myself, well this will just be an experimental page and I’ll experiment with the different ways the flower or the trees can look. Inevitably, as I go through the pencil strokes and then the brush strokes with water, the image comes to life! I am taken by surprise once again! I fall in love with my art, and keep falling deeper in love with Eleanor. ​ 

It’s been four years since Eleanor rested in my arms and we gazed into each other’s eyes. And oh how my heart misses her! Even as I feel joy, my heart expands and I feel my pain and my joy co-existing. One recent example, of joy and sadness coexisting, is Eliza’s completion of her first year of pre-school (going twice a week to a local church pre-school). I attended the celebration where the children sang songs and the older children ‘graduated.’ I almost could not bear the tension of my ever-widening joy for my daughter, Eliza and the pain of missing my other daughter and dear-heart, Eleanor. And now, as I write this I find myself having a little more spaciousness as I breathe more deeply, holding both my daughters in my heart.

​I suppose in following my own loving support for others, it’s time to love myself and honor myself in acknowledging and owning, and coming fully alive… I am a writer. I am an artist. It’s not something I do, it’s something that comes and I am taken by. I truly feel in awe each time I create.
 
As you can tell, my paintings are a slow and organic process. Since I began, I have completed 3 pages and started a few others. 
 
With the summer solstice approaching, I feel our current season, as well as this season of my life, and I find myself being called towards coming fully alive; just as the fullness of summer berries come to fruition. If you feel this calling as well, I offer this poem that I read last week to my yoga students and one that I return to again and again.

​Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving — it doesn't matter,
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow a hundred times,
Come, come again, come.
 
 
“Come, come, whoever you are”
~Rumi

​

 by Janet Wepner

​One of the mistakes of our current times, I feel, is that we believe we need to be ‘independent.’ While yes, some uses of the word are valuable, we have a tendency to take it to an extreme. What inevitably happens is we become islands in our own world; completing our daily tasks, obsessively thinking of what’s next on our to-do list and at the same time attempting to hide feelings of inadequacy. The truth is that we are not inadequate. However it is important to note that most likely it is our interactions with others and with the Whole of Life that is lacking or insufficient. On a personal help level, I believe that we can choose to reflect on this dynamic and choose to do it differently. 
 
The internet has contributed to our isolation and ‘over independence.’ For example, the world wide web was designed to connect us with others and a vast array of thoughts, ideas and information. We can now ‘Google’ all our questions rather than having a conversation or dialog with someone else. As a result, the internet has also sped up our daily lives, and what ironically gets left out is human-to-human connection. How can we continue to become more human with one another? Rather than expecting our selves to do more or be superhuman, and instead to be more human.
 
We can look at nature, literally and figuratively, for information and support. Trees and plants have a hidden connection underground through the chemistry of certain fungi.

​“…As a result of this growing body of evidence, many biologists have started using the term ‘wood wide web’ to describe the communications services that fungi provide to plants and other organisms…The fungal internet exemplifies one of the great lessons of ecology: seemingly separate organisms are often connected, and may depend on each other,”
says chemical ecologist Kathyrn Morris.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141111-plants-have-a-hidden-internet
 
This line is what stands out to me the most, “seemingly separate organisms are often connected, and may depend on each other.” In essence, I see the same is true for us. We as human beings are more interdependent with one another and nature than, at times, we care to recognize. So not only are we human be-ings, but we are designed to ‘be’ human together. We can depend on sharing our humanity together, if we so choose.

​We are resonant, vibratory beings interacting with and dependent on one another and the Whole of Life in unseen ways all the time. For example, to explore this differently in one’s self, rather than simply walking, try walking with a moment’s awareness of each step you take… and the Whole of Life connected to you and you to it. Do you feel a deeper sense of support and aliveness moving through you? How might you feel in applying the same depth of awareness and felt sensation while in an interaction with another human being? 
 
Richard Rohr a monk and spiritual writer speaks similarly saying,
“This understanding gives us an utterly different sense of self; this person is truly a ‘sounding through’ (per-sonare) much more than an autonomous being…it is coming to know a new and essential self that is interconnected with everyone and everything else,”
Richard Rohr, "The Journey of Conversion".
 
I love Rohr’s use of the phrase ‘per-sonare’ (pronounced like per-son-air). It looks like the word person, but it is Latin and means ‘by sound’. Sound is an unseen vibration and a great example of how we are a ‘sounding through’ for one another especially when we speak to each other, but also non-verbally. And Rohr also states and points to a new essential self that is interconnected with everyone and everything else. We are not designed to be islands of isolation, especially if our intention is to feel alive in this world.
 
I’ve also been reading and enjoying Philip Shepherd’s book “Radical Wholeness”. 
Shepherd says, “Growing into adulthood is what happens when we heal ourselves beyond the structures of the known into the reality of the unknown – into the felt mystery of wholeness.”  Shepherd recognizes the Whole of Life as a mystery, and how we can grow beyond the structures of what is already known and expand into the unknown – the felt mystery of wholeness.
 
He also says, “self-awareness is created through relationship.” Relationship is an essential ingredient in self-awareness. This can be counter-intuitive at times in our ways of thinking and believing we need to be alone to gain self-awareness. While time to reflect and integrate within one’s self is important, it’s also striking to see the value in relationship and really learning about who we are, as we are in real human relationships. 

“… relationship is made possible by exchange,” says Shepherd. How are you exchanging with the world? In a very real and literal way we exchange with the world in every moment, for example, with our breath. We draw in life with our inhale and release what’s no longer needed on our exhale. Life receives our exhale, and welcomes our inhale. We also allow or disallow exchanges to take place with one another. For example, allowing an exchange to take place when we witness an interaction between an infant and a loving parent tends to be warming and brings out the best in us. What is outside of us is allowed in, and then what is inside of us is allowed out in an enlivening flow and exchange. We can also choose to disallow or disconnect from such an interaction, cutting off the exchange and refusing the Whole of Life to move through us.
 
I feel that even though we are driven to ‘over independence’ and resulting feelings of inadequacy, that we can also make a new choice in any moment. I also realize that in some moments while it seems like a simple idea and easy to make a new choice, it can actually be very difficult to change. Strangely enough, when our interactions with others are lacking, we “internalize” that as inadequacy on our part. Human parents, including myself, are fallible and imperfect. Parents make mistakes to lesser or greater degrees. Psychology and counseling books speak about how as infants we internalize these environmental mistakes and failures as failures of our own; but we can ask ourselves, “How can an infant fail?” It’s not possible, they are completely dependent on the world around them. 
 
So if we are not failures and we are not inadequate, then we can empower our selves to make a conscious effort in reconnecting with the Whole of Life rather than separating into an overuse of independence. 
 
In closing, the ‘quest’ or question I am offering as something to live into and to walk with is this:
 
   How can we continue providing and creating opportunities
   for ourselves and for others,
   to exchange,
   to be a sounding board or “sounding through” (per-sonare),
   in becoming more human with one another?
   While honoring and allowing the Whole of Life,
   to move through us, as we move through life.
 
 
With you on the journey,   ~Janet Wepner

This title caught my eye from one of my favorite poets, Maya Stein*. 
 
In reading it and reflecting on it, I became aware of feeling awkward and strange in my own experiences, and how in those moments there is so much life! And yes, sometimes, strangeness is a place I lean toward!
 
For example, I engaged in a conversation with a complete stranger, the bus driver taking me from the Charlotte long-term parking lot to the airport terminal.
 
One of my mentors, Michael Mervosh, (click hereto learn more about Michael Mervosh) even encourages us to put ourselves in moments that feel awkward or strange, so to create space for Mystery and the Unknown. The mystery, or the unknown, holds vitality, life and energy! When we stay in our mundane, rote lives of sameness, we lose a certain amount of energy and it can easily be recovered in the spontaneous Mystery of Life. Often times we feel awkward, strange or uncomfortable in the unknown, because of just that, we don’t know– we don’t know what will happen next, we don’t know what the other person is thinking, we enter moments of literally not knowing. So much of our lives centers around knowing, and needing to know answers, that we forget about all the possibilities not yet known in life, inside our self, and inside others.
 
So then it becomes valuable, and even essential, to lean into awkward and strange moments, especially if they are strange due to being something not yet known to ourselves. 

In my example above, I flew to New York for an opportunity to teach in a facilitatorship training this past November (click here to learn more about PSEN). I decided to drive to Charlotte and do long-term parking at the airport. I waited for the bus to pick me up from the parking lot and drive me to the terminal. The bus arrived and I climbed on. I was the only one riding. I sat down close enough to be able to converse with the driver, but not too close, keeping my distance. Being a friendly driver, he struck up a conversation with me asking where I was headed. I told him NY, and he decided to share how he used to go fishing in NY. I could have left the conversation there. I’ve only been fishing a few times in my childhood and it doesn’t hold that much interest for me. Plus it was a really awkward moment trying to get through the bus and airport process, talking with a stranger, in addition to preparing for a new teaching opportunity. 
 
In that moment, I chose to lean into the strangeness of the unknown and the mystery of being human with some curiosity. I asked him who he went fishing with. He launched into an interesting story of him and his friends going from New Jersey up to New York for fishing trips and what that meant to him. He asked me if I knew anything about fishing and I said no, not really. Yet in the meantime my interest was being piqued simply from his enlivenment about the subject. He explained to me about different types of lines and hooks and what they were for. I don’t remember the details, but I remember how much I enjoyed our contact and conversation. Life and energy flowed through me in a renewing fashion because I leaned into the ‘strangeness’ of the spontaneous mystery of life in front of me.

The line in Maya’s poem reads:
“…Sometimes, strangeness is a place I lean toward, an alien continent
I travel to when my own geography rubs its too-familiar elbows at my ribs…”    
(Click hereto read other ‘ninja’ poems, her weekly poetry practice, written by Maya Stein.)
 
I read these lines to mean that sometimes our “own geography” -what we know about our self, our own inner landscapes- rubs, and rubs again and again with a pointy elbow at our ribs. It can be painful to feel stuck within our own inner terrain, our own geography. And I interpret it to mean that the spaces of Unknown can often times feel like entering an alien continent.
 
It also feels important for me to say that just because a particular environment is where we originate from (our home, our culture, etc. ), it does not mean that that is who we are. Your past environment is where you came from, and you are now free in your own becoming. 
 
“Sometimes, strangeness is a place I lean toward!” I encourage you to join Maya Stein, my mentor, myself, and others, and lean toward strangeness, specifically the strangeness and awkwardness of the Unknown.
 
Doable moments of strangeness:
           -make eye contact with a stranger and smile
           -strike up a conversation with a stranger
           -try something new that you’ve always wanted to do
                             (ex. guitar lessons, singing, macrame, dancing, painting).
 
Many blessings on your strange encounters in the Mystery of Humankind. May you be pleasantly surprised!   
                                                                        

Written by Janet Wepner