{"id":21959,"date":"2025-01-01T10:05:28","date_gmt":"2025-01-01T15:05:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/?p=21959"},"modified":"2025-01-01T10:10:23","modified_gmt":"2025-01-01T15:10:23","slug":"begin-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/?p=21959","title":{"rendered":"Begin Again"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I went to the synagogue begrudgingly one year, because my son was studying for his bar mitzvah. I had taken to spending the high holidays in my own celebration for years – honeycakes, apples with honey on Rosh Hashanah, and a day of no screens, just meditation and journaling for Yom Kippur – this felt holy holy to me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There I was sitting in a stiff chair in a synagogue listening to the chanting (and if it is not Sephardic, it still sounds alien to me), and I was looking through the prayer book and reading the margins. In the margins, are quotes and words of inspiration. On this page, there was a quote from Elie Wiesel. Wiesel was a holocaust survivor and an author as well a Nobel Laureate. The quote said, “The gift that God gave Adam in the garden was not how to begin, but how to begin again.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I could hang my hat on that one quote. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The struggle is often how<\/em> to begin again, not could I begin again. And the knowing is deep inside me. I know how, I struggle because I’ve gone astray, I’ve wound up in a place where I’m circling the drain of flying monkeys, irresponsible eating, drinking, smoking – read: indulging in nonsense, or my favorite drain – the one where I spiral into believing I’m not good enough for what I want, what I want to do, what I believe is true. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve been sitting back and watching my son who is nearly 16 years old work on issues of feeling not good enough and I want to jump out of my seat and yell YOU’VE GOT THIS. I’m not going to lie, I have jumped out of my seat and yelled, whispered, written and text him this message over and over. Alas, I’m a fixer and I’m trying to fix his brokeness, and what do we know about fixers – they need to fix themselves, right? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I grapple with the I’m not good enough<\/em> when I say to myself I don’t know how. I don’t know how to do what I want to do. I don’t know how to begin again. I don’t think I’ll ever write a word again. I don’t think anyone reads blogs anymore. I’m not sure anyone reads at all anymore. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. I don’t think I’m good enough<\/em> underlines each of these thoughts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I saw the Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama) speak to a crowd in New Orleans. I was thrilled to be there – imagine the Dalai Lama had come to the United States! What he said that struck me the deepest was this: when he first came to the West he was surprised to experience that we don’t have a lot of self love. He talked about how important it is to love yourself. He didn’t say but I read between the lines that he decided to dumb down his message of spirituality to love yourself<\/em> because he truly believed that is what we need to hear in this country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I brought this up at a retreat with a man who said he didn’t believe in loving yourself. “You have to love God first.” I stared at him. Yes, and? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the steps into vulnerability is loving myself. When I am not taking care of my needs – my rest, my nourishment, my heart, my spiritual growth, my emotional connections – I wind up masking this fear of vulnerability by telling myself I am not enough<\/em> to deserve this care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Dalai Lama visited New Orleans in 2013 – he spoke at many places but I heard him speak at UNO where thousands had gathered to hear him. The Dalai Lama is the global figurehead of Tibetan Buddhism. He has resided in Dharamsala, India since 1960.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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I went to the synagogue begrudgingly one year, because my son was studying for his bar mitzvah. I had taken to spending the high holidays in my own celebration for years – honeycakes, apples with honey on Rosh Hashanah, and a day of no screens, just meditation and journaling for Yom Kippur – this felt holy holy to me. There I was sitting in a stiff chair in a synagogue listening to the chanting (and… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1kHSD-5Ib","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21959"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21963,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21959\/revisions\/21963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}