Are we there yet?

Posted on by Janine Bertolo

Self-Centred Newsletter – December 31 2023

Acknowledging my colonial settler privilege in living and working on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe People, in progress of learning right relationship with the land and its First People

Are we there yet?

In 2021, when the social media trend was to choose a word for the coming New Year (is that still a thing?) mine was ‘embody’.

2021 me had no idea.

I have always been astounded at the power of intention, of setting an idea/desire/concept/dream free into the universe and releasing attachment to an outcome (as best as this imperfect human is able).

So much wonderful has manifested in my life with a practice that I never really realized was a practice. It was just something I did.

I remember a past version of me as a cheerful warrior in high school in the 70’s, encouraging myself and my friends to embrace a PMI. That’s a positive mental attitude btw; a concept originally introduced in 1937 by Napoleon Hill in his book Think and Grow Rich – a book I’ve never read, a person I hadn’t heard of back then, but somehow that phrase seeped into my consciousness and sparked my imagination and optimism for creating something better, for myself, my loved ones, my world.

Perhaps it was written into my DNA by one of my genealogical ancestors before I was born. Who knows?

1970’s me had no idea.

In any case, when the troubles of living in a post-colonial late-stage capitalist world got to feel like too much for me and my capacity to bear, there was always something deep inside that called for a pause, for a retreat into myself and land in the stillness to try to imagine a better way.

When I practiced Nichiren Buddhism, the intention took the form of chanting for an hour a day each morning and evening for a couple of months. 

In a space of six weeks, three transformative events happened two weeks apart from each other and changed my life utterly and completely, and set me on the path out of crippling debt, isolation and toxic work environments.

The chanting was a form of intention that cleared out resistance and cleared a path for the universe to deliver the joy and abundance that I believe is the birthright of every living creature.

When my partner and I were forced to move from the house we were renting in a time of unaffordable housing prices (it’s only gotten worse since then) and my manager brain was working overtime to find a place to leave, I remember calling for a moratorium on the search, and creating a cozy bed retreat for us to dream and write our desires for the perfect home as a way of inviting it in.

And a few days later, I saw a real estate ad for a house in the hills north of us, in a town I’d never heard of, and whose kitchen had the word “Cucina” stenciled in large letters, and I knew we’d found our home before any of us had stepped foot in it.

Late in 2019, when I was burned out and exhausted from years of fighting the good fight as a union activist turned political staffer, I took my retreat. This time it didn’t feel so much intentional as unavoidable. I had been running on empty for too long, trying to pour from an empty cup, extracting every ounce of life and love towards the cause, like a good capitalist should. 

But there was somewhere deep inside of me that knew that the healing and transformation would come in the pause, as terrifying as it might be. This time the intention took the form of a pause.

When the Covid pandemic arrived a few months later and changed our lives, I remember feeling like I could deal because I’d been living in a sort of self-imposed shelter in place for months already. None of us expected it to last more than a few weeks. Right?

2019 me had no idea.

That retreat was an intention that created opportunities that would otherwise have been inaccessible to me because of geography, expense and time limitations. When the world moved online I was there.

So, in the true nature of both/and, a most terrible time was (and is, because despite what economists want us to believe, Covid is not over) also enriching and transformative.

An extended period of simultaneous expansion and contraction that now seems perpetual.

Birth is a death wish. (I wrote that to myself a few months ago and sent it in a post-dated email. Does everyone do that or is it just me?)

And I’ve heard Buddhists say that death is a birth wish.

Wishes are intentions.

Protests are intentions.

Intentions can take as many forms as our bodies can imagine.

I look back at the one-word intention for 2021 – Embody – and marvel at the time traveling me that planted a seed.

And as 2023 comes to a close, I know that seed has germinated and taken root, with the maturity of seasons still to come.

Have I arrived yet?

Once again, I have no idea. Maybe it’s because ideas are manifestations of our brains, and our brains are only a small part of the sum total of us as fully embodied humans. 

Maybe it’s time to change the question.

Because as cheesy as it may sound (as cheesy as a cheerful chant of PMI) the journey just might be the destination.

These words traveling from my laptop to your screen may be an intention of their own.

My wish for you and for all of us at the end of this calendar year, is for the days and weeks and years to move us all closer to peace, justice, joy, and community.

May it be so.

Hello!

I’m Janine. My pronouns are she/her.

I am an anti-capitalist crone, post-trauma growth coach, and consensual copywriter.

I strive daily to identify and unlearn the voices of white heteronormative patriarchy that are insidiously planted in our brains from an early age – voices that, without critical inquiry, we often confuse as our own.

I dream of a return to the Commons and a world where all living beings have equal access to the necessities of life, including laughter, rest, creativity, and joy.

Even though I didn’t always have the words, this dream has been the undercurrent of all of my pursuits from an early age. 

I host the Caucus of Crones and Self-Centred in the Kin Keepers’ Haven, co-held online with my dear friend Trevia Woods.

I am available for 1:1 coaching sessions.

Drop a comment or check out my website if you’re interested in connecting.

Subscribe to have Self-Centred delivered directly to your email inbox here.

3 Questions for the Full Moon in August

Posted on by Janine Bertolo
low angle photography of full moon under silhouette of tall trees

Welcome to Leo season dear friends!

The full moon arrives on August 11 at 9:36 p.m. in the Eastern time zone.

I always look forward to Sarah Kemp’s Moonlight and Manifesting full moon guided practices (via Patreon.com – you can follow without subscribing to read public posts). If you’re interested, you can find all of Sara’s offerings here.

It’s also Perseid season…. have you seen streaks of light in the night sky? You’re not imagining things! The meteor shower will reach its peak in the early morning August 13, but if you have clear skies, the brightness of the full moon might make viewing difficult.

Either way, there’s magical light falling on us this week.

I have such fond memories of discovering quite accidentally that meteor showers are a thing, one hot summer night in 1987 while on community retreat. After most were in bed, a few friends gathered on the lake shore to wind down and enjoy the summer evening. We counted over 200 shooting stars that night and I was forever hooked.

I love to think about the cyclical timing of the universe that carries us on our annual trip around the sun, through belts of cosmic debris that burn up on hitting the Earth’s atmosphere.

Scientific and magical all at the same time.

This month’s newsletter follows the format set by the 3 Questions with Kat & Val podcast, a weekly delight that asks, “What’s bringing you joy?” “What’s moving around for you?” and “What are you learning?”

I look forward to Tuesdays when Kat and Val release new episodes.

What’s bringing me joy?
– Breakfast Bowls (lunch and dinner bowls – aka salads – too):
I love vegetables. I love fresh. I love the abundance of fresh local and delicious produce available to us during the summer. And I love being able to* toss a random combination of things into a bowl for a healthy, nutritious and delicious meal. This morning’s breakfast bowl consisted of tomatoes grown by my partner in our yard (you can taste the sunshine in them!), sprouts, arugula, lettuce, green onion, avocado, fried eggs and cooked ham. So.fucking.delicious.

*Okay, more accurately, my lovely partner does the tossing, the shopping, the cooking, and the bowl assembly, not me. And this too brings me joy.

Being able to listen to your body’s needs and honour them; to be able to ask someone to source the ingredients and prepare them, is a sign of a healthy nervous system. I haven’t always been there, and having regained the capacity for this also brings me joy.

– Ms. Marvel is delight. It brings me joy, and if it doesn’t bring you joy, I don’t want to hear about it.

– Learning and creating new things – I created a guided practice for orienting to your space and cultivating safety. Learning to use the audio conversion and mixing software, searching for background music and integrating it was… well it was fun!

You can listen and download the new thing I made here.

What’s moving around for me?
The non-binary nature of consent: and by this I mean recognizing that all-or-nothing perfectionist thinking has infiltrated my brain so that I deem any level of discomfort around something new as non-consensual.

This is simply not true and, more importantly, this internalized messaging keeps me in a state of freeze or stasis, unable to move or grow or expand, even when I desire it.

Without curious inquiry, this dynamic plays out in my life around chronic pain and mobility, around relationships, community-building and justice work. The discomfort of stretching into new places of learning and growing is not self-harm.

I am finding the work of Betty Martin and the Wheel of Consent very helpful in unpacking this. You can learn more about it here.

The concept of dirty pain versus clean pain described by Resmaa Menakem in this article also speaks to this idea, and is something that I am digesting and integrating:

“When people respond from their most wounded parts, become cruel or violent or run away, we experience dirty pain” (Menakem, R., 2017, pg. 20). When we avoid pain and discomfort, we also create more of it for ourselves and for others. To heal collectively, we must be willing to engage and feel clean pain.”

***
I have joined the Institute for Radical Permission facilitated by adrienne marie brown and Sonya Renee Taylor.

The most recent teachings explore self-worship as an act of radical permission, including developing decadence practices for ourselves.

There are some sticky bits around this for me.

In answer to a question about how to cultivate self-worship, adrienne marie brown suggested taking time to look at the moon the next time it’s full.

Notice that the surface of the moon is not smooth; it’s pockmarked by asteroids that have collided with it. The moon has a face because of those shadows; the moon has acne scars.

The moon never apologizes for its shadows because they are the story of its shaping, of its being.

The shadows tell the story of what’s shaped us, what we’ve overcome, what we have survived. Each of us is a miraculous being. The shadows shape us. They don’t have to be in charge.

Each of us is a luminous full moon, comprised of shadow and light, unique and precious and invaluable to the whole.

Taking this one to heart.

What am I learning?
See above; it’s all in there.

Offered with love,

Janine 

I am a post-traumatic growth and somatic coach who helps people heal & find ease from trauma that gets stuck in the body so they can live more fulfilled & authentic lives.

I create a safe, consensual, nurturing space for exploring, excavating, and healing, allowing what’s been stuck to move through and out.

​​​​​I love to work with humans to transform individual and collective trauma that disconnects us from the wisdom of our bodies, and keeps us from living joyful, connected lives.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

You can find more about my offerings here.

Mom and Me (and a bowl of cereal)

Posted on by Janine Bertolo

Remember that Bee Eye Are Dee my mom and dad were thinking about getting for me for my fifth birthday?

Well, it turns out bee eye are dee spells ‘bird’ and that’s what I got for a present. He was a green and white parakeet and I named him Charlie. He lived in a cage in the corner of our dining room, next to dad’s chair by the window. The cage had a pull out tray lined with newspaper to catch Charlie poop and seeds he scattered.

For breakfast most mornings, I’d fill my bowl with dry cereal in the kitchen and carry it to the dining  room table to add milk and sugar and eat.

One morning, when I was feeling a little sleepy and not quite coordinated, I tripped, knocking the bird cage and my cereal bowl onto the floor.

I guess mom wasn’t in a very good mood. Maybe on second thought, she was in a mischievous sort of mood. Parents are humans too after all.

Whatever, she took the broom and dustpan and swiped everything up, cheerios, bird seed, bird poop, feathers. She dumped it all back into my cereal bowl, slapped the bowl on the table in front of me with a bang and said “eat it.”

Time stood still.

I remember staring at that cereal bowl, a tiny parakeet down feather stuck to one of the Cheerios, wafting gracefully in slow motion in the breeze from my breath. And the smells of bird poop, bird seed and Cheerios.

I don’t know how long I sat there. It felt like forever. I remember thinking, she’s not really serious is she? Was this some kind of joke?

I like to think that this was followed by a second edible breakfast, but I really have no recollection.

My mom lived with cyclical depression and mental health issues. I didn’t really understand that as a child. I just felt that something was not right and, as children often do, I blamed myself. I learned to silence myself, my needs, in order not to upset someone else’s equilibrium. Most of the time that someone else was my mom.

I learned to put others’ needs before my own, and I used this strategy for most of my adult life.

All I knew back then was that my mom wasn’t always there for me in the ways that I needed her to be. I got the silent message that my job was to be there for her, to take care of her, and I took on that role with fervour and skill.

I was reluctant to shed the role of parent and go back to being a daughter in the times when she was feeling stable and well. As you might imagine, that in itself was a source of conflict.

I have the greatest compassion for my mom and the life she lived without adequate mental health resources to support her. She was a brave, incredibly strong survivor who did the best with the circumstances she faced. She experienced discrimination and isolation and judgement and shame because of her mental health issues.

My mom brought a lot of joy and music and laughter into my life. She shared a fierce and loyal love with my father that I held as my standard, unwilling to settle for anything less.

I know how much my mom loved me. I cherish my memories of the smile that brightened her face every time I showed up to visit unexpected. She thought I was the most beautiful daughter in the world. I know this because she told me often, and I believe she believed it.

Whenever I’d complain about the behaviour of a male colleague or co-worker, she’d reply “Well it’s obvious isn’t it? He’s in love with you.” Every single time, and there were many. I suffer no delusions about her accuracy of assessment, but it says a lot about the way she loved me, and I cherish that.

I am proud of myself for entering into a personal journey that allowed some healing of our relationship over the years leading up to my mom’s death in 2019. A couple of years before, on her 80th birthday, I thanked her for teaching me the meaning of unconditional love. I wrote it in a card and watched her read it across the room. I know from the light in her eyes and the smile on her face that she heard me.

Mom and me at 10 in 1971

I have learned to forgive my mom. I’m learning to forgive myself as well. It’s a layered process. I get the sense that mom learned to forgive me too.

I am resourcing that incredible strength of character and unconditional love I’ve inherited from my mom, and I am grateful.

I’m learning that putting my own needs first allows me to have something to offer the world. I’m learning to reparent my inner child and to walk more gently in the world. I’m learning to redraw personal boundaries. It helps to feel less alone. I’m learning to love myself and love life.

I can tell you, though, that at the age of almost 60 years, I’ve never eaten another bowl of cheerios, and most likely never will.

One day a while after the Cheerios incident, Charlie caught a cold and got all puffy and didn’t live much longer. I’ve never really felt the urge to have another bee eye are dee either.

Just sayin’