Wait for it, Wait. Spring is Here!

Happy Spring!

White trees, pink buds, too, purple shimmer you give me a start,
a chance, a movement of expression to reach you, touch, explore
devour, release, break through the firm barrier and grow.

See me, you, in every defining blossom of blush.

Let Them Eat Cake: Good Intentions Never Fall Too Flat

When I'd bitten off more than I could chew, my mother used to tell me the road to hell is paved with good intentions.Take last night, for example. Me and my big mouth. I told both of my evening classes - back to back - that we would begin to celebrate birthdays and this past Monday and Tuesday started the procession. We won't do it again until April, thank goodness. I really messed up.

Monday's party was for a lovely Albanian woman and the class made a list and money was collected and the result was a deliciously huge cake prepared by another student in our class. We had tortilla chips, salsa, flan, and more. Soft drinks and juices were carried in by other students and it was a charming success. But I also went home tired, needing to make a cake for the next night's event. Did I mention I was tired?

Now, this second class is smaller than the Monday one, 15 most nights versus nearly 25. I stared at the tin baking pan I'd purchased and it looked large. I couldn't imagine baking and transporting such a big batch of Funetti cake. I should have made it, though, let it cool overnight and frosted it once at school. But I didn't. I fell asleep and in the morning hurriedly made the double portion, but by the time I needed to leave for my train ride to Harlem for my second day of a 12-hour schedule, the cake was not finished. It wasn't firm in the center. It was liquid still! Thankfully, I had left some batter out and had also baked a small offering. Small. But it had cooked clear through and so I took it!

I wish my cake had been this big.

I was not thinking, firing on all pistons. And once in Harlem, a full eight hour day, and blurred right into the evening, forgetting to seek out a bakery on 125th Street during my lunch hour. Plus, my feet hurt. Oh that road to hell. Before the students arrived, I stared at the cake that amounted to a Texas-sized cookie at best. I blushed, thankful I also bought a dozen donuts and a box of fancy cookies. But I'd forgotten to buy soft drinks. We had a bottle leftover from the night before, so I took it out of the school's refrigerator. I found a pitcher, too, and filled it with water, praying all this was enough. In hindsight, I should have passed around a list for this class as the Monday class had done.

This night's birthday celebration was for a delightful Greek man. He gave me a precious wooden sailboat after a cruise he and his wife attended a few months back. I love it. The base of the boat has the word "love" written in cursive with white paint. 

"It is small," he had said.

"No! I love it!" I said when he gave it to me, and I meant it.

I shoved Munchkin donuts around the base of the cookie/cake. As we stood about the table, the class was polite and I hope to heck everyone got a slice, thin though it was. I sliced and served, not looking up.

Later, at home, I stared at the larger cake and its sunken middle. I could have cut out the uncooked part and had more than enough cake. Shoved Munchkins in the hellish mess.

I still feel embarrassed because it is my nature to be generous. It looked like I was stingy, unthoughtful, and unprepared. And yet, only the last part of my previous sentence is true. I mean think about it: my kind Greek student thinks the decorative sailboat he gave to me was too small, and I think my mistake produced a dinky birthday cake. But our intentions were humongous.

Tomorrow night, I will apologize to him. Or not. I need to forgive myself and know my intentions were from the heart. The debacle kept me in the direction of the fiery furnace, but there's always hope for a detour.

Righteous Rain

Two years ago in March I was back home in West Texas and would come to stay there for five weeks while caring for my mother who would die on April 13, 2010. As her hospice caregiver, I signed up to be with her 24 hours a day the last ten days of her life. I am so thankful for it. When I returned to New York, I was unbelievably sleep-deprived, yet a cleansed energy began to pummel through me, and still today. Those five weeks were magical to me as I know they were to my mother, too.

We were never close. I wanted to move back to my childhood home more than five years ago and be there for her, but she decided to move in with my sister, so I remained in New York, silently thankful and disappointed at the same time. But there are no mistakes. Because when it came time for her to come back to my sister's home, to the bedroom built on for her, I was the only sibling available to stay with her. I eagerly signed the consent form, agreeing to be the best hospice caregiver I could be.

I had no business being there. I had lost my job in 2007 and spent the next three years struggling. When I returned after my mother's death, I still had my new part time job, but my finances were collapsing on me and yet I felt such grace, such thankfulness. The fear was great, but I felt, truly felt one foot in the next dimension urging me on to find my middle ground and to learn from all this.

So I am writing about those five weeks with my mother. It has taken two years to know this is the exact moment to do such. I've had pages and pages of starts, but nothing has worked and it was because I was without self esteem which I reclaimed a few months ago and now everything has changed. I am so fortunate.

Showers of blessings. Five weeks.Starting now.

I See You and You are My Gift to Freedom

"When the world begins to overwhelm you, it is because you are looking too far from your own path....respond fully and openly to those who present themselves to you. They are the guardians and guideposts of your unique lessons."  Matri: Letters from the Mother, Zoe Ann Nicholson

If I read too many tweets, too many status posts from subscribers, it doesn't take long before I feel a strange, twist of discomfort with all the issues and problems in this World. Frustration and anger rises. I want to post rebuttals, get into it. I suddenly feel like it's all so hopeless. Where did that come from? I wonder. And then I realize...I am going too far from my path; from what is right in front of me. There is so much help I can do if I stay calm, centered, in the present, and being with whatever and whoever is standing and looking at me.

Maybe it is the young woman on the train this morning with a blanket around her, colorful enough that for a second makes me think it is a long coat. But it isn't. I need to ask if she is in trouble, needs something, is homeless, why without a coat? But I once I hear the train schedule is being interrupted, I get off the train, and remember her just now, and I sigh. I forgot her.

Maybe it is the woman I tutor with here in the Bronx who likes to talk when we aren't with students, rather than me preferring to get on this computer and write. She's talking to me now and my neck is sore from turning around, but each time I do, I realize we are sharing a moment. I bought her a coffee this morning and she shared her sandwich with me. "We're a good team," I tell her, and she smiles, going back to her newspaper as I turn to type.

Maybe it's my friend who texts me news about her ailing mother. "Can you meet for coffee?" she asks and I do it, turning off "The View" to go and see her.

Maybe it's my daughters, grown, and working hard to live a free, full, hearty life. I am learning to text them first. How are you? shows up on their phones before they can beat me to it. Just a feather dropped to them, telling them your mama loves you.

Maybe it's the person in front of me. The woman in the public bathroom at the mirror, brushing her hair as I wash my hands, and both of us feeling the distance, the DNA-learned distrust we automatically put between us, judging, positioning, rejecting. Next time I will smile, meet her eye, and know I have sent a wave of kindness into the energetic movement of the Universe. When we women begin to regard each other with kindness, the revolution will be complete.

The past is gone. Thank goodness. The future is baking in this present. We are the Merlin the Magicians we have been waiting for. We are who is right in front of us at this exact moment and it is an opportunity to plant the seed of love. The victor is us. It always has been and always will be.

Mother Teresa said it best: "I believe in person to person. Every person is Christ to me, and since there is only one Jesus, that person is the one person in the world at that moment."

And I intend to remember this the minute I am standing in front of an awkward situation with an angry-fed-up-with-the-world person. Even if it's only me.


Sheela Wolford is the creator of Workshops by Wolford. She lives in Brooklyn with a cat nicknamed Catcow and who has no problem standing in front of her demanding to be brushed, again and again.

Did I Ever Tell You I'm My Hero?

More than a few months ago, I reclaimed my self-acceptance by listening to a great program by Caroline Myss on self-esteem. She tells it like it is and then comes the moment of truth: Will you put this incredible information into action?

I did.

Actually, it was a long overdue window of opportunity to do such. As a 56-year-old woman, I listened and felt the truth massaging, invigorating, and liberating my solar plexus into action.

It didn't take long.

You know, the funny thing about self-esteem is it isn't an aggressive-in-your-face power, but rather it is simply a natural don't-have-to-think-about-it response. The first time I answered a question with a higher sense of self-esteem, I had to stop and take it in. I waited for the usual rush of fear or indecision or regret for speaking.

That didn't happen.

Instead, it just felt real and the absolutely correct response. So that's self-esteem, I thought, holding on to the edge of a table, clutching it, thankful, calm, and ready to go forward. Two weeks ago I went with my grown daughters on a road trip to Portland, Maine. We were discussing what we should have for dinner that evening? My younger daughter wanted sushi. She was hoping her sister and I did, too. Before self-esteem, I would have gone with the concensus. But after self-esteem it just came out even to my surprise when I said, "I don't want sushi." Just like that. "Whoa," said my younger daughter, "you really have gotten self-esteem." I had.

Norman Vincent Peale declared that "when people believe in themselves they have the first secret of success." Exactly. I felt it as if I was standing in a rushing river, a revolution of power just surging through me. Oh how I wish I could turn back time! But it is okay. I am connected to me now and that is all that matters. But I remember times when I was too afraid to go forward with a project, to call someone related to it, and so on. Not anymore, but it isn't always easy-breezy.

I still have to wrangle my emotions and let courage take the lead. It is that one step; that one move toward the goal, that knowing that retreating is fear, doing is courage. I choose courage. And sometimes it means changing my circle of friends, colleagues, relation to relatives, and so on. Once you flirt with self-esteem, you must be committed to a long-term marriage. I am and I do.

Hafiz wrote, "I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness, the astonishing light of your own being." So, what is self-esteem? It is telling your truth, everytime. It is speaking honestly, what you know, what you need, who you are.

I am a poet who before didn't think her words had standing power. I am a writer who wrote so sloppily she could not read what had been written and why even type it? I am a photographer who is learning that her view of the world is interesting, artistic and healing. I am a workshop leader who wants to bring all the studious information she has found to others hungry and who want to be whole.

"I love you, Sheela," I say every morning in the mirror as my cat meows, translation: Get my food and brush me. I stare into the mirror, kindly ignoring him, and I seek out any self-hate or deep disgust, and I grab it, bless it, and say good-bye. This act is wordless. It is a stirring bliss of freedom.

Before purchasing Caroline Myss's program on self-esteem, I kept the information from a Sounds True catalogue taped on my bathroom mirror. One day I knew I had to order it and get on with it. My intuition was frustratingly thumping me on the head. For so long I had tried to accomplish so many aspects of my career, bludgeoned by my procrastination and incongruities of actions. Listening to Myss, I wrote furious notes, giddy, emotional, and feeling the pulsation of a power that sang to me and what I knew was the missing ingredient to my life.

My being is bright and now I know how to beckon it to shine. I am light no longer afraid of the dark.