I am going to begin this post with a gross understatement:

Being a nonprofit director is not easy.

But then again, neither is being a boss. Or a parent (or a parront, for that matter). Or a child. A sibling. A partner. A spouse. A best friend. A colleague. A man. A woman. A child. A human being.

You get the point.

Life itself is also not easy. Just in case I missed this lesson, my own life has been providing me with handy daily reminders for well over two months now.

I can’t tell you how much it annoys me when I read statements like, “you are the one you’ve been waiting for.”

Really? I think. Nope. I’m pretty certain I’ve been waiting for someone else.

But the truth is, I’ve not so much been waiting FOR someone else, but I’ve been waiting to BECOME someone else – someone I like better, someone who matters more, someone with more influence or confidence, someone prettier, smarter, happier, smoother in the art of life and the living of it.

I’m 42 now, so I’ve been waiting for a while.

I am always reading a stack of books. Books are great mentors – always on call when you need them, never too busy or too tired, never offended if you walk away and seek counsel elsewhere instead.

My typical pattern with my book stack is that I read part of one….until I get overwhelmed, or bored, or distracted, or the lure of another book becomes too powerful to ignore….so then I jump to another one.

Or maybe I finish one whole one, just for the sense of accomplishment it gives me….and then as quickly launch into the next.

The truth is, mostly I just take bits and pieces from any one book, because there are only bits and pieces that may apply to where I am at in life at any given time. Some books that I really love I buy, just so I can read and remember the relevant bits now and then revisit them later for the stuff I missed.

Such is the case with my current read. Recommended by a Facebook friend, with a front cover in soothing blue and the single-word title, “Solemate,” this book promises to teach me how to “master the art of aloneness and transform your life.”

I am all for both of these things – especially if I can learn it all in under 300 pages.

My Dad considers himself a “lucky person.”

While I am as delighted by this news as any good daughter would be, I have to admit that luck and I have our differences.

Specifically, I disagree with luck that it exists.

The other day I happened to mention this to a friend. He asked me, “So what does luck mean to you?” 45 minutes later….here is what I was able to come up with.

“Luck” is the stuff that happens to me that I define as “good” but which I can’t control (ie. I am born into a middle class family with a steady income and a healthcare plan; I have a naturally strong immune system; I am an American citizen….you get the picture.)

The rest – the things most people call “lucky” – are the things I put under the category of “hard work and determination.”

A few posts ago I mentioned a recent period of time when everything in my life seemed to be going south – as fast as it possibly could.

The only trouble was, I didn’t want to go that way at all, and certainly not at the pace my life was setting.

Right around that time, a dear friend texted me a book recommendation. The book? “Necessary Endings.”

While the subtitle initially seemed to suggest the author had a business audience in mind, the first few pages set my mind at ease. Businesses, after all, are composed mainly of people (along with the usual assortment of electronics)….and people tend to run into the same sorts of challenges, conflicts and even endings at home as they do at work.

I found “Necessary Endings” illuminating for both the challenges I was facing in that moment, and also for other challenges I had placed on the back burner (ie had been trying to ignore).

I am now eagerly and at great speed plowing through two of Dr. Cloud’s other books, “Integrity” and “Boundaries.”

Stay tuned….

Today’s Takeaway: What does the phrase “necessary endings” bring up for you? Are you perhaps facing an ending that you have delayed too long – or one you refuse to admit needs to occur? Are you comfortable in navigating endings or would you benefit from additional skills? If so, perhaps “Necessary Endings” might be able to serve as a useful resource for you as well!

This post is from this month’s edition of “Good News for Eating Disorders Recovery.” I hope you enjoy it!

You Are Your Own Reward

The first time this phrase came to my mind I can still remember thinking, “Oh good god.”

I mean – seriously? Do ‘real’ people (aka people like me) actually say things like this?

As it turns out, they do. They even say things like this and mean them.

Not so long ago I went through a period where life really, really, REALLY started to feel like a thankless job.

Everywhere I turned there were endings. Conflict. Misunderstandings. Heartache.

I wanted off. Out. I wanted to find the person who had signed me up for this – this thing – this life – without my permission and, well, do whatever came naturally.

I caught myself looking around for ‘comforts’ – trying to ease my own pain, limit my own stress, locate and annex tiny moments of joy so my own days no longer felt so endless, or bleak.

It took me awhile to realize that the reward I was seeking was the one I already had.

Me.

There I was, going through it, getting through it, waking up each day and going head to head with the unknown yet again, absolutely refusing to see any other outcome other than a positive one (even and especially if I couldn’t fathom what that could possibly be yet).

It wasn’t a fun period of time. I’m glad it’s over. And I don’t want it to come back.

But out of it I got that treasure of treasures – the active, undeniable, day to day experience of me showing up for me, as me, in my own life.

In the same way, it may be so easy for you to miss the sight of yourself, making yourself proud, showing up for yourself again and again even when you would rather do anything but.

It is very easy for you to miss seeing this. But I see it so clearly.

My wish for you this month is that you will at last realize that YOU – as you – for you – …

I hope I am not the only one who sometimes goes to bed at night or wakes up in the morning and thinks to herself, “Remind me why I am showing up for this (life) again?”

Lately, it has happened a bit more often than usual …. that life has felt heavy, overwhelming, confusing …. full of more questions than answers, more insecurities than confidences, more drama than accord.

In these moments I have found myself searching – HARD – for joy, yet finding only trace elements where a robust surplus formerly lay. I have felt the weight of onrushing unanticipated endings without the corresponding lift of encouraging new beginnings.

The other day I even caught myself thinking, “Man, life sure seems like a thankless job sometimes.”

And sometimes it does. Sometimes it feels like there should be somebody we can complain to – some higher up whose job it is to fix those darned potholes we keep hitting.

But there isn’t. There is only us. For those of us who have faith, perhaps there is God (or whatever our personal preferred terminology may be). But then faith complicates matters, because of the fact that sometimes we are tested, sometimes good-seeming things are really not that great and bad-seeming things are the best thing for us in the long run.

So still, faith or no faith, there we are, complaining to ourselves …. consoling ourselves ….. working out in our own minds and hearts how to make what feels not-too-great feel at least tolerably better.

Interestingly – unexpectedly too – what I have learned through this most recent “thankless job” period is that I can actually do this.

I can find reasons to motivate myself to get up when I would prefer (and it also seems perhaps wiser) to stay in bed. I can find ways to calm myself down – and stay calm – when every rageful or sad molecule in my body is longing to act out.

I can even find tiny sweet things – things that aren’t perhaps the red carpet and fireworks display the hard times seem to merit, but are still …

I love movies. Truly, I do. Movies are uplifting, comforting, instructive, thought-provoking, affirming and sometimes challenging. Movies teach me and encourage me, scare me and fill me with gratitude. Watching other people – real or not so real – live their lives onscreen makes my own life feel more vibrant and alive as well.

Did I mention I love movies?

But I am often not too good about seeing them when they first come out. Truthfully, often I am the one “discovering” last year’s Oscar winners while in line at the Redbox (or online at Netflix).

Speaking of which – recently I saw a movie called “Looper.” Judging from how confusing I found the plot initially, either my IQ is on a steady decline or perhaps it wasn’t in last year’s Oscar running. But as the film progressed, it got better. And by the end it got very good – and very simple – indeed.

I don’t want to spoil the storyline for those of you who haven’t seen it yet. But if I were pitching the plot to a big money bags producer and I had to sum it up in one line, it would be: “The bad things people do are to try to protect the good things in their lives.”

From this perspective, I found the film so interesting and also strangely reassuring. I say this because, when taken out of context, many people’s choices and actions can seem so evil, so bad, so grave. But then as the greater story emerges, so often there is some underlying motive stemming from love, loyalty, connection.

This seems like a very important point to make, especially in the world we live in today when so much of what we read about, see on the news and hear from others just makes no sense at all. Why do people do the things they do? Who are these others – these awful people out maiming, killing, stealing, lying, cheating, deceiving, taking from others what never has and never will belong to them?

I don’t know. But I do know that there is more to each of those stories than …

Often in my college programs I share the story of how my best friend from kindergarten started out our 6th grade year by telling me I was too fat to be her friend. She told me it was because she wanted to be popular in middle school and I was too fat to be seen with.

Retelling this story is both painful and vindicating. It is painful because each time I tell it, I revisit the shock and shame I felt when she spoke those words. It is vindicating because in the retelling, I realize I am stronger now and have more coping tools to withstand such an incident were it to occur today.

But one thing I have only more recently realized is that I wasn’t the only one who was in pain that day. The truth is, happy, healthy people don’t hurt other people. Why would they? Who would want to mess up feeling happy and healthy?

But hurting people – well, that’s a different story. Hurting people hurt other people all the time. Sometimes the hurt is so deep and vast and overwhelming that it even just spills out and they can’t control it no matter how much they want to or wish that they could.

Who knows what Leslie was going through when she “divorced” herself from our longstanding best friendship that day. One thing I do know, however, is that it must have been pretty painful. She must have felt pretty scared. She must have felt she needed that popularity so much – like she needed oxygen.

It is so difficult when people hurt us – or at least I find it very difficult. Some people, because of their work or their personality or for various reasons, just seem to have thicker skins for these sorts of life experiences. But despite the fact that I work with a group of folks who are often encountering their own mortality on a daily basis (and in their fear might at times do or say just about anything to get basic survival needs met) I …

Recently my longtime dear friend and colleague, Dr. Dena Cabrera, and a newer friend of mine, Emily Wierenga, released a much-anticipated new book to help moms who are recovering from an eating disorder. Yay!

“Mom in the Mirror” was released this month by Rowan & Littlefield Publishers. When Dena first mentioned the concept to me a few years ago, right away I was anxious for her to begin work. This is because we have so many members within MentorCONNECT, the eating disorders mentoring nonprofit I founded in 2009, who are moms. So while I am not a mother myself (although I am the proud parront to a most beautiful and intelligent bird named Pearl) I am regularly privy to some of the struggles and strains that cross the minds and hearts of mothers who want to make sure their own eating disordered ways are not passed along to their kids.

While not everyone on MentorCONNECT will necessarily relate to some of the faith-based passages in “Mom in the Mirror” (both co-authors are dedicated Christians and so their faith necessarily infuses their personal journeys and the work they do to support others as well) I personally felt that the book is written in such a way that readers who are not Christians can still find tremendous value in the majority of the material.

In this way, “Mom in the Mirror” really does offer readers the best of all worlds – inspiring personal stories of recovery from the authors and others interwoven with the latest eating disorder research by noted experts in the field and practical tools and tips throught to help readers strengthen in recovery.