Black History Month Poem

Black History Month 2011

In 1998 I moved to South Carolina.  My exposure to black history and racial prejudice had until that time been largely influenced by television, movies, and what I had read.  I had no first-hand experience of life in the southern US.  I was naive enough to think racial differences were part of the past.  It did not seem possible to me that such a thing as “voluntary segregation” could exist in the late 1990’s.  The term “voluntary segregation” was introduced to me in a short-lived friendship that I had with a young black man from South Carolina, named Wendell.  It meant that although blacks were by law no longer segregated, black and white people still chose to live separately.  It was expected.  It made things easier for everyone.  And in truth, when I looked around my neighborhood we were by far white.  Wendell told me about “voluntary segregation” on the last day I ever saw him.  Wendell and I had instantly become friends when we met but we did not remain friends for long because of the compromises he would have had to make, the risks he would have had to take, in associating with me, a white woman.  It was a shock and disappointment to me at the time.  A deep hurt curled its way inside my heart for the bitter, sad truth of it.  Wendell has remained in my thoughts and prayers all these years and I wrote the following poem in honor of him for this 2011 Black History Month.  Wherever you are Wendell, this is for you, my friend.

~ Wendell

his name was Wendell

he was the first black friend

I ever had

with a smile so big

it stretched across his face

and sparkled in his eyes

and took me by surprise

and made me smile back

made me laugh with him

just for the joy of it

made me like him

want to get to know him

talk to him

made me want to be his friend

his name was Wendell

and we sat on the steps 

of my front porch

that first day 

looking out at the southern afternoon

with the sun so hot 

and the air so thick and drowsy 

the day so slow 

that we languished in the lazy shade

me a white woman 

he a black man

in a place where I was to learn

that color

still made a difference

still mattered

still separated

still painted prejudice 

on the hearts of those 

good southern Christians

like a sad song they were born to sing

like a brutal burden they were doomed to bear

simply because they always had

and for no better reason than that

but on that first day 

on that thank you God for Wendell day

he was my friend

making me laugh ‘til my sides hurt

slap my knee

throw back my head

wipe the tears from my eyes 

shake me, make me feel good laughs

and for a space of time

he remained my friend

he told me things

showed me things

let me see the south his way

but there came a day

that wish to God it never came day

when Wendell said

we could no longer be friends

his smile was gone 

our laughter silenced

by an ugly truth

as we stood in my kitchen

him telling me

that the way of south

would never really let us be 

friends

me a white woman

he a black man

it’s the way that it is

the way it’s always been

best you leave it alone

best I go on home

I told him no

not where I come from

he put his hand on my arm

looked into my eyes

this ain’t your place

you must realize

it’s better this way

easier too

here in the south

it’s what we do

I go my way 

you go yours

and he walked out my door

his name was Wendell

he was the first black friend

I ever had

and even after all these years 

and all this time

the regret lingers with me

gnaws at my conscience

of what is right 

and what is terribly wrong

so I carry Wendell in my heart

and wish for him

hope for him

long for him

to one day be 

my friend

again

02.12.2011

we're in a relaionship

I hear and read a lot about building relationships in business.  It has become a catch phrase that represents the approach necessary to being successful in business or in any job.  It is something that was there all along but now we recognize it and have given it center stage in our efforts.  We seek to understand and connect with others so that we can help them, be of service to them.  We know that if we establish a relationship with those we meet we will benefit and grow with them, not just because of them.

Last night I had some friends over to my house for a jewelry party.  The two women who conducted the party were sisters and they presented numerous pieces of jewelry on mannequins that they had dressed in varying outfits to demonstrate the versatility and beauty of the jewelry.  The sisters had this rhythm between them that drew us in.  They were not glamorous or intimidatingly good looking.  They were just two women like us who used jewelry to look good, to feel pretty, and to augment their wardrobe.  Over the course of a couple of hours we got to know these women.  We shared food and talked while we tried on the jewelry, laughing and enjoying the "girls' dress-up event."  I learned a lot about mixing pieces of jewelry.  I learned even more about the power of relationships because these two women came into my home strangers but by the time they left I felt I knew them.

And that is the power of "relationshiping"in business and in life - getting to know others.  It's the going from "hello" to "I can't wait to hear from you."  It is the sharing of stories and experiences.  It is getting to that place of comfort and easy conversation where connection takes root and becomes something more.  Last night I fell in love with the jewelry, learned a lot, and chose pieces that I am excited about.  It was fun.  But it was the interaction with others and the experience that will bring me back to shop again.  They mentioned a spring line.  Can't wait!

the people we meet

One of my favorite things in this life is to meet new people.  I love the conversations and discovery.  I especially enjoy looking at the world through other people's eyes.  The perspective they offer often makes me reconsider my own views, opening me up to possibilities previously unconsidered.  How wonderful to find fresh ideas.  Today I met two new people.  At the end of my time with each of them I felt lifted.  The circle of my own life was broadened and reshaped by their having arrived.  And for that I was grateful.  Blessed.

Every day I have the opportunity to meet new people.  I love that as I get ready for my day what lies ahead is still largely veiled and unknown.  For all the planning I do, my interactions with people remain the element of surprise.  As we reach out to people through the internet and social media we take our cues from things they have written and posted on their websites, facebook, twitter, or elsewhere.  We have learned to interact using common tools, phrases, links, and visual and audio clips.  We live and function in this new realm where we converse, communicate, interact, do business, and build our community.  So often what someone has written or posted offers just what we need in the current moment.  Somedays it is the found phrase of another that inspires us, moves us to action, keeps us from giving up and allows us to find our way through to the next level of success we have been seeking.  It is that one person who seems to see us where we are and offers the hand of change, hope.

My goal is to be that person for someone on any given day.  I offer it from a grateful heart.  We are here on this planet in the wide universe to bless one another, to create the pathways, and to be a light.  Pay it forward.  There is always more.

A change in the weather

It's November 9th and the temperatures here in Phoenix finally dipped below 70 degrees - 69 to be exact.  Everyone was talking about how cold it was today.  People wore hats and coats and sweaters.  Now I know to my Canadian family and friends this sounds a little crazy.  But I've lived in Phoenix since 2003 so my thick Canadian blood thinned a long time ago.  And just so you know, I was not wearing a coat, hat, or even a sweater.   But I was delighted to feel the chill of November, be it ever so relative.  Because after months of living in air conditioning, fending off the 110 degrees outside, this was a day to celebrate.

All my life fall has been my favorite season.  The smell of macintosh apples, smoke from a chimney, a new woolen sweater, my leather book bag, maple leaves on the ground, are memories that take me back to my childhood in outport Newfoundland in autumn.  Of course, that was September.  Still today I found myself remembering those things and enjoying them once again, if only in my mind.  There was for me always a sense of new beginnings in the fall.  School, the promise of ideas, new books to read, stories to write, friends and adventures.  How lovely, that on this November day I was reawakened to that joyful anticipation because the cool air held a twinge of the crisp days of fall from long ago.

My life in this moment is filled with new beginnings.  I am learning to live my life as a single mom. I am meeting new people.  I am stepping out of my comfort zone to do things I have not dared before.  I am building a a business from home, a life long dream of mine.  These are new adventures, new joys.  And while I still have my moments of trepidation I wake each day with the certainty that I am on to something good.  Something wonderful.  A definite change in the weather.

May you blessed today!

www.ceowomenathome.com

www.facebook.com/mary.hodder1

life unveiled

Elizabeth Lesser has a wonderful book called "Broken Open; How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow" that I am reading for the third time.  I have recently had some experiences that made this book a guide and a necessity.  I separated from my husband, moved to a new house, and my father died - all within the space of three weeks.  That was May.  It is now September.  I thought, being the virgo, type-A person that I am, that by now I would be well on my way to the life on the other side of my life's tragedies.  That is not the case.  I have tried to accept this and learn some patience.  Elizabeth talks about going into the pain to find courage in the softness of sadness.  I always thought courage was about strength and resilience.  My sad, broken heart just needed to get over things.  Yet, as I take more care of me and let the sadness exist for a while I am finding a new dimension to courage that I never knew I had.  You see, for a long time I hid my pain and put on a facade for everyone.  Now the veil is lifted and I am standing naked in my own reality, facing the woman in the mirror who lets her true feelings show and is not ashamed of the truth anymore.

Elizabeth also talks about the "Open Secret" that we all share.  We tell each other in our conversations and greetings that all is well and life is good and have a wonderful day.  We walk away envious of the other's happiness because we know ours' is fake.  But the secret is that the people we greet most often feel the same way.  They think we are the happy ones and they wish they were us.  If we were honest we would both see that we have pain and fears and disappointments.  We would be able to truly see each other and perhaps even lift each other up.  Instead we want others to believe we are happy and all is well even though we are tortured by the misbelief that it is really everyone else who has found the key to happiness for which we continue to search.  I walked around like that for years and it took a lot of energy to pretend I was "fabulous" when what I truly needed was to open my heart and tell my story.

I am in the process of becoming real.  I am slowly coming to like and love myself.  I am thinking again of what pleases me, exploring the dreams and longings of my heart.  I am learning to trust the voice within me that I finally recognize as my own.  I am beginning adventures, like building a business.  I spend time calling friends I have neglected for a long time.  I am writing down my goals and planning my life.  I am taking time to sit with myself so I can listen to silence and wait for answers from within.  I am learning to trust that my sadness is the pathway through to the me I have yearned to find.  And when I think I don't know how I will make it on my own I remind myself that I am already doing it, one miraculous day at a time.

I know that as women we are so used to taking care of others that we forget how to love and nurture ourselves.  In the last three months I have had an awakening, a Phoenix kind of arising, from my past.  I see now that my life was not full of mistakes, but of lessons and blessings, from which my whole self is being formed.  For within every perceived failure lies our potential for success if we but seek the lesson offered.

mighty lessons

When my father died in May my heart seemed to split wide open.  I was in the midst of separating from my husband, as well as moving to a new house.  My kids, caught in the middle. Then suddenly I was on a plane flying across the country to be with my family in Newfoundland.  Looking back on those days in May I scarce know how I survived.  At a time when I needed someone to lean on I was the most alone I had ever been in my life.  We can go for years feeling that things remain the same and then within the space of a few days reality shifts and we are forever changed.

Somehow I stumbled into June.  The kids and I began our life in a new house, getting used to the changes. I am in awe of my body now because each day I was able to keep going and it never failed me. One day at a time.  June became July and July gave way to August.  And here I am today.  Slowly the heart ache subsides and life around me takes on the visage of normal.  I am learning to go forward.  For the first time in almost 30 years I am not in a relationship.  And while I thought I would leap into the experience it has taken some getting used-to, some adjustment and courage.  My father told me once that he thought I was a very strong person.  He also told me that being able to support myself was important in life because there are no guarantees.  I wonder if he saw something in me that drew that comment to his mind.  For here I am living out the "no guarantee" scenario.

So what does this story have to do with building a business?  Well, it's more about building a life.  We all come to our work and daily engagements with multiple shades of experience.  We are not one-dimensional, and really how boring would that be?  I look back upon May as a month of mighty lessons.  And the most important one came from my father.  He took his exit much as he lived his life, quietly, faithfully and without a fuss.  He died as he lived, with honor and blessings.  My father did not amass great financial fortune in his life but he lived with the kind of abundance and love that most of us yearn for but rarely find.  Not one day of his life did he owe money.  He never had a mortgage or a car loan or any kind of credit.  He never knew a day of debt.  He loved my mother with his whole heart and created a life that was happy, family-centered and rich in joyous gatherings.  He focused on what mattered, never veering from that, and always working hard to support it.  And therein lies the wisdom.  To focus on what matters most in all that we do.  To reaffirm our "why" when we wake up each day.  I believe that if we do that, focus on what matters,  anything and everything is possible.

finding your passion

When I was a young girl attending university I became an English honors student.  This event in itself was a surprise to me, that I should be accepted into the honors program.  It was the first time in my life that I really felt I could be more than ordinary, more than a girl from outport Newfoundland.  It was the first time that the universe responded to my heart's greatest desire to be a learned person of literature.  I wanted to hear and feel and fully experience the power of language and how we as humans communicate what is in our souls.  It was the beginning of my love affair with words that continues to this day.

Looking back I wonder if things would have turned out as well as they did without my beloved professor, Gildas Roberts.  Dr. Roberts was extraordinary.  He was a man of small stature but large presence.  When he walked down the hallways of the English Department he seemed to glide, with his academic robes gracefully swishing behind him.  He was immaculate in dress and personal grooming, distinguished and charming.  He knew he caught your attention and he enjoyed it.  He entered the classroom with the same flourish and looked out upon us with a mischievous gleam in his eye.  Only Gildas Roberts could make Beowulf rise from the pages to live amongst us in the classroom.  His flawless reading in Old English gave shape to a language that was as sweet in the ear as it was upon the tongue.  I went on to take advanced Old English.  Dr. Roberts taught one other student and me in his office for two semesters.  We were two eager young girls with our feet tucked beneath us in large leather chairs, ready to learn from a man whose wisdom we so deeply admired.  That winter was a blessed time.  Snow falling outside the window of Dr. Roberts' office while we read and translated word for word the entire text of Beowulf. By the time spring came we had finished our translation.  As a gift for our many hours of dedicated work Dr. Roberts gave each of us a signed copy of his personal published translation of Beowulf.  It is a treasured book in my library to this day.

After I graduated from university my life took a number of different turns and it was many years later that I decided to reconnect with my professor.  Sadly, my dear Dr. Roberts had been tragically killed in a motorcycle accident while traveling in Wales.  It broke my heart to not get to tell him how much he meant to me and how important a role he played in my life.  Part of me supposes that he knew.  But youth is not always respectful of the gifts bestowed.  It takes time and perspective to gain genuine understanding of what was imparted by those who taught us when we were young.  It was when my children took an interest in Beowulf that I began thinking of Dr. Roberts again.  As I read and translated the text for my kids I heard the voice of Gildas Roberts patiently enunciating each separate sound of the Anglo Saxon words. Once more Beowulf came alive for me and I was able to incite in my kids the awe and wonder of the story of a hero and a monster.

How fortunate are we when we find our passion!  There is a joy in it like none other.  We are fully awake, alive in the pulse of our greatest existence.  It is in our passion that we find our reason for being, our purpose, our right alignment with the spirit that guides us.  I wish for you just such an awakening, just such a doorway into your passion.  You deserve nothing less.

happy by choice

So often I have found myself saying, "I'll be happy when..."  My thinking put happiness in the future and placed its dependence on some event or thing or person coming into my life.  It was as though happiness was something I had to wait for.  It was not in the present, or at least the happiness I hoped for was not in the present.  And I seemed content to live like that.  Waiting for happiness to arrive.

Louise Hay, author of "You Can Heal Your Life," teaches that anything we want in life we need to affirm in the now.  Say it like it already exists.  "I am happy."  The first time I said that I let the words resonate for a while.  I said it over and over until I understood that to be happy is a choice.  It is something I am or I am not, and either way I choose it.  At first it was surprising and a little uncomfortable.  I get to choose.  It's up to me.  It's in me.  I don't have to wait for it, or hope for it, or long for it.  I can be happy right now just by saying so and believing it.

We live in world filled with people who long for, wish for, and wait for, but cannot seem to get what they want.  I have been one of those people.  "Someday things will be better."  Today I look in the mirror to have a upfront and personal conversation with the woman who is me and I tell her, "Someday is today." I know that the choice to be happy is all mine.  No matter what has happened or will happen I am alive with the certainty and blessing that today is the day I am happy by choice.

If we choose to be happy so much of what we struggle with will ease.  Like magic we will be surrounded by other happy people, drawn to us by the power of our choice.  This simple truth can be applied in all other aspects of our life.  What we think and what we believe draws to us and creates for us our reality.

sacred space

When I was  a young girl I would go walking in the woods near my house.  I would tuck a book inside my jacket and walk along the trail, follow the old fence, and make my way through the under brush until I came to my tree.  My tree.  The one I climbed and pulled myself up until I came to that wide branch that curved up to the tree trunk creating a perfect seat for me.  And there I would nestle myself into that wooden nook, out of view amongst the green leaves and and the shroud of trees surrounding my sacred space in the forest.  For a while I would sit in the quiet to read and to think and to be with just myself.  Lost to time and the demands of others.

It's been a lot of years since I sat in that tree or any other.  I make it my practice though to sit quietly each day so that I may reconnect to the silence within, to the peace that is the soul.  It is the act of withdrawing from the world to a softer inner place that allows us to return to the world reawakened and renewed.  I carry the memory of my tree with me, returning to it in my mind whenever I long for a moment of bliss.  I feel the curve of the tree at my back, hear the rustle of the leaves, and I slip back in time to my early joy of solitude.  I close my eyes to go there.  And when I return I open my eyes to see the world is always more beautiful after we have stepped away from the noise, be it ever so briefly.

Take time for yourself.