Day 12 ~ 10/12/10
This blogging thing is getting easier! It’s like having an online journal, but really holding myself to writing every day. When I hesitate to write for one reason or another, I can feel welled up energy within my body becoming stagnant. When I release it through my arms and hands (working with my heart), I feel so much better, like I have let go of creations from the day and am clear to start again. It feels like writing in meditation, I really don’t know what is going to flow out.
It’s interesting that I (we) can create something out of nothing, and live in it. Living the opportunities, the wins, the losses, the ups and downs, certainly the all-arounds! Learning from and experiencing the lessons that have been created from it. But when it becomes time to dissolve it, or let it go, there is this piece of me afraid of watching it die. Coming to the realization of having loved every minute it was here, grateful for all of the experiences, whether they were perceived good or bad, then letting it go.
It is definitely my fear of death that is still apparent here. Not knowing what is on the other side, afraid to let go and trust the unknown, trying to stay in control of what I have going on now. Go Death! It is both scary and not, the more I die off to who I though I was, the more I really feel like I am living, freedom is approaching!
This is sort of my eulogy to Blooms and Zooms, probably too long of a story, oh well.
In 1999, I created a business from scratch. My friend and I started out making/decorating candles and selling them at trade shows. When it was time for me to quit the flower shop I was working in at the time, I was going to reconnect with my passion for mountain biking and start racing again like I had done when I lived in Mammoth Lakes.
The universe seemed to have other plans for me, and because I was completely lost, I ended up getting married in 2000 to my boyfriend of two years and having a baby. Guess I had my plans laid out for me! I ended up getting really depressed, I really didn’t want to get married until after the baby was born, but I caved in to pressure from family to get married.
I missed working with flowers, but I have always enjoyed photography. My husband has always supported me in whatever I wanted to do, I just don’t always have a clear picture of what I want to do. I ended up starting to take photos of babies at play dates, and some friends set me up with a couple getting married and I did their wedding photography. I also was asked to create all the floral decorations for my friends wedding. I really felt great, felt like I was gaining purpose in my life other than having a child that I had no idea how to take care of.
I was so young, 25 when my son was born, most of the moms I met were already in their 30’s and seemed to really have a connection with their babies. It was interesting that when I finally turned 30, I started to have a similar connection to my kids and started loving them in a completely different, more nurturing way.
Anyway, I couldn’t decide if I liked working with flowers or taking pictures more, so I decided to do them both. Hence, Blooms and Zooms was born. (When coming up with a name my dad told me if I ever opened up a retail store I could call it Snaps and Crap…oh, how right on he was!!!) I started from our garage, booking weddings and making flowers for all occasions. The opportunity presented itself to open up a store, and against everyone else’s opinions, my husband helped me open a store in 2004. By this time our son was 3 1/2 and our daughter was 1.
So many quick lessons were learned, about people, business, myself…how a business owner can work any 18 hours of the day, any 7 days a week they choose…There came a point where I was known as the flower lady around town. We were given awards for our work, and some people would only get their flowers from us. I was really running it by myself with very little business experience. I was being consumed as a person and defined by the business. I didn’t have time for my family, had no idea I even existed as a person anymore. I was learning so many lessons in such a short amount of time!
Thankfully, people come into your life for one reason or another. A very dear friend was going through some issues herself and took a personal growth course, and pulled herself out. She introduced it to me, and as I was about ready to walk away from my business, family and life, I really had nothing to lose, so I took the course too.
Talk about rapid change in a short amount of time! (Thank you Brian Klemmer) I was introduced to perceptions and ideas that I didn’t even know that I didn’t know! Opening myself up to learning how to take responsibility for the way I felt, all of my actions and feelings were being created by me. This was a new paradigm for me, I had no clue that I had control over how I felt, I thought life just happened. I blamed others for my suffering, looking everywhere but inside myself for answers to questions that I didn’t know needed asking.
The changes left me wide open to explore an integral part of my spirituality that was also missing…but that’s another story!
I had many employees come and go, allowing me to work on relationships. One particular lady walked in one day, and after hiring her for the Christmas holiday, all of my other employees quit! It was the best day! She really helped me “clean house”, and remains one of my best friends to this day.
When my five year lease on the building we were in was coming due, I knew I couldn’t continue to operate the business as I had before. The economy was sinking, most people were now buying their flowers from the supermarket because it was cheaper and convenient. I was struggling to stay in balance with myself and continue to run the business which was quickly losing money and racking up loads of debt trying to hang on.
I finished out my lease and in June of 2009 moved the business to a location where I could share a warehouse space with my husband’s business. It became much simpler to operate when I wasn’t confined by my mind that I had to be open, waiting for sales, for certain hours of the day. But I was still being run ragged! One particular day I had a bunch of calls for flowers, and people were giving me their orders. I told Dakar that I had several orders for the day, he said that’s great! For me, it wasn’t. I felt like I was taking orders, that I had no control over my life. That I would wait for someone to call me and tell me what to do for the day.
I began a process of redefining the way I looked at working. I started to dissolve many of the distractions around me, cleaning house and getting rid of stuff. All this stuff that had accumulated. It was interesting that as I began to get rid of this stuff, and be more spiritually connected with my Ka body, that my perception about work changed. I have always enjoyed the art of working with the flowers and taking photographs, but feeling like I had to was a prison. Knocking down the prison walls, bit by bit, tasting fresh air on the other side….
In January 2010, I decided it was time to stop the day to day delivery of flowers for birthdays, anniversaries, get wells, etc. I focused on working holidays and events only. Less than a week later, I found out that my younger sister passed away. The timing was, well, planned by the universe. I had just created space, and I found myself in shock, and an immense amount of grief…and forgiveness…(also another story, sigh...).
This summer was great, with only events and holidays to focus on, I had a lot of time to play, grieve, reflect, and clean. Two yard sales cleaned out about 80% of our stuff. Felt really good to shed lots of weight. Fall found me ready for my next step, so here I am.
Even though my perspective about the business has completely changed, and I no longer feel imprisoned by it, the feeling of what if I just quit it keeps coming in. I would have to trust Dakar even more financially, I wouldn’t have my extra income, I might just have to unify with Dakar in every way, and stop living with the separation we still have in certain areas of our lives. Oh boy, now that freaked me out! So, because it feels scary, I’m doing it! It fells like the cycle of life for Blooms and Zooms is coming to its natural end, and instead of watching it hang on, clinging to life as a vegetable, I finally have the courage to pull the plug.
My son wanted to know the names of the survivors of the Titanic tonight. We looked them up on the internet, and a particular story caught my eye. One of the crew members was asked why he didn’t take the lifeboat and go back to save more people from drowning in the freezing water sooner. He said it would have been a suicide mission, “A drowning man will grab on to anything and pull it down with him.”
This feels relevant for me, as I do not wish to continue to cling so I’m learning how to drown. Death of a salesgirl who didn’t like selling stuff in the first place! It was more about creating with whatever medium was available, and now that is even more clear to me.
“You let me drown
I grew gills and fins
Now I’m as deep as the sea”
~ James
I know this is just my story, but I feel like reliving the memories has helped make it okay for me to let it go.
Thoughts come up about if I have nothing to do, no to do lists every day, will I become lazy? What is lazy anyway? Sometimes when I’m not working, days will go by and I don’t even know what happened to them! I’m really good at doing nothing. The piles of laundry and dishes in the sink remind me of this…but they too, end up being washed when I am just in the flow of the day and I don’t force myself into any rigid time schedule to make it happen.
Dakar and I set aside time to work even deeper this evening…all of a sudden we were up talking and working until 4 a.m.! The discussion of him selling his business, me dissolving mine, our continued commitment to work together first above the distractions of day to day life…we’ve even started having our kids join us in a “meditation” for 5-15 minutes every other day. (So far it’s been giggle sessions trying to be quiet!)
For the evening’s gate work, I found the issues of surrendering the business coming up for me. (duh!) The resistance of years of layers was really tough to get through…Again we tried talking, yoni gazing, first and second gate holding, to making love to release into surrender. I have a really thick skin, and if I can hold on to issues this tight, then I’m pretty sure I have the willpower to do the work I must do every day to be lazy, or not! Finally, at 4 a.m., I was to exhausted to do anything BUT surrender, and I felt like I was climbing out of a thick layer of mud. No, that’s not really true, I wasn’t out of it, I felt and still feel like I’m swimming around in the mud, but laughing and having fun with it! HA HA HA look at me! I’m a pig, snort, oink – oink, this little piggy cried “Wheeeeee!”
I could feel the physical aches and pains of my hips, pelvic and ovaries hurting after our hours of "love making/get through the resistance", I had to do my ovary breathing practice, amazing how much pain this can take away in an instant! Getting the energy moving and flowing, not allowing it to stay stuck. I am so thankful for the teachers I have in my path that have showed me many ways to work through my stuff, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Blessings to those who have the courage to walk their truth and share it with others who are ready to receive.
Alright, that’s great for today, but now I’m hooked! Bring on the next moment, time to go even deeper! Or relax and integrate, or take action to release the business physically. I'm sure I'll have plenty of opportunities to see if this issue is completely done or not. For now, do you or anyone you know have any interest in fixtures and inventory from a flower shop? Let me know…
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