Category: Coaching
Tuesday, Oct 15, 2019 | Big Thoughts, Coaching, Confessions, Fall, Meditation, Play, Sleep, Soccer, Stand, Yoga |
I have a lot on my mind. And somehow that has translated into silence. How to sift through the jumble and identify items worthy of sharing? I seem to exist in a fog of confusion, at least right now.
Last week was absorbed by creating a roster for this season’s soccer team. A painful, heart-rending process, in all honesty. Humbling and bruising, too. A large part of me rebels against the levels imposed by competitive sport that claim to filter children into good, better, best. It isn’t an objective process, yet it’s treated as such; worse, there’s an implicit assumption that the teams themselves are good, better, best, based on level alone, and that a child’s experience would therefore be improved by moving up, and would deteriorate by moving down. I know what I can offer, as a coach, but within the competitive framework, it often feels like what I can offer doesn’t actually matter.
I’ve been waking in the middle of the night, unable to fall back to sleep. Mind racing. Body restless.
Not thinking about these things, exactly, but about the everything, the jumble, the chaos of a world that claims to be about one set of rules and values, while operating on a completely different set of tacit rules and values. Winning. Winning by any means. Power. Shows of dominance, especially rage. Shaming. Placidly public corruption. Lies. Assume everyone is lying to you, or you’re naive. Well, dammit, then I’m naive! The values we encourage our children to adopt could almost appear cruelly out of step in the context of this greedy, ego-ascendant world: be kind, share, be trustworthy. But that’s what I want to be and to do.
That’s the space I want to hold open.
I keep picturing the frame we teach players to make with their arms, to protect the ball and box out the pressure. It’s a strong stance, but not aggressive or violent or dirty — you don’t lift your elbow to hurt the attacking player, you simply use the steadiness of your body and of this frame you’re creating to hold your ground.
The conclusion I keep coming around to, amidst all the confusion and noise, is: I want to be kind. It’s actually almost the only thing I want to be. I don’t think much else matters to me, in the end, and in the right now. I accept that kindness can go awry, that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, that kindness, offered in ignorance, can cause suffering. And maybe I’m talking about something bigger, deeper, wider than kindness. Maybe I’m talking about love. Love; and attention. But it’s easier to start with kindness. Kindness is easier to grasp in the moment.
There is a mantra that’s been keeping me grounded, as much as it’s possible to be grounded, whenever it feels like I’m whirling away or spiralling down: I am loving awareness. It helps when I’m worrying about being judged, or am judging others, when I’m second-guessing my choices, or letting external pressures and feedback (real and perceived) affect my state of mind.
Here’s a ten-minute meditation to sit with.
(If the visuals in the video turn you off, just listen to the sound. Or don’t listen to anything at all, just repeat the phrase I am loving awareness, till you know it’s true.)
xo, Carrie
Monday, Sep 9, 2019 | Coaching, Fun, Good News, Play, Soccer, Space, Spirit, Success |
I often come to this blog when I want to capture something ineffable — a mood, a moment, an emotion. It’s become a container for that which is fleeting (okay, what isn’t fleeting?); or, more precisely, for that which I want a record, a trace of what it felt like, or what it meant, whatever “it” was.
Today, I come to this blog to record what it felt like to watch a player score a massively critical goal in an intense and challenging match — the game-changer. I keep returning to this moment in my mind, and replaying the passes that led up to it, as well as the pure joy that seemed to pour through my body as I crouched and opened my mouth and SCREAMED that joy right out from my guts. (Everyone else was screaming too, so my own yell didn’t stand out.)
The scream felt so spontaneous and so free, like it was coming from a pure, deep well of emotion. Wonderful emotion. I’ve been on the other side, witnessing an important goal scored against our team, and I know that the emotions there (at least for me) are flattening or deadening; I don’t feel much. There’s a recognition that disappointment happens, and sometimes things don’t work out, and also that it’s just a game.
It is just a game.
But I actually wonder, upon reflection, whether it just being a game made this particular moment of joy that much purer and simpler, too. I can think of other joyous emotional moments, but they all come freighted with a shadow side. The birth of a child is joyous, and terrifying; the love you didn’t know you’d feel is shadowed with the possibility of a loss you hadn’t fathomed before. And when The Juliet Stories was shortlisted for a Governor General, I also experienced a moment of joy that was almost without compare; but in the same moment, I nearly collapsed from the weight of all those years of waiting and work.
It shouldn’t seem like a goal in a soccer game should make me feel the same level of joy. And yet I’m here to report that it did. It totally did! But it was joy without anything else attached — no shadow side, no deeper responsibility, no fulfillment of a life’s dream. Just joy, pure and simple. And I think I felt that level of joy so purely because it was just a game. Because I knew that it really didn’t matter one way or the other, in the great scheme of things. Our team would still be a terrific team, and we still would have had an awesome season, with lots of good memories, even if the goal hadn’t happened.
But it did happen. And when it happened, it was a beautiful manifestation of things working out, of the opposite of disappointment — potential fulfilled. And my response was a full-body scream of YES!
A cross-field through-ball deep to space — an absolutely massive kick from a player I’ve loved coaching for three seasons now; a gutsy run onto the ball, and a turn and a cross from a player new to the team this season who has been a fiery force to behold; and a charging run onto the ball and perfectly placed one-time shot into the back of the net from a player I coached years ago in house-league, who joined our team this season, and who I knew had exactly that kind of high-pressure finish in her.
Our fiery force scored a beautiful goal not long after to close out the game. I screamed again, just as loud. Might have wiped away a few tears too.
I suppose it is a pretty intense emotional investment to coach a group of players over a season; many of them now for four seasons. I’ve seen them grow up from ten-year-olds to teenagers. I’ve seen their skills develop through effort, willingness to push themselves, practice, trial and error. I’ve seen them learn and re-learn how to work together as a team, not just as individuals. And I’ve seen them become who they were today: a team full of potential, fulfilling their potential. It’s awesome to peak at the end of the season. We play in the cup final next weekend, just like we did last season. And all 18 players were part of this win today.
As I said in my pre-game speech (short, and a bit emotional): I’m so proud to be their coach, and I’m so proud of everyone’s development and progress this season. I finished by saying that I was really hoping we could get one last game together next weekend, and (as they already knew), for that to happen, we’d just have to win.
And they did.
I think we all must have really wanted one last game together.
xo, Carrie
Wednesday, Aug 21, 2019 | Adventure, Art, Coaching, Drawing, Driving, Fun, Holidays, Lynda Barry, Play, Space, Spirit, Swimming, Writing |
I’ve been away. Now I’m back. I feel filled up, and in a laidback frame of mind, and body. My posture seems more generous, my thoughts move more easily toward making space for others, rather than pinging with desperation about the lack of space this might leave for myself. I also feel a little bit worn out, and tired, but not exactly anxious about this state of affairs. It’s a manageable level of tired, the kind that can be remedied with an afternoon nap (note to self: take one).
I was in Rhinebeck, New York last week with Kevin and our youngest. We camped. Kevin and I attended Lynda Barry’s workshop. We wrote, we drew. We played tennis and basketball. We played cards. We farted with alarming frequency, because of the food, which didn’t convert anyone to veganism, I’m afraid; rather the opposite. On the rare occasions when cookies were served, or chicken, the joy of the diners was palpable, as was the greed; at one meal, my own husband turned into a cookie hoarder and ate so many, he felt sick.
I read a freshly written story out loud on the last morning that felt like it was both mine and yet weirdly not mine; maybe it belonged to the collective imagination.A list of the wildlife we saw: a cicada coming out of its shell; a large black rat snake (almost stepped on it); deer (several); groundhogs (many); a beetle much bigger than my thumb (in the washhouse sink); chipmunks and squirrels (of course); we also smelled a skunk outside our tent, and heard the scritching of tiny paws on the walls all through the night.Back home in Canada, I spent the weekend at a soccer tournament. Our team went all the way to the finals, playing through pouring rain, ridiculous humidity, and hot hot heat. Somehow we also had a regular-season game to play on Monday night, about an hour outside of town. By which point, everyone was hurting, including yours truly. (I need a root canal, but that’s another story.)This is the first fall I won’t be teaching in six years. My approach toward September seems measurably different this summer — I scratch and paw at the absence of anxiety, admiring it, wondering if this is what ease feels like, and will it stay and play?
xo, Carrie
Tuesday, Jul 30, 2019 | Backyard, Coaching, Confessions, Dogs, Lists, Sleep |
There are things that can’t be seen, but can be smelled. There are things that can’t be seen, but can be heard. There are things that can’t be seen, but can be felt.
Of things that can’t be seen, but can be smelled, I give you this: the place beside the porch where, last night, when cornered and harassed by our clearly not-that-bright dog, a skunk sprayed said dog and surrounding area. I don’t blame the skunk. In a way, I don’t blame the dog either. There’s no one and nothing to blame. It’s just that this is not the text a person wants to receive from her son, while driving back-country roads at around 11:30PM, returning home from a late out-of-town soccer game which one has spent standing, soaked to the skin, in intermittent pelting rain, beside a soccer field: I think Rose got skunked.
Yes, the evidence would have it. (Luckily for you, dear reader, this is not a scratch-and-sniff post.)
Of things that can’t be seen, but can be heard, I give you this: our refrigerator, roaring like a jet engine, despite having been “repaired” yesterday morning. We await the return of the repairman, who tightened the compressor and gave us a 90-day guarantee. I’m wearing ear plugs. They’re not working. The jet engine that now resides inside our refrigerator persists. (Click on photo below to play video of fridge-as-jet-engine.)
Of things that can’t be seen, only felt, I give you this (not pictured, naturally): the inside of my brain and body, exhausted from lack of sleep. It’s been hot, and I love love love the heat, but our house hasn’t been cooling down at night, and our sleep, even before the skunk and the fridge, has been restless. And so, I give you my stuporous mind. I give you my determined aching limbs, which rise every morning and run through the park, because they are certain, as am I, that the day will be better having done so, and worse having not done so.
I give you this: it’s smelly, noisy, sticky, messy in here; house and mind.
But this too, I give to you, and it’s no small thing, this thing that can’t be seen, only known: twenty years ago today, I got married, and twenty years later, we’re still married. There’s no way to see exactly what that means, but it’s plenty to live off of. It’s carried us through all the things. It’s carrying us even now.
xo, Carrie
Friday, May 17, 2019 | Art, Big Thoughts, Coaching, Confessions, Feminism, Organizing, Peace, Space, Spirit, Word of the Year, Writing |
Sometimes my skin feels too porous, and emotions pour in almost painfully. Yesterday, I started reading a personal essay in the newspaper written by the mother of a child on the autistic spectrum who was being bullied by classmates, people he thought were his friends. I had to stand up and walk away, so strong were my feelings of sickness and pain, gut-deep, a grief and horror that seemed to wash through my bloodstream.
I stood by the sink and wept.
Stories of exclusion, cruelty, judgement of others trouble me so deeply I can hardly tolerate the pain. I guess here in my mind, I live in a world in which people see each other, are kind to each other, have compassion for each other; but in the real world, there is a lot of pain inflicted even by people who are trying to be kind; pain is also inflicted by people who only want to be left alone, people who don’t want to engage, people who don’t care, who are struggling with their own troubles; and there is pain actively inflicted by people who fear and hate others for their differences, people who don’t want to understand or learn or listen, people who actively target others, weaker and more marginalized than themselves.
I can’t make sense of it.
It just doesn’t make sense in my brain.
I don’t have solutions. I can only to attempt to make spaces for that version of the world that exists in my mind to exist in real life. I’ve tried in the classroom, on the soccer field, inside my own family, and in this storytelling workshop. I know I’ve gotten things wrong. I suspect I’m sometimes the person who’s inflicted pain when trying to be kind, and acting in ignorance. But I’d rather try than hide. There is no alternative that makes sense to me.
XPagePerformance2019WEBAD
For the past 11 weeks, I’ve been privileged to be part of The X Page Workshop. It was envisioned as a creative and collaborative undertaking that would bring together women from different cultural backgrounds, all of whom are making lives for themselves and their families in Canada. Each week, a group of almost 30 of us have met to work on writing and staging stories. Together, we’ve made something that’s rich and enriching. Just with stories! Just with stories and goodwill, trust, kindness, and effort. When we’re together in the beautiful space at the Centre for Peace Advancement, as we have been every Tuesday evening since March, I feel immersed in the possibility of the world inside my mind becoming a real place. It feels like a real place, then and there.
Just thinking about being there brings me a sense of peace and ease.
It isn’t perfect. Why should it be? This world in my mind has conflict, but it also has ways of talking about conflict, because there is trust, and the trust is constantly being earned. Each small thing offered, in this world in my mind, is actually a really big thing. Our gifts to each other don’t have to be grand gestures, large acts, or come from a place of material wealth.
I think the best gift we can give to someone else is to see and acknowledge them without wanting or trying to change them in any way.
Unconditional love.
To live in this world in my mind, I have to try to live with unconditional love. And that means feeling too porous sometimes to the brokenness in the real world. That means loving what’s broken, too, unconditionally. And that hurts. But it’s the only thing that makes any sense to me at all.
xo, Carrie
Thursday, Apr 18, 2019 | Adventure, Art, Big Thoughts, Cartoons, Coaching, Creativity course, Drawing, Fun, Lists, Lynda Barry, Meditation, Peace, Space, Spirit, Teaching, Work |
End-of-term launch party.
I’m done teaching for another term. My course was on the creative process: how to set goals, envision a major project, and lay the groundwork necessary to complete the work. I spent a couple of days this week and last meeting with students to hand back their final projects (stories in comic form), and to chat about the term. Some themes emerged in our conversations. Here’s what we learned.
The importance of mistakes. So many students talked about how important their mistakes had been in shaping their project, how an apparent mistake had turned out to be important or valuable to their drawing, or how freeing it was to allow themselves to make mistakes. My theory is that through mistakes our unconscious mind gives us important information we couldn’t otherwise access; and drawing is the perfect medium for this communication with the self, because we see our “mistakes” pretty much instantly, and have to figure out what they’re trying to tell us.
The freedom of stepping away from perfectionism. Students also expressed how freeing it was to embrace their mistakes, or even how freeing it was just to give themselves permission to make mistakes. Creating a major project by hand is time-consuming and laborious, and if you don’t accept the mistakes you’ll inevitably make, you’ll never finish what you’ve started.
The calm that exists inside creation. Every student in the class put a lot of time into their projects, and some put in vast swathes of time, far more than they’d anticipated, or really, that was required to meet the project’s guidelines. (In other words, they didn’t care about the rubric, they cared about the work itself.) Students talked about losing themselves in what they were doing. It didn’t feel like work. It was fun, it was relaxing. The time flew. There is a meditative quality to making things by hand, to being focused in this way; engaged.
The time for this is always with us. (To paraphrase Lynda Barry.) This feeling of calm, this experience of getting lost inside a pleasurable task, is available anytime. And yet, we seem to need someone to remind us of this, we need a reason to get engaged in this way, a task, a project for a class to give us the excuse to get lost in making something that requires focus and effort, that is time-consuming, and that ultimately may have no material or monetary value. We feel like we have to prove that it’s worth it. I wonder why? When it seems so obvious, looking at these wonderful students and their amazing artwork — their unique, truthful, serious, funny, silly, brave, thoughtful beautiful art — that it is worth it.
This course gave the students permission to make art. To draw. To colour. To turn their lives, their observations, their ideas into cartoons. Many expressed how valuable this practice was for them, and how much they hoped others would get the chance to take the course too. “Everyone should have to take this course!” “You have to teach it again for the sake of future students!” In truth, I’m not sure what I taught was a course so much as a concept: what I tried to do was make space for the students to make space for themselves.
Anyone can draw. Most of the students had no idea what they were signing up for when they entered my classroom on day one. They thought they were taking a creative writing course; the course description was vague; they were surprised to learn they’d be doing so much drawing. They weren’t sure they could do it. Many hadn’t drawn since high school, or even grade school. “I never thought I could draw well enough to …” And to a person, they could — they could tell the stories they wanted to tell through cartoons. (“Well enough” went out the window; “well enough” had no place in our classroom.)
Pride in accomplishment. The final projects undertaken by the students were big!! This was no small undertaking. And everyone did it! The deadline got met, and each project proved to be as unique and individual as the person who created it.
Thank you, Artists of ENGL 332! Thank you for your trust. It was an adventure.
xo, Carrie
Of things that can’t be seen, but can be heard, I give you this: our refrigerator, roaring like a jet engine, despite having been “repaired” yesterday morning. We await the return of the repairman, who tightened the compressor and gave us a 90-day guarantee. I’m wearing ear plugs. They’re not working. The jet engine that now resides inside our refrigerator persists. (Click on photo below to play video of fridge-as-jet-engine.)
