April 2023 Newsletter
Grow Your Inner Wisdom… In the Midst of it All
“Cry. Forgive. Learn. Move on. Let your tears
water the seeds of your future happiness.”
-Steve Maraboli
Hello everyone!
I hope that you're all enjoying the springtime weather! In honor of this season of new growth, the theme this month is decluttering and creating space. We often do this with our homes this time of year—cleaning out closets, cleaning up the yard and getting rid of possessions that are no longer used or needed. Much like we clean out and up our home space, we can do the same with our thoughts and hearts—identifying, exploring and, ideally, letting go of those thoughts, feelings, judgments, resentments and old hurts that no longer serve us.
When it comes to our thoughts, the Buddha suggested replacing harmful thoughts with wholesome ones, encouraging us to use awareness skills to help point us toward what would bring us relief. And, in Buddhist psychology, forgiveness is understood as a way to end suffering and to bring dignity and harmony to our lives. Forgiveness is fundamentally for our own sake and for our own mental health. It is a way to let go of the pain we carry.
The blog posts this month, Spring Clean More Than Your Closets: Practices, Tips & A Meditation To Clean And Clear The Mind and Creating Space For Healing And Growth Through Practicing Forgiveness, highlight ways that we might be holding onto thoughts, ideas, perceptions, mistakes and resentments that are unwholesome, outdated and not serving our best selves. The posts this month also offer insight, tips, practices and guided meditations to help clear the waters of the mind, as well as to practice forgiveness for ourselves and those who have harmed us.
Cat Tales: Letting go of the yellow ball...
Even though our home is flooded with balls and cat toys—and her brother Max and sister Pearl play with many different colored balls and a long, tubular cat toy—since she was a kitten, Eve would ONLY play with just this one yellow ball! We would offer her other balls, but, nope, that yellow ball it had to be.
The problem is that ball gets lost—under the fridge, inside a closet, under a couch—and it’s very hard to keep track of one ball. These cats don’t seem to have the ‘nose thing’ going like dogs do—they don’t go sniffing around to find their toy.
After four months of playing only with one ball, Eve began to tire of looking for the yellow ball and missing out on play time. Watching Max and Pearl play with other toys became too tempting. And then, very recently, she shifted! She tried playing with a tubular toy, and now loves these long, multicolored toys so much that she will no longer play with the yellow ball—at all.
A one-year-old cat finally let go of a behavior that was not serving her. Now, what about you?!?
In the best of all possible worlds, it would be so wonderful if, like Eve, we, too, could let go of our own yellow ball, finding joy in something new.
Is there a thought, behavior, old hurt, resentment or judgment that you're ready to let go of? What can you clean or clear out as to create space for something new to grow?
I invite and encourage you to read through this month's blog posts and engage in the guided meditations, taking with you an intention to release and create space as you do.
Thank you for your presence—I’m so happy that you are here!
May you be filled with warmth and kindness.
May you be healthy and safe.
May your heart know peace.
Warm blessings,
Karen
The Healing Time: Finally on My Way to Yes
by Pesha Joyce Gerter
Finally on my way to yes
I bump into
all the places
where I said no
to my life
all the untended wounds
the red and purple scars
those hieroglyphs of pain
carved into my skin, my bones,
those coded messages
that send me down
the wrong street
again and again
where I find them
the old wounds
the old misdirections
and I lift them
one by one
close to my heart
and I say
holy holy
READ...
A NYT article, Don't Jump Into Spring Cleaning. Take it Slow, discusses "slow cleaning," which encourages cleaning a little bit every day, or just sometimes, when you are able. Rather than waiting for seasonal cleaning, when the mess can feel unmanageable, this approach takes cleaning in chunks, dealing with any "mess" in ways that feel less stressful and more actionable. In theme with this month, keep in mind that we can apply the same practice with our thoughts!
WATCH…
In his TEDx talk, psychological flexibility: how love turns pain into purpose, clinical psychologist Dr. Steven Hayes explains that it is what we do with our thoughts that either sends us on a positive trajectory of love, prosperity, connection and freedom or downward into pathology and despair. Based on personal experience and decades of research, Hayes shows the importance of emotional openness, feeling what is there to be felt—even when it's hard—and of bringing love to ourselves.
LISTEN…
Rumination: How To Disrupt Intrusive Thoughts. In this episode of the Being Well Podcast with Forrest Hanson and Dr. Rick Hanson, the father and son team define rumination, explain what we might get out of it, and discuss how self-constructing (developing our personalities based on the experiences we have) invites in rumination, while self-acceptance undermines it. The episode ends with a walkthrough on how you can mindfully deal with a negative thought.
In addition to this newsletter, I offer an online, donation-based meditation class/guided practice every other Monday night 7:30-8:30pm EST in a relaxed and warm setting on Zoom. The only requirement is an interest in increasing mindful awareness and skills through practice and growing your inner wisdom. If you’re interested in beginning, reconnecting with or deepening your meditation practice in community, we’d love for you to join us! Get more details and register here.
Dr. Karen Walant has been a practicing psychotherapist for almost three decades and holds a MSW and PhD in Clinical Social Work from New York University. Karen supervises other clinicians in private practice and has given lectures around the country on issues related to attachment, mindfulness, meditation, addiction and recovery; deepening the therapeutic relationship, parenting with kindness and fostering compassionate relationships. She is the author of Creating the Capacity for Attachment: Treating Addictions and the Alienated Self. A long-time meditator, Karen is also a 2021 graduate of the 2-year Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training Program (taught by meditation experts Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield), is certified as a Mindfulness Meditation Mentor, and is certified as a Level I Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) Teacher through Brown University.