For the past four years, while living abroad, Mother's day escaped my attention completely.  This year it's back on my radar and it gives me an opportunity to reflect on what it means to be a woman in the world without her mom.  (Many of you have read and commented on an earlier post I wrote on the anniversary of her death, which you can find here.)

I don't feel crushed by sadness anymore when I reflect on my mom or the nature of her death.  Some motherless daughters describe the loss as an open, empty hole inside them.  In my teens and early twenties I would have described it that way, too.  I think that years of mind-body practices, including grief therapy, have brought me to a place that I would describe as "spacious" rather than "empty."

From this spaciousness, a few years ago, grew an intense desire to start a scholarship fund for motherless daughters.  Groups of motherless daughters meet around the world and I'd love to offer some of them an opportunity, in scholarship form, to go to college, university or to travel the world.  Our odds seem stacked against us following the loss.  There's a feeling of lack so deep that we decide we're the only one's in the world going through the loss of a mother.  I'd like to show other motherless daughters otherwise, by bringing them together for the scholarship ceremony, honoring even those who applied but didn't win.  The scholarship winners will meet once a semester to chart their progress, celebrate goals reached and set new ones.

This mother's day I celebrate mothers worldwide, but more than that, I honor and celebrate motherless daughters.  We're strong, we've overcome the odds and we've gotten insight into an amazing world:  one where sickness and dying are not simply endings, but opportunities to see that each moment of our lives matter.  And that mom, in the global sense, is always in us and all around us. 

Many blessings.


(More information for Motherless Daughters on Mother's Day & Motherless Daughter Support Reference List)

I'm a compulsive "starter."  I love starting things.  No, really.  I might be in the middle of seven books right now.  All in the very early chapters.

I love starting projects, networking (because it may be the start of something huge!), companies (three to date and working on the fourth and, fingers crossed, final) and conversations.

But don't ask me to finish anything.  E.V.E.R.

Let's start something new together, by all means.  I'll ask the right questions, tease out of you what it is you're really trying to do in the world, help you define your vision.  I may even send a follow-up email.  But there's a slim chance I will go out of my way in five years to make sure you did what you said you were going to do vision-wise.

Some of this compulsive starting must come from some quirky genetic coding.  It seems that no matter how hard I try to finish something I often fail.  Even writing an entire blog post takes a lot of effort and focus!  I'm not unfocused as a rule and when I find a project I resonate with I give it my all.  I don't want to come across sounding flaky.  Michael Gerber talks about the three types of people that make an organization run:  The Entrepreneur (or vision maker), the Manager (in charge of the day-to-day) and the Technician (widget-maker). 

I fall squarely into the Entrepreneur, vision-maker, big picture category.  So I started reading The Girl's Guide to Being a Boss without Being a Bitch (guess what, couple more chapters to go...!) and have found that to be a helpful guide to figuring out what the hell a manager actually does and have gotten down to the business of managing.  GTD (a system for productivity that you can google if you're bored) helps me close open loops and actually forces me to see that oftentimes finalizing something frees up a lot of creativity to...do my favorite thing!  Start new projects!

Seth Godin's most recent release, The Dip, talks about the place in a project, organization and our personal lives where we find ourselves struggling to keep up the motivation to continue.  I am reading it this week.  I'd like to discover how to see 1) the difference between a dip that might come back up again (in terms of challenging me, my organization and increasing sales, etc.) and 2) a flat-lining project/relationship/organization.

Eventually I'd love to find myself in roles that are never-ending but that have discrete success metrics.  For instance, as a teacher in Japan, I had benchmarks, holidays and goals that let me know how I was doing (least favorite, but most informative were the board of education meetings which found me melting into my chair in ill-humor and frustration).  I foresee myself funding companies as a Venture Capitalist/Angel Investor to watch projects get off the ground and mentor companies (as I already am) in the start-up phases.  Beyond that, the scholarship and travel projects I'm currently engaging in will challenge me, I believe, well into my 80s.  

I'd rather say, on my dying day, "I started a lot of things that either failed or fizzled, grew after each one, and the few I did follow through on are in this room right now." 

Back in the day, as a student, getting written up was major trouble.

Now, it's taken on new meaning.

In other news, I'm looking for a way to publish a book.  Someone's suggested Lulu.com.  I dunno...

Expatriette™ (the novel) coming soon to a Borders™ near you!

The weekly podcast Zen is Stupid just went up.  This one's on women in Buddhism.  I don't think I speak on behalf of "the average woman" if there is one, as we talk about during the podcast.  I really would love to see what people think and want to continue to discuss women, Zen and the difference in masculine/feminine approaches to spirituality (as well as examining the similarities!)

Listen here:  the site.
Or here:  through our friends at Zencast.

To read past articles on the subject of women, femininity and Zen, please check out the ongoing conversation at Buddhist Geeks.

One question that comes up in the podcast is how women might alter their practice to better suit their needs (ie. sitting facing in to a circle rather than at the wall, having more one-on-one sessions with teachers at retreats).  Another, one that I'm still exploring myself, is how flexible is gender?  Is it a spectrum on which we find ourselves in a different place from day to day?  Old questions, new context.

A handy little guide.  Works for me, anyway.  How to network with geeks, in geeky situations...without looking like you have no idea what a feed aggregator is.  The first blog entry at Plunge Artist.  We have a favicon!  That means we're official!!  Even if the Secretary of State said we were 2 weeks ago...everyone knows you've got nothing if you've got no favicon.

Anybody out there whose parent(s) named them something and then decided to shorten it?  I'm one of those kids.  I've gone through half a dozen names in my lifetime.  And never been married.  Since you might steal my identity, I'm going to keep the one's you don't know a secret.  *wink*

Before I turned 21 I told people I was going to switch over to being called "Gwendolyn" on my 21st birthday (mostly because I suffered from a pretentious disease that year).  My friends laughed it off (they knew about the "p" bug). 

But now I'm serious!  Gwendolyn is a magic-tastic name and it's like a fine wine sitting up on a shelf waiting to be taken down and drank.

Gwen is much less of a mouthful, a lot more accessible and people can spell it now (thanks, Gwen S!).  Didn't use to be that way.  Quinn, Glen, Guen, Quen, even Qwen is how I've seen it spelled.  Qwen!?!  Hello!  Nothing comes after Q but "u" people (except in a few amazing cases--and, fast fact, I've been to the very suq pictured there.) (incredible.  a wiki entry on "q" followed by something other than "u") (what will they think of next?!).

I'm only writing this post to distract myself from myself so, I'm done now.  Gwen it is.  Unless someone has an idea for another name altogether.  With recent nicknames like Gweek and Gweebs cropping up, I don't think I'll be changing it anytime soon, but if you win the re-naming competition, you get something cool.

Interview with Brad Warner, Alterna-Zen Maverick

The first part of a three-part interview with Brad Warner is up at Buddhist Geeks.  You can listen to the podcast here.  Read more about Brad, the wonder kid, on his site.

Or, check out his blog.

He's sort of a tiny bit of a maverick in the Buddhist scene.  He's on Suicide Girls, an alt-porn site that I nearly became a part of.  If you like sex, click on that last link.

Back to Brad.  I knew very early on in Buddhist Geeks that I wanted to interview him.  Because of his travel schedule (he still works for a Japanese company, is married to a Japanese lady and travels to Japan frequently) it took a few months for us to set the interview up.  Once we did, it was wonderful to have him on the line.  I met and studied with him during one of his retreats in Japan.  The retreat was secluded with a lot of opportunities to talk with him one on one and I briefly considered becoming a groupie.  If you knew him, you'd see what the temptation might be.  And quickly realize he's not really the groupie-wanting-guru-type.  The world doesn't need anymore of those, methinks.

The interview is casual, upbeat and funny at times.  The third part is the funniest, so if you're short on time or whatever, listen to that one. 

That's all for now.  Happy listening.

Friends, loved ones.  I'll have time for a more thorough update later.  For now, our house burned down late last night, around midnight.  It's now uninhabitable and I'm living, along with my five other housemates, in a motel.  We're all safe.

The Red Cross blew my mind with their friendliness, genorosity and caring.  My grandmother's composure at 3am her time astounded me.  Friends and neighbors came out of the woodwork to offer love, well wishes and shoes. 

For now, we rest in a space of Not Knowing.

The healing begins at Burnt Toast restaurant.

FYI:  THE HARD DRIVE WAS RESCUED OFF THE MAC.  ALL DATA WAS RETREIVED.  You can now buy the macbook and see new photos of it at Ebay.

The aftermath.  A photo tour.

Some footage of Casey, the DA, an investigator, the Fire Cheif and my loud mouth.