Project Dog Love
In my muggle life, I coordinate a grant for 45 nursing homes. As part of the duties, I order ‘prizes’ for residents participating in the program. The number one requested item is some form of stuffed animals. Residents love to cuddle them, take care of them. It enriches their lives.
This kinda breaks my heart because I know how much dogs mean to me and millions of people. I know elders, in the care of nursing homes, miss their animal companions. A stuffed animal is a small comfort. But it is a comfort.
In an effort to enrich the monthly newsletter we send facility leaders, I was looking at August’s notable month markers: Honey Bee Awareness Day, World Photography Day, National Peace Month, National Dog Month. My supervisor started including fun month celebrations in the last newsletter to our facilities. When I looked and saw National Dog Month for August, I knew we could do something special.
On social media, I put out a request for photos of people’s dog’s faces we could include in a graphic that would go to nursing homes we work with as a way to bring joy and love and comfort to residents and staff. The response was overwhelming.
Photos started showing up in the comments, friends and family texted photos….Project Dog Love was launched for the elders of North Carolina.
At the end of a very busy day of grant work, I started my yoga practice and allowed the energy of asking, receiving, and creating this project to move through me and tears welled up. In a world so full of division and hate, somehow I found myself infused with love and care for animals and elders. I felt the love of every person that sent a photo of their beloved dog with the wish of joy and love for elders missing their companions and longing for connection. I felt the love of the dogs. It helped me see how easy it is to bring people together when the common goal is unconditional love–the essence of what dogs mean to us.
I’m grateful for a project director that allows me to be creative and who adds her creativity to our project. I’m grateful for the family of dog lovers who want to be a part of showing love and appreciation to our elders. And for my own canines who shower me with unconditional love and appreciation…deep gratitude.
I sent an email to all the facility leaders this morning sharing how this came to be and that people from California, Kentucky, Michigan, North Carolina, Colorado, Alabama…and many other states…wanted to send love to the residents by sharing their dog companions. I asked them to share the image and let their residents know that people all over are thinking of them and sharing dog love with them. Within minutes, I received this response: “What a great idea! The residents will love this. Thanks for sending.”
My wish is that we could have a poster printed and sent to each facility. Another wish is to print out a photo of each dog and let that dog be a guardian of love, a mascot, for each facility along with a story of who the dog is and how it came to their human companion. There are lots of rescue stories that are amazing…but the grant doesn’t cover those costs. Perhaps the momentum of this project will keep building and we can find a way to share more dog love.
Thank you dogs for reminding us of a common thread that weaves us together…LOVE.
I awoke to the news that Ram Das had passed from his physical body. While I wasn’t a devotee, I am a lover of him and his story and life. He tried the quick way of enlightenment through experimentation with hallucinogens yet found beneath the mind-expansion of such substances a vast space that opened through meditation and through love. Or at least that’s my understanding. That’s what titrated out of what I know of him.
When I read the news I searched other related stories and that led me to Krishna Das music, which I enjoy through my yoga practice. And then Girish, who is another favorite. And Sean Johnson…then I pulled out my yoga mat which has had very sporadic use since I moved a month ago.
As I stretched and opened I felt the prayers come forth from deep within. Prayers of love, gratitude, compassion…that’s what yoga is to me. Praying with my body and mind and spirit. Opening. Unfolding. Allowing.
I arose before sunrise each morning, before putting on the wetsuit and using an underwater camera kit to connect with whales. With yoga mat in hand I climbed to the open deck where stars were brilliant and the moon shimmering on the surface of the ocean. That particular morning as I prayed with my body, mind and spirit the whales came closer…so close that their fishy breath was drifting across me as it glowed in the moonlight.
Affirming the connection to all life, to the stars, the sea, the whales, I felt engulfed in a purple flame and still the humpbacks came closer. We were connected through that spiritual kinship of limitless light.
This morning in the loft I was there, in the ocean with the whales and stars. Gratitude filled me as I sat in stillness. The vision of a white humpback whale swimming in a sky of stars over mountains returned as it has over the past several months preceding the move back to the Appalachians.
The settling in, the anchoring and grounding into my new home progresses and as the final boxes were unpacked this weekend I found myself anxious to deepen my spiritual practice and allow the flow of Universal Laughter to echo through my being.
Go brightly Ram Das. Thank you for reminding me to be here now. Thank you for your dedication to Love. May you dance among the stars surrounded by the essence of Life.
“All trees are not good trees,” she said as she leaned over, placed her hand over my arm and smiled with that knowing smile that she was right and I, because I dare to care about all trees, was wrong. It wasn’t the first time I was put in my place because I am sensitive to life.
My first memory of being ‘put down’ for being sensitive was when I was a child. My dad and I were watching a movie on television where an old man had saved, at great hardship, to purchase a piece of glass for the window in his cabin. After he bought it and installed it, his mule kicked a bucket through the window. I cried and my dad laughed at me for crying. That’s my first memory of feeling compassion and being pushed out of the tribe.
Those of us who are sensitive live in a world where we are put down, outcast, made to feel less than, called names and in general judged to be stupid or simply wrong. And because we are sensitive as part of our very nature, we sometimes feel completely out of step with the rest of the world. I know many of you are keenly aware of this truth.
Because we receive negative feedback so often about our deepest, truest selves, we have difficulty believing that we are whole and beautiful. If the world mirrors back to us that empaths are silly, flakey, ridiculous then how do we believe the truth about ourselves? How do we learn to trust ourselves? How do we claim our space in the world?
Clarissa Pinkola Estes says, in her series Mother Night, that people who feel, that are sensitives, are pushed to the edge, are outcast…these people who are the artists, the creatives, the healers with their open hearts and minds…they are pushed to the fringes of society. But when this happens, she warns, the culture dies because they are not allowed to do their work, for their work is nourishment for the psyche.
I was having a rough day and asked for guidance. When I arrived home from cycling I put the sound files on my phone on random play and Clarissa’s series was what came to me…as a big answer. Listening to her reminded me that my empathic ability is my gift. My ability to feel deeply is a gift…to the world. How many of us can breathe that statement in? Try it… My ability to feel deeply is a gift to the world.
I would suggest not trying to fit in to a world that tries to consistently push us out. So you want to push us out, okay. I will walk along the fringe…I will dance along the fringe and I will find those who will dance with me. I will connect with my sisters and brothers who also bear the scars of feeling in an unfeeling world. Clarissa calls us Scar Clan of the Tribe of the Sacred Heart. We recognize each other by our ability to feel deeply, love deeply and we have the audacity to care deeply.
And then I would suggest spending time to connect with our feelings of love and compassion and to do so without shame. We were taught to be ashamed of our compassion and kindness so let us un-teach that to ourselves and simply sit in stillness and silence with acceptance for ourselves….our beautiful, bright selves.
