Tag: Tiny Drop

If you want to get a good taste of interbeing, try living in a tiny  house… with another person and two not so small dogs. Our Tiny Drop is a whopping 160 square feet, and that is including the sleeping loft. The ground floor footprint is only 106 square feet. It is truly tiny. Fortunately, because we did a hell of a job design-building it, it doesn’t feel that small. But the reality of its smallness sets in when two people can’t pass by each other when one is trying to do the dishes and the other needs to go pee and there is a dog in the way to boot. Let’s just call it snug.

Let’s just say that everyone is always in each other’s space. It’s more workable when the weather conditions are nice. Under those circumstances we spend a considerable amount of time outside on the deck, in the hammock, working outside, or exploring the 40 acre ecological sanctuary that is our backyard. But that’s not right now most of the time. More often than not, it’s snowing (yes, even in mid-April), raining, or just plain cloudy and cold. And that means we spend most of our time inside in our intricate daily dance with and around one another. And did I mention two crazy dogs?

We realize that this isn’t for everyone and one of the things that Shannon and I appreciate about one another is that it is for us. Of course at this point in our 13 year relationship, we understand well how such experiences serve to constantly push us deeper into our stuff. And we embrace that. It has helped both of us to take charge of our own healing for the sake of stepping into more of who we truly are in the world. The tendency that we both have to put ourselves in extreme situations is all just part of it. 

I’m not going to lie, though. It isn’t easy. For starters, Tiny Drop is not yet fully functional. Primarily, while it is plumbed with a kitchen sink and full bathroom, that plumbing is not yet connected to an outside water source. That is due to the fact that we have needed power in order to make that happen. Our property is completely off-grid. It took us some time to get the 2.5 kW solar system installed to feed electricity into the house. We do have that now, although there are still some glitches to work out. Our last hurdle is to get water from our spring connected to a large rain tank from where it has to be pumped into a pressure tank and then into the house. At least that is what we think has to happen. Then we need to finish the connections between the hot water heater and a propane tank. 

Until then, water has to be manually hauled into the house and dispensed via glass jugs at the sinks and this crazy contraption that Shannon rigged up for us to shower in our very nice shower enclosure. If we want that water to be hot for showers and dishwashing, that has to be accomplished on our propane turkey cooker outside. Oh and we use gallon jugs to pour water into our composting toilet for flushing to an outside dry well. That has enabled us to pee inside of Tiny Drop instead of having to go to the Shittin Shanty, which we greatly appreciate in the middle of the night. But until we are able to hook up the exterior compositing unit (work in progress), no pooping inside. For that we still have to go to the Shittin Shanty, which has an internal composting toilet. 

That sounds like a lot, right? It is. If you really want to deal with your shit, there is perhaps no better way than to actually deal with your shit. Know what I mean? That internal composting toilet has to have its bucket replaced when it gets full. That’s what I mean. When we take away all of the conveniences that we take for granted on a daily basis, it adds up fast. I’m barely even scratching the surface here. Again, I’m not going to lie. I’m tired. I know, however, that there is a gem to be found in the tiredness, in being worn down to your bones. Such endeavors have a way of washing away all of the illusions that entrap us in a certain way of being. Our modern lives have us believing that the only way to get water is by turning on a faucet. Yet if we had to, if our spring stopped running, we could walk down our driveway and across the street to collect water in the river… for free. No plumbing required. And, yes, we can poop in the woods just like everyone else. 

I’m not saying that we should give up all of our modern amenities and technologies. I am saying that it is a worthwhile endeavor to strip yourself of them from time to time to see what effect they are actually having on your life. Are they really making life better, or are they caging you in some way that you have become desensitized to? It’s worth asking, lest we end up in a world that we did not really intend. 

All that said, my friend Amanda asked for an example of “that’s on you” from my last post. I happen to have a good one from a few days ago. Shannon and I were on a walk up to the sanctuary on the mountain. The sanctuary is in a clearing about half way up the mountain where the previous owners had started to build a rustic cabin on a huge rock outcropping. They didn’t get any further than setting a stone foundation and a timber-framed floor that has since rotted. Yet the place is indeed special, and we have therefore designated it as the location of the future sanctuary to our ecological sanctuary. Moving up from the sanctuary is “Meditation Mountain,” a surreal place with multiple stone outcroppings spaced out in such a way that provides the perfect opportunity to choose your spot to sit in stillness. Turning to the right before Meditation Mountain is the forthcoming path that we are calling the “Middle Way” as it runs between a split in the mountain stream and then proceeds up through Split Rock to a lookout over the adjacent mountains. 

This place is magical. We are getting in the habit of walking up to the sanctuary every day as a way of becoming more intimate with the mountain while blazing trails at the same time. On this particular day, we were poking around the sanctuary trying to determine where exactly we wanted the trail to approach it. I was pointing with my hiking poles to two trees where I thought the path should pass through. Shannon couldn’t make out what I was pointing to, but I couldn’t think of another way to explain it to her other than pointing. In an attempt to understand me she said, “use your words.” That was all it took. I was triggered. 

Triggered means that I was instantly in a world of hurt. My survival tactic to that hurt is to shut down and shut out. I retreat and cut you off at every path. Not that you won’t know that you’ve made a grave mistake, because I have my ways of making you feel it too. You’ll get my cold shoulder, my silence that can cut through just about anything and you in particular. Shannon knows this space well by now. In earlier versions of our relationship, this silence would have ensued for weeks or longer, ultimately escalating into the end of the world. Now I know what you are thinking… all of that just because of three little words?! Yup. All of that. Why? Because the button she had just inadvertently pushed was the activation button for my speech impediment wound. In other words, every pain and all the shame that I had ever felt from not being able to speak properly or to communicate when I was little was just brought to the surface in full force. Ah, now it makes sense. Right? 

These sorts of experiences get exaggerated when the triggering person is one of our most beloved. “How dare you? How could you? I thought you loved me?“ These are all of the thoughts that accompany a triggered state of being. Fortunately with enough years of these types of experiences, I have learned to recognize in fairly short order what is actually happening.  In this case, I immediately was able to push out “I don’t like it when you tell me to use my words. It makes me feel like a 5 year old.” Shannon also has enough years of this type of experience to recognize what is going on as well. For her part, she immediately said, “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel that way.” And she meant it. In previous versions of our relationship she might have said to me (as I would have to her if roles had been reversed) something to the effect of, “That’s on you.” 

“That’s on you” because that wasn’t her intention and it is therefore on me that I took it that way. And, frankly, that is a correct assessment. It’s just not helpful. It’s not helpful because what “that’s on you” communicates is “I have no desire to help you with that and I don’t care that you are having that experience.” Another way of saying it is, “That’s not my problem.” It therefore exacerbates the problem, because it contributes to the triggered person’s story of “You don’t love me.” Yet here is where it gets tricky to grow out of and move beyond these dynamics. In our case, we have both done a ton of personal work aimed at healing our wounds. That is to say that we have both taken responsibility for our own healing and have put a significant amount of work into it. That is what enabled me to first of all speak my truth rather than defaulting to a shutdown. It enabled me to stand into it and stand up for my inner wounded 5 year old. Shannon’s sincere apology then made it safe for me to say moments later, “It’s because it triggers my speech impediment wounds.” Ah-ha. Of course. That makes perfect sense now. 

We had each done our part perfectly. Shannon had zero other responsibility in this situation beyond apologizing for what she didn’t intend with complete sincerity. That is all I needed from her. The rest was entirely up to me. It was up to me to recognize that I was triggered and why. It was then up to me to acknowledge, protect, and nurture that part of myself. That all truly was on me. But it would not have been nearly so easy if Shannon hadn’t held the space for me to do my work. That is what the apology did, it gave me space. I didn’t exit the triggered space immediately, because these wounds run deep and they need some extra attention. But an hour or so later I was completely out of it and we went about our day in peace. 

Yet to get to this point in a relationship requires trust and willingness. We first have to trust that the other person really does care for us and has no intention of hurting us. The triggered person has to be willing to take responsibility for his/her/their own wounds and to do the shadow work required to heal them. It is true that the triggering person doesn’t have to show up to any of this… unless of course he/she/they wants to foster a healthy relationship (a healthy YouMe) with the triggered person. In that case, it might behoove us to reconsider our knee-jerk “that’s on you” response and instead search for ways to hold space for, without taking on or over, the triggered person’s healing process.

Now if you can hang with me just a bit longer, I would like to also extend this to our relationship with the world at large. I’ll use our mountain ecological sanctuary as the example. We are calling it an “ecological sanctuary” because that is what we intend for this place and our relationship with it. It gives little indication of the actual state of this place at this given moment. The reality is that this mountain was “lightly logged” decades ago, and that assault left its wounds. Most of the remaining trees are not mature and, as happens in a young forest, too many adolescent and baby trees are fighting for their survival. When you are a tree living on a mountain you have to cling to the soil for life. Otherwise the massive amounts of water that move through here, as it is right now, take it away and leave you with no ground to stand on. As a result, way too many trees are falling down well before they reach maturity as they give way to the pressures of snow, ice, and wind from above followed by rushing ground water from below. The loss of trees results in further loss of the soil and roots needed to slow down the water. The water rushes even faster and exacerbates the whole cycle. 

Shannon and I didn’t cause these wounds to the mountain. They occurred long before we became stewards of the mountain six years ago. We could easily say to her, “That’s on you.” After all, we don’t have the insights to understand what is going on with her, much less what to do about it. That being the case, the forest has to figure herself out. She has to find her own balance in time. And, honestly, that is a fair assessment. She knows herself much better than we do. Far be it for us to tell her what she needs to do to heal. But we are choosing not to say “that’s on you.” We are instead choosing to be present to her wounds, to acknowledge what we can see, to do our best to listen to whatever she might be able to communicate to us, to listen for any guidance that she may be able to give us about how we might help support her, and most of all to hold space for her healing process. We choose this, because at the end of the day, her healing and our healing are not two separate processes. They are one. We are one. If we can figure out how to heal together, this mountain and us, then it will be no tiny thing.