Tag: blog

Feedback

Rachel Ann1 Comment

As defined by Merriam-Webster, “the transmission of evaluative or corrective information about an action, event, or process to the original or controlling source, also: the information so transmitted.”

Feedback is a necessary component of growth, and therein resides the rub…growth can be painful or uncomfortable. A seed pushing forth beyond the soil, rising towards the sun, cares not for the speed at which it travels, but rather it continues to reach beyond what it could be capable of. Cue the theme song from the second movie in the franchise that is FROZEN, “Into the Unknown!” Does anyone else hear Idina Menzel’s voice singing now? You’re welcome, but I digress.

Feedback exists whether we appreciate it or not. The fact of the matter is this, we live as human beings within societies. Each of us plays a role within that community with a particular job, role within a home, or a family. The thing is we garner feedback as we tread through this life based upon the encounters we have with others.

If I had listened to all the feedback I received over my four decades here on Earth, I would surmise that I am too much of this or not enough for any person or area in life. The long and short of it is, unless you can magically transform into a type of seasoning that everyone utilizes on their food, take the Trader Joe’s “everything but the bagel” seasoning. It’s just not going to work. “Life’s too short to sweat the small stuff, kid,” my father would constantly say to me while growing up. If I had listened to others, I would have only laughed when I read the condensed version of the feedback on that list.

Feedback can be quite subjective to the owner of the thought itself. Consider the source, which I often found myself saying in my early adulthood. I harkened back to this while I spent twelve years in public education. If one considers the source, the root of an ideology, then perhaps one can utilize their own powers of deductive reasoning or, insert audible gasp, critical thinking skills that are all too often lacking in this current day and age of snapshot glances in time, and pundit professors on the palm ridden land of Tik-Tok university. There I go again, I digress.

If one can make a discernible source-credited reasonable statement regarding feedback for an individual, party, or country, then thankfully, living within a democratic society, they can openly share their critique, nay feedback.

What a gift.

What a blessing.

To say what one thinks.

To criticize.

To provide feedback.

The struggle that lies within discomfort is, in turn, a test, my friends. If you can continue to hold your roots, to continue to grow despite the resistance that the sky throws your way, there is the opportunity to see another day when you will surely bloom and grow. It is always a powerful stronghold to receive the flurries of feedback, opinions, and hate-spewed commentaries and continue to shine regardless.

See the truth behind the gray filled skies.

Light always has the power to pierce the darkness, even a single ray. Seek the light.

Seek humanity.

Fear not the feedback that dwells beneath the surface because if one’s roots are well planted, a weather shifting will not remove the plant.

Feedback is just that, information.

Seek the source, or, as the kids say, ask for receipts. Take courage and be kind, but face the light and continue to grow.

Wave upon the sand

Rachel Ann2 Comments

Starting with 2015 and continuing for almost a decade now, the ocean’s waves have become an analogy for my life’s seasons. Everything comes and goes.

I see Debbie and I holding hands in Hong Kong, walking down the sidewalk laughing.

The sound of the waves lapping at mine and my nephew’s toes as we spread her ashes in the ocean.

The coming and going of the tide.

Holding my firstborn’s tiny hand while he slept.

My eyes watching for the rise and fall of his breathing. The reassurance that he would come and go in each moment right before me.

The ocean waves playing through the sound machine beckoning us to sleep.

My first and second born holding hands and taking their first steps together.

Brothers.

Hand in hand.

Together.

Walking towards the ocean.

Turning around and looking back and laughing.

The push and pull of time.

The needs, the fulfillment and the letting go.

“How do you pin a wave upon the sand?” said Mother Abbess.

Their tiny foot falls echo in my mind even in an empty house this morning.

There were no tears shed this morning from either parent or babe. The ultimate gift as a parent is a silent one.

The brave confidence in seeing your child know themselves.

Seeing them stand true and proud.

Seeing them confident in their own autonomy.

Seeing them communicate for themselves.

Seeing them advocate for their own needs.

A whole human.

A single world held in this tiny body.

All the work.

All the time.

All the practice.

All our play time.

All the love.

Watching the wave slide away and become a part of a vast ocean.

Finding it’s way.

My feet are still on the beach.

The imprint of the little toes standing next to mine.

The imprint of a hand upon the heart.

He waved and signed, “I love you!”

Okay, maybe there are some tears now.

Blue Skies

Rachel Ann4 Comments

Searching for blue skies in the last days of January in the P.N.W. is a novelty. My youngest child was doing just this on a recent drive.

“Mama, mama,” he exclaimed, “Look right there, see that? There’s the blue skies!” His anecdote reminded me of the famous song, “Blue Skies,” to which I promptly began singing the melody.

He asked me, “Who sang that song?” It got me thinking, I wonder who composed that song? I pulled up my application on my phone and clicked on an Irving Berlin recording available on YouTube playing, “Blue Skies.”

While digging a bit deeper at home, I discovered that my very same child who was named after the famous Jewish composer, Irving Berlin, had discovered, serendipitously, that his namesake also had written the song in 1926. This moment of spontaneity sparked so much joy on our recent drive. I love it when life brings forth these little coincidences. I read that people have started referring to them as, “glimmers.” For what it’s worth, I have always thought of them as sparkles…

Antisemitism has reached a fever pitch worldwide in the recent months because of the attack on Israel on October 7th, 2023 and the ensuing war. This date was marked for Jewish people world wide as the most deadly day for Jews since the Holocaust, since the expel of Jews from the Middle East, and it was transpired on hallowed ground.

There are little to no choices when it comes to identity. The world seems to decide how one can be identified once a box has been distinguished. Here me out though, I always felt and feel a sense of pride when I talk about my background and who I am. The people that came before me survived traumas all their own. They are now imprinted in my DNA, and in the DNA of my children. However, with that being said I work actively hard at igniting joy in my children around their identity. We distinguish how important it is that they are who they are. This rich culture of people who have survived and thrived. How their actions in the world can spark a flame of hope and kindness when they act in a way that focuses their energy positively.

When we leave this Earth, this realm of collective humanity, all we really have is the imprint from our interactions, from our work, from the collectiveness of being a human on this planet we all call home. What if, we looked for more blue skies? Perhaps looking up a bit more would shed some light upon the dark corners we find ourselves nestled within?

(Some favorite renditions of, “Blue Skies,” that my Irving and I listened to included: Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Irving Berlin, and Doris Day.)

Cloak

Rachel Ann3 Comments

Burning the midnight oil here, but when the spirit moves me, I try to honor the words and write. I had the joyful experience of taking a HIPHOP HITTS class with LaTosha Wilson. I had this moment during class when I realized how impactful it can be to connect with another person. Maybe the atoms collided to spark this, and my sister’s spirit moved through me, but I felt something truly move through me. There was a spark, and this idea came to mind, so here goes.


If I were to explain my life to a stranger, I would say it’s like woven fabric. A tapestry of the places I have walked, the people who have held me in so many ways, the lessons learned, and the moments that cast light through moments of darkness. The threads we weave each day are sewn in color. Our energies collectively create these dynamics that can be tangible if we pay attention. Sometimes when I truly get to know a person, I begin to see a color that resonates within my mind when I look at them. Maybe it’s a sense of learning someone’s aura or way of interacting with the world around them. What have you? It’s there. I felt this sensation of red, warmth, and fire in class.


One person can transform the energy of a room, and it is in these moments that I imprint a memory in time. I cannot explain how impactful dance was for me in my healing journey from losing my sister and having multiple pregnancy losses in succession. I told myself I would not let it define me; however, I now can see that it paved a much greater pathway in my life. It taught me the essence of gratitude, choice, and feeling the one thing no one can ever purchase but must earn: love.

What I felt tonight can be likened to a term coined by Emile Durkheim known as collective effervescence. The meaning of this phrase explains how a society or community of people who come together can work with one another to express and participate in the same thought or action. It reminds me of my experiences in singing with choirs and feeling the collective effervescence from the music we created.

This fabric is something I carry with me. I weave through it daily; I hold it, not as a load of burden but as a cloak that shifts and moves with me. My collective being remembers the moments that turned the fabric. This fabric holds the healing that transpired with each step of forward momentum. The bumpy textures of scars from my past experiences have become one with the material moving as a force to propel me forward.
These chapters have become textures in my life. Like a quilt, I can cuddle up to and hold close. Feeling this sense of deep gratitude for the places I have been. I was filled with such an overwhelming sense of gratitude to be present, dance, and share in the energy in the room.

We all carry so much with us each day and every year, shaping and molding us into the human beings that walk this earth. What if each of our capes becomes more entwined and lifts one another up? Perhaps this is a utopic perspective or cliché, but with gratitude, acknowledgment, and hope, I can’t help but feel that my cloak has become my queen’s robe lifting me along as I walk forward.

Yahrtzeit: Six years passed.

Rachel Ann5 Comments

There are days that feel so heavy to be a human. I felt those all weighing down on me when I woke up today. Each passing year feels so different.

Some years (pauses), God, I just wrote years, as in plural. As I shake my head at the realization of the length of time, I visualized something. The distance of days, turned months, turned years feels like more and more time built between the two of us. Maybe I need to talk that one out… Regardless, unpacking my thoughts and feelings is a daily task these days.

Back to my thought: the heaviness. Sometimes humanity weighs heavy in the heart. Maybe it’s the turning of the season today, the official beginning of the hibernation period, the winter solstice begins. Maybe it’s the remembrance of what we all lost when you left this Earth? Maybe it’s the fact that so much humanity is ever changing? The world still feels frozen, but why? Maybe it’s the fact that I’m feeling all of the things I allowed to become numb?

Maybe it’s all of it.

It is all of it.

All at once.

The crashing waves. The water washed over me, and I just let it all flow. In ways, like these words. I always turn to here. Let it all out in writing. Maybe that’s why I hadn’t blogged in so long. What do we say when we have too much to say? Or if we find ourselves without the words to fully express our feelings, where do we begin?

I turned a lot to podcasts this year. Unpacking, and repacking what I’m experiencing, listening to, mulling over, and chewing on in my head.

Often I take the feelings, and I weave them into an armor of something in my mind. The fabric of this life. The frayed edges worn with time. Here I stand alas, holding onto that scarf and hoping it still warms me, even after the years have unraveled it’s thread.

Golly, I’m at a loss. I hate that. I don’t like not understanding, or not knowing. That is definitely the type A coming through…

My patience runs very thin these days, it reminds me of ice. Cracking and refreezing, and the water still moving beneath the surface. What is it like to full submerge, and feel that sting? I remember all too well that frigid cold feeling in 2015, of knowing the inevitable was coming, and I was incapable of stopping it. That’s it. Right there. That knowingness of watching the inevitable unfurl. That was the submerge, the slow spiral, and the waking up knowing.

Sometimes I turn, and I think that I see your reflection in the mirror. I hear the same sound in my voice, that I once heard in yours, and the ice cracks. Perhaps it’s knowing that all things have changed, and so many remain the same.

Humanity keeps spinning in it’s web. The universe is still shifting, and yet in the quiet hours of the morning, in the repeated numbers on the clock I have seen the: 222, the 444, and the 555’s, I think of you. The buzzing of a picture frame on my birthday. The song titles you loved, as recent discoveries of unknown artists sing. These are universal signs. The dragonflies that passed us by in Fall. The shooting star that Andy saw last week. The birds that stop, and meet my eye. All of these are natures way of saying, keep going dear heart, I see you there. These reminders repair the frays. I turn my head and the breeze gently sways. New winds begin to blow.

I cried more today, than I can remember in the last 365 days. Maybe it’s because I feel you more, and I feel you less, all at once in the caverns of my heart. Maybe it’s because the fleeting feeling of time ticking becomes ever present with the growth of these two babes. There’s nothing quite like being needed to remind you of what’s important. I heard a new song by Ashley Monroe titled, Gold, and I thought about you. Her voice reminds me of Alison Krauss. These little things help reweave the threads hanging loose.

I don’t know if I believe the phrase, time heals all wounds, is accurate any longer. Maybe it’s more like this: time cloaks the wounds, and your heart grows less heavy. Regardless, here I am. I broke a few stress cycles with the tears today. You would probably say, “Look at you, healing, and stuff, haha, and be healthy you. I’m proud of you.” I’ll go hug the babes, and take a walk now.

I’ll leave you with this Big sis:

Your son’s doing well.

He’s nearing six feet.

He’s driving now too.

Imagine that.

We all love and miss you.

The books you should see coming out in 2021, ahh, I hope you do see.

I saw a hedgehog on google today.

I chuckled aloud, and thought you’re so funny.

Leo said you wink at us when the stars twinkle bright.

I hope that he’s right.

xo,

Your little sister

RAB 2021.

Blow out the candles

Rachel Ann3 Comments

They say age is like wine, it gets better with time.

I’m not sure who they are, but I couldn’t agree more. Life’s bit bittersweet with a flaky exterior. If I were to define age it would be the conscious knowledge of a number, and yet the fleeting feeling of freedom. When I was a child, I would wonder who I would be one day. What does it even mean to be? In the Spanish language it conforms to: ser, to be….

To be or not to be, that’s always the question, isn’t it? I have been an official adult for twenty years now. I am not sure of everything I have learned and how I could possibly put it into words. I think the description would need to be written as multiple stories instead.

All I truly feel is: gratitude. This gratitude for just being, going back in time to my writing of the Hebrew phrase: hineni: here I am.

Being here.

Being still.

Being in motion.

Being.

How lucky am I? I think I am similar, and also very much changed. I don’t make room for as many things anymore. I shed them like a cloak each year that I realize the lack of importance they held. Take for instance, doubt.

If I had given into doubt, I wouldn’t be here, writing, this, sharing it on the ethers of the internet.

If I had given into doubt, I wouldn’t have the memory of us holding hands in a foreign land and comforting her in the largest trial of time.

If I had doubted my gut instinct and not held his hand that one day, I wouldn’t be here with my family today.

If I had doubted my abilities, I wouldn’t have sung in that room with a panel of music faculty members judging my every move, and been awarded a scholarship.

If I had doubted my kindness, I would not have made my lifelong friend again and passed her paper in study hall.

If I had doubted my hope I would not have believed in rainbows after the storm and held both of my babies close to my heart.

If I had doubted my self-worth I wouldn’t face my fears and discuss them monthly with a trained professional therapist.

If I had given into my doubt I wouldn’t submit and submit, and revise, and edit, and resubmit my stories again and again.

If I had given into my doubt, I wouldn’t have crossed the 13.1 finish line and completed a half marathon three years after taking my first steps as a runner.

If I had given into doubt, I wouldn’t have made countless friends and spent hours at a dance studio I called my second home.

If I had given into fear I wouldn’t have a fifteen minute birth story and a beautiful human to care for.

Doubt is like your shadow. It tags along for the ride, trying to pull you back, or pull you down. But at some point, you must know how to embrace it. Remember that first time you discovered her? The shadow friend waved back, didn’t she? Sometimes doubt, and fear can high five you, just to see how far you have come, and give you a nudge to keep going.

Life is like that too. All the shadow friends fall behind, as you turn and face the light. It’s better if you look up most days. Take a power stance, and find the light of the sun, or the moon, and allow its shine to lift you up towards the sky.

Cheers to 38, the strong years, and all the ones that came before. They made me into this human form that helps me charge forth with passion and integrity.

Rain drops on roses.

Church

Rachel Ann3 Comments

What does spirituality mean to you as an individual? I was recently listening to a podcast on, “Unlocking Us,” with the Nelson family. They were discussing what spirituality meant to them in their family and I connected to something I hadn’t thought of in a while. There are always these thoughts that linger just below the surface before emerging with impeccable timing. Call it God, call it the universe, call it what you like, but it released something I had been holding onto.

The idea of how spiritual I feel, and have felt when playing music revived itself. They say, “don’t lose yourself,” when you’re mothering. I understand how true that can be. I have worked hard to continue to be myself and evolve with each pregnancy and birth I have been blessed to experience. With each one, I have become a new version of myself.

Is it not amazing to be alive and experience all of the highs and lows of being a human? Over the last eighteen months we have all had a collective experience, and yet an individualized one at the same time. How unique it is that as a whole, the entire earth has bared witness to this pandemic and continued to revitalize and find ways to connect? Albeit connection without touching, at times, but connection none the less. However, I do think that in some ways it has come at a cost and for myself, I have realized how much I have to break away from the technological connectivity I had grown accustomed to…

I often sit on my bed and gaze out the window when I am writing. There is a beautiful cherry tree that continues to grow each day. This tree and I have seen many stages of life together over the past decade. When sitting down to write today I realized something, I am so grateful for this view. The leaves now delicately quiver in the winter wind. They dangle on bare branches reminding me of how much I can dangle on the precipice when I feel at my most raw and exposed. There is something to be said about the seasons and how much it can invoke these instinctual feelings within me.

I often analyze and over think ideas. It is something I have grown aware of with age, and also grown to appreciate about myself. This characteristic, not flaw, allows me to have the ability to be a natural researcher, thinker, and empath. I am constantly considering what I think the other being might feel or be going through. I also weigh choices heavily, and I have learned to release my worries quickly.

The act of mindfulness has been a slow process I have been cultivating over the last few years. It has recently blossomed with my commitment to meditation. Through the act and practice of exercise with a friend’s partnership on social media, I committed myself for four months to a daily ritual. It helped me realize that I can do the same with my mindfulness and take it to another level with meditation. Ultimately this practice helps me two fold: be a more present human being, and be a steadier rock in the turbulence of my children’s springs. I will be the first to admit that their waves of emotion can greatly affect me. As an empath it is extremely challenging for me to not become washed away with their tides, but I am holding firmer ground and breathing deeper now.

Where am I going with all of these collective thoughts? I’m rooting them here, in this virtual ether captured by a moment in time. It had been a while since I sat down and wrote a flow of thoughts without trying to conform the ideas or control the output.

I realized that sometimes we all just need to let things go. Let go and let God. The only thing to fear, is fear itself. What takes up your mental space can consume you, carefully tread my friends and find those spaces that bring you back to what truly matters. This time of year brings back many memories of collective effervescence for me. The act of being together, the act of singing together, and feeling that spiritual moment that you cannot explain. It may look different for me now, but the emotions still rise the same. May this season bring forth a renewed energy filled with hope and light. May we all be taken to, “church,” and find that moment where our souls ring and feel lightened by the load of what being a human means.

Lingering leaves of 2021.

Blooms

Rachel AnnLeave a comment

Spring came upon us in the midst of the crisis that lingers world wide today. Our world is blooming while we seemingly are distancing. What can all of this mean? Perhaps an analogy of spring itself is one way to consider the current situation human beings find themselves in.

A small bud rises forth from the growth of leaves that surround it. It is this bud that brings color, hope, and joy to the viewer. Mother nature herself has been flourishing while we wait and give space to ourselves and others. Consider the following: Color has now returned in waters unseen for decades, foliage is beginning to grow where earth was once scorched, wildlife is returning to waters uncharted by creatures for years, because of human activity being ceased. Perhaps all of this brings forth a deeper meaning: when we are able to still our minds, still our activities, and focus inwards growth does transpire. I ask myself, what truly can grow with a bit of nurture each day?

Ask yourself, when was the last time you watched a plant grow? I formed the habit with my son to stop and talk to our plants and flowers every day. As silly as it sounds, after a year of doing this he will now go up to plants and say hello on his own. I chose to make this a priority in our home and environment because what better way to foster an appreciation for what helps you as a to human bloom? Our plants are the providers of  oxygen, beauty, and food. Here are some recent photographs of nature in our midst from our morning and a song of beauty to inspire your inner and outer day.

Photographs taken by, Rachel A. Becker.

Link to youtube of Yo Yo Ma and Mr. Rogers playing and singing, “Tree, Tree, Tree.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX3XvPYU2kA

The Art of Letter Writing

Rachel AnnLeave a comment

What do letters mean to you? They’ve always been the connection that I had to friends and family who lived far away. And, let’s face it, when you live in Anchorage, Alaska, everyone and everything feels quite far away.  My first pen pal was my Grandpa Woody. He was my cowboy grandpa who would come up for a visit every November to spend Thanksgiving with us, most years. I would look forward to my monthly and holiday letters. I loved his spring time letters too. He would write to me in his fashionable cursive handwriting that I would decipher slowly, being the emerging reader that I was. I can vividly remember opening a letter one spring, probably in late March or early April and tucked inside was a furry gray pussy willow bud that he had gathered from a tree outside of his house. The opening of that letter has stuck with me to this day. His letters are now bundled together with a ribbon alongside my sister’s letters for safe keeping.

My second pen pal was my sister. She was ten years older than me and left home for college shortly before her eighteenth birthday. I vividly remember the day she left.  The leaves clung to the branches with a foreboding coldness, brilliant maroon, yellow, and brown hanging by thin invisible threads, similar to how my heart felt when she drove away in dad’s pickup.

She would write to me weekly, send me updates on all the happenings in the lower forty eight, the seasons, the sounds, and the adventures she took. Some of my favorite letters were enclosed with photographs of her adventures or cartoon drawings she created to entertain her tiny sibling. I loved it all. I would mail her cards and drawings, long letters that mom and dad helped me spell out letter by letter. When you’re a dyslexic writer of seven, things take a little bit longer to complete. One Hannukah I received a tape recorder box with a giant speaker and microphone. I recorded a sung letter to Debbie that ended with a rousing rendition of, “Puff The Magic Dragon.” I’m sure the tape is long gone, but I know she remembered that particular letter/package and the enclosed demo. Ha! Who knew that all these years later I would pull out the letters of the past and read her words to hear her voice again. Her letters bring me comfort and make me laugh aloud even now.

The most indelible thing about a letter is that you know the person who wrote it for you, held it, cared enough to write it, and mailed it with love. It always felt like such a gift to receive a letter from someone in the mail.  I want my son to know what that feels like as both the sender and the receiver. So, letters we write together, each season and each holiday. I think it’s important to take time to think about those in your life that you care about and pause enough to reflect upon that and give them a token of your heart.

I had the idea to begin a blog this past fall, to mark the passing of time in a daily way, that perhaps our son could look back upon one day. I decided to use the voice of our beloved dog Kimmy to narrate our daily adventures together. In a way I feel like I am giving him a small piece of what I have in the letters I have kept and cherished throughout the years from family members.

What else can we draw from as humans except knowing that the passage of time is marked in human history through the written word. So I leave you with this thought: think about the last time you wrote a letter, and why. Now, who could you write to today and thank, make laugh, or draw a smile from when they open their mail box and see it waiting for them?

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Spring Thoughts for 2020.