Falling Gently Podcast

Falling Gently

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Broadening the context through which I look at the world, finding connection and wonder. We need each other to remind each other. fallingtenderly.substack.com

Sep 30

Optimums & Baselines

If you were to guess How many times in your childhood do you think you said “When I grow up, I’ll never do that,” or “When I have kids, I’ll never make them…” whatever Probably a lot Although plenty of those things are self-fulfilling prophecies Many do shape how we move forward and raise our own children This is something I noticed early on and had to square with I lived my baseline, and used it to imagine my optimum I then worked to provide my optimum for my children Which then became their baseline It would frustrate me how they would sometimes take my optimum for granted But, I would have to remind myself that they never experienced my baseline This was their baseline And while I thought they were wildly lucky For them it was just Tuesday And so there should be tacos I had to hug and kiss all my relatives every time I saw them My children do not have to touch or be touched by any person for any reason They do not have to deal with my creepy uncle who was always untying my bows And while adults held authority in the house I grew up in By the time I had kids I realized older does not necessarily mean wiser And so while they had to be respectful, they were in no way subordinate These things felt like huge upgrades to the operating procedures of my youth But they’re my kids’ baseline Anything else seems absolutely primeval to them So I can’t quite expect them to be grateful Indeed, they have ideas to refine their policies even further And that’s evolution They WILL make choices informed by their baseline, finessed into their optimum And their children will be blest But they probably won’t be grateful Because that carefully engineered optimum Will once again become a baseline And they will call me and say, “they don’t know how lucky they have it!” And I will laugh and say, “Yep, but it just shows you’re doing your job. That’s evolution.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fallingtenderly.substack.com
Sep 24

People are like Ice Cream

There were brief periods when my children were in classrooms Classrooms can be surprisingly political places Especially for those unversed in chaos theory We had our share of great teachers and questionable ones Great friends and nemeses To make sense of it all, we had a family metaphor School is like an ice cream store There is room for all of the flavors in the coolers Some flavors you’ll like, some you won’t But a big part of the value of the store is that there’s something for everyone Dad loves pistachio ice cream. He’ll get it a decent portion of the time. I really don’t care for the flavor. I don’t even like the look. Even if I hated it, I’d still have to appreciate it exists because Dad enjoying pistachio ice cream gets us to the ice cream store which lets me get strawberry. So, viva la pistachio ice cream But, strawberry, please. Today. Tomorrow it might be chocolate. I might even want a double. Every once in a while, there might be some ice-cream-catastrophe And the scooper will need to get involved Like tree nut flavors having a dedicated, separate container All the flavors may not go well together And they don’t have to Each flavor is delicious to someone And every one has a right to exist You don’t need to like it Your job is to find what you DO like Sample away You do not need nor want the whole cooler to be just one flavor. You also need not eat every flavor in the cooler Nor eat the same one every time You don’t need anyone else to agree with you They’re welcome to their own flavors Sovereignty starts at the ice cream shop But it doesn’t end there This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fallingtenderly.substack.com
Sep 22

Friends Are Like Pizza

When our kids were little Sometimes a friend wouldn’t be in the mood to play with them And they would take it personally Doesn’t that person like me anymore? It’s a moment And it doesn’t feel good It works both ways Sometimes they wouldn’t be in the mood to play with a certain friend It didn’t necessarily mean they didn’t like them Or did it? That could be a real quandary How does this feeling reflect on forever And that is a question we don’t necessarily need to ask every time We had a family context: Friends are like pizza We love pizza We’re stoked to eat it A LOT But that doesn’t mean we’re always in the mood for it And not being in the mood for pizza doesn’t mean we don’t like pizza It just means it doesn’t sound like what would be satisfying right now Or we’re simply not hungry This orientation resolved a lot of anxiety, often immediately And its effectiveness reached back into my own childhood I had often put myself on a rollercoaster ride if someone wasn’t as eager as I was Old, unresolved tensions I didn’t realize I’d still carried Melted like the cheese on a pizza Rejection didn’t necessarily have overarching meaning And if it did, if someone didn’t like me anymore or whatever Let that be on them to be explicit about “I’m allergic to pizza” Noted. Everyone moves on And having it as a policy in our lives For a decade or more I’ve witnessed it meet and diffuse an anxious moment a hundred times In both directions Let that feeling or wondering rest in a bed of perfect acceptability I suppose it’s a mechanical thought process of not taking things personally Having a context that diffuses extended meaning Acknowledging that relationships having natural experiences of space Doesn’t mean the relationship is lesser I remember one friend my daughter absolutely loved And when she didn’t feel like doing things with her, she’d feel terribly guilty “Maybe I don’t like her as much as I think I do?” The pizza analogy nipped that in the bud All the guilt and inquiry went away And didn’t taint their next encounter I think plenty of people do this naturally I didn’t And I’m glad I didn’t pass on all the neurosis I had about youthful friendships Finally, I, and my children, could choose from the buffet of life Not feeling like we need to put everything on our plate Or to be on every plate To enjoy what’s most delicious today There is a buffet here. Would you like some pizza? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fallingtenderly.substack.com
Sep 18

YES!

Kiichi Usui was the best man in Yoko Ono’s first wedding They were part of a group of Japanese artists that came to New York in the ‘50s To make art that didn’t exist yet Kiichi parlayed his traditional Japanese art education into abstract expressionism While Yoko got into the Fluxus movement where the idea mattered more than the object You may be familiar with the story of how she met Lennon When he went to see her installation consisting of a ladder At the top of which was a magnifying glass You could use to search the ceiling where you’d find a small, printed word: YES And thus began her third and final marriage But Kiichi had a different experience He’d been a working artist in New York for a decade when his wife got pregnant To support his family he decided to take on a new relationship with the art he loved And moved to Michigan to open Meadow Brook Art Gallery On the campus of Oakland University There, he made a name for himself as a curator Bringing in remarkable works rarely seen outside of New York or Paris Lichtenstein, Pollock, Warhol To this tiny art gallery in suburban Detroit But he made that gallery big, in reputation as well as acreage The university sat on a fifteen hundred acre parcel of land Anchored by the founder’s Tudor Revival Meadow Brook Mansion Kiichi initiated a competition for large modern installation pieces throughout the property That made the whole campus feel like anything could happen around the next bend He didn’t paint during most of the years he was curator As he felt it was a conflict of interest But in the mid ‘80s he started again He moved from abstract expressionism into what he called Photo romanticism Applying his talent to recognizable imagery with a softness photorealism wouldn’t allow but impressionism took too far My mother shared an office with him when she worked for the theater and festival So I knew him When I was 18 and a Japanese major Kiichi asked if he could paint me I was happy to sit for him, and happier still when I realized it would just be a photo session Much easier While most of the work revolved around me wearing intricately embroidered kimonos I was mortified the first time he asked me to take my clothes off What would my mother think? When I timidly told her after arriving home she said “Of course he did! He’s an artist. What did you think was going to happen?” I went on to sit for him about a dozen times over the next decade From which he painted somewhere north of 30 portraits of me before he died Recently, one came to live with me, brought by my mother And hanging it, I’m wildly grateful she didn’t purchase one of the nudes I may still be the same weight But I am decidedly not the same shape Here, in my 200th post, I’m embracing my changing form And who I’m becoming takes me back to Yoko Ono’s seminal piece I feel like I’ve climbed a ladder, and I’ve been searching the ceiling with a magnifying glass And finally, I see YES Go ahead, say YES! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fallingtenderly.substack.com
Sep 11

Earth Treasure Vases

In 1990, Buddhist practitioner Cynthia Jurs went to Nepal There, she was lucky enough to have an audience with a 106-year-old Rinpoche She asked him what she could do to help heal the earth and her people He told her ‘Just one person practicing deeply can have a dramatic impact But you, dear one You need to bury clay pots in the earth’ Excuse me? Not what I was expecting Not what she was expecting But his hermitage gave her 30 small pots She says it took her quite some time to wrap her head around the assignment But she’s been traveling the world planting these pots and more, 72 so far With local communities, in ceremony Through her organization Alliance for the Earth In learning about her work I also learned: she’s not the only one Multiple traditional communities plant their prayers Putting minerals or seeds or talisman in a pot and burying or submerging it A ritual act of appreciation for the land Recognizing the earth as a main character Not a set An invitation to the unseen world for collaborative assistance And acknowledgement of participatory enmeshment I’ve heard it said that at the end of ancient battles, for example Both leaders would plant their weapons on the battlefield In recognition of the land and what had just happened on it Modernity eliminated that kind of honoring In favor of digging up those weapons and putting them on display in a museum This practice reverently puts things back But I’m most touched by the participatory nature of the practice The involvement of community and peace-builders in burying these vases As individuals and groups, visitors and residents, hold and bless these vessels Living ceremonies catalyzed by symbolism, intention and ritual Even developing ongoing peace and resource alliances Brought alive in a new way by what was buried I particularly love this ritual because I can feel the humility and recognition Participation as the sacred act The results: out of our hands But joining hands in recognition that our intention and actions matter That the course of our shared history might hinge on a prayer and a gift Humans and the earth have had millennia of certain kinds of reciprocity Usurped by things like plumbing and industry And we have lots of decisions to make about how we continue to exist And as much as innovation may have a role to play So might Guidance from the proverbial - and literal- wise one in a cave This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fallingtenderly.substack.com
Sep 8

The Cricket Cage

Today I had the opportunity to use my umbrella shaped like the Duomo in Florence There’s a detail on it most people don’t notice Like the Eiffel Tower in Paris or Big Ben in London Florence’s skyline is recognizable based on the Duomo Or, more formally, the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore The cathedral grew with Florence’s prominence in Italian history First, just a small church on a northbound Roman road Then a 5th century upgrade to “Santa Reparata Basilica” But as the middle ages became the Renaissance Florence came out swinging And this Russian nesting doll of a church Began to take its modern shape 1296 brought a new cathedral which took 100 years to build But left a nearly 150 foot hole in the roof And in 1420, Brunelleschi began the octagonal dome that is now known the world over The first and still largest brick dome in the world In what was a drama worthy of a telenovela He built it in only 16 years With incredible innovation Using no scaffolding or wood supports And confusing the hell out of the architects and artisans of the day But, for some reason, Brunelleschi left the base of the Duomo unfinished You have this incredibly fancy, two-tiered, intricate dome And a bunch of raw stone and sandstone beams attaching it to an incredibly ornate cathedral He died more than a decade later… He could’ve finished it No one else had the guts No one understood the engineering above it and didn’t want to be responsible for collapsing the structure But eighty years later, as the Renaissance was hopping Florence set an architect to the task At about the same time they commissioned Michelangelo to carve “David” to sit at the cathedral’s roofline So, this architect designed decorative columns for where the cupola meets the cathedral And he completes one of the eight sides before Michelangelo comes back to town with David A couple of things happen next One, David is so beautiful - and so heavy - they decide he must live where he can be appreciated And even Michelangelo’s archnemesis, DaVinci, agrees David should be placed in front of the town hall Sorry, Palazzo Vecchio Where he sat for the next three hundred and fifty years But, the other thing that happened Is someone asked how Michelangelo thought the Duomo base was coming along He snickered and said the columns made the Duomo look like a cricket cage At which point, the work was abandoned. Permanently. I mean, if Michelangelo doesn’t like it… So, that’s what my umbrella shows One edge of the octagon with it’s cricket cage And seven more completely unfinished Because of one man’s opinion And here, 400 years later, it remains the same Look at a picture - any picture One of the most ornate and visited buildings in the world remains visibly unfinished And absolutely no one cares But it does make me chuckle every time it rains. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fallingtenderly.substack.com
Aug 28

Comprehensive Hygiene

There is not a food on earth that I expect to fulfill all my nutritional needs Much less satiate me permanently There is no shampoo so powerful that I’ll never need to use shampoo again And there’s no clarity, on any subject, that means I’ll never need to address it again with my beloveds Why, then, do I keep thinking ‘this spiritual practice should clean up all the remaining debris” “This mental practice will conquer this long-held pattern forevermore” Or “This emotional clarity will erase the original wound” My conditioning on ‘arriving’ is so strong That even a lifetime of experience disproving ‘arrival’ In every category Still gets overlooked I get disappointed when I need to meet a challenge I thought I’d already met adequately As if participation, refinement and renewal Were admonishment instead of opportunity Still, part of me wants to be ‘done’ and wants to be done through one effective tool Sigh Even the washing machine has to go in circles for quite some time to get the clothes clean One round won’t do it The truth is, I love my practices I just wish I didn’t NEED them And I do need them I need meditation as much as I need to brush my teeth And am quantumly better to talk to after both I need relational witnessing as much as I need exercise And feel invigorated and alive after both I need creative expression as much as I need food And feel delight in process and restful satisfaction after both Hygiene is an ongoing process not because yesterday’s efforts were insufficient But because that is how living systems work I want to tell my children I love them over and over, in new ways Last year’s love is insufficient to describe the depth at which they delight me today I don’t take that kind of repetition as a problem I like what it grows into Just like I like the way my teeth feel after the dentist Or I like the way our house looks right before we have company I like the way I feel when I’m inhabiting my whole self with compassion and curiosity These may not be permanent states, which is sometimes frustrating But coming back around to them sure feels good This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fallingtenderly.substack.com
Aug 20

You Can’t Go Back

In my early 30’s I lived in a boat house on a small private lake in Michigan I called it “camp” Which is how I squared myself with copious spider population It was the early days of the internet and I’d done a keyword search using “charming” And it was Down a ½ mile-long driveway Around the side of the main house Park by the magnolia tree Follow the stone path to the 40 steps The entrance of the house sat atop another 20 steps down to the water It was about 700 square feet Knotty pine walls (another reason I called it ‘camp’) A 30-foot porch I could fish off of But really I just threw the fish blueberries and watched their disappointment The weekend I moved in, a former contact called I answered the phone, “Paradise, may I help you?” He was offering me a job to run a new Australian office of his web design company “Thank you,” I said, “and if I hadn’t been serious with my salutation, I’d be all over it” It was so beautiful, I never wanted to leave So I asked my boss “what would I need to do to work from home” She answered, “you’d need to get another job” But 6 weeks later, I ruptured a disc And whadayaknow, I couldn’t drive for 3 months I had been traveling a lot, so now my colleagues had to come to me Camp hosted many meetings Several colleagues slept on my porch instead of their hotel We would swim off the dock to separate the work day from the evening The environment was so spectacular I could invite anyone over at any time Whether I had food or wine to offer And feel utterly confident that they would be delighted to simply be there Usually, I could throw something together But it was really an afterthought. Until I got married Suddenly, I started freaking out about whether I had enough wine Or adequate snacks If the house was clean enough Or I’d swept the stairs WTF? It took a few times of this happening to realize I’d changed the tape I’d had the carefree single woman tape in the player And now I had the wife tape And that one was full of anxiety about how the details reflected on the state of my union I had to do it right or everyone, including and especially me, would think I was doing it wrong And the craziest part was that even finally realizing what was happening did not end the dynamic It took concentrated effort to set down the anxiety that felt necessary And it was only the magnitude of the beauty of the environment that would pause the tape Reminding me to enjoy the privilege of sharing the space with people I enjoyed As time went by, camp became less enchanting The roof leaked. The landlord weirdly wouldn’t fix it Tucker designed an utterly hilarious indoor gutter system that channeled water into 3 separate buckets By the time our daughter was born What was once magical suddenly felt potentially dangerous Circumstances changed We ended up moving 1,000 miles away And I had to continue to slowly debug wife.exe In a New England bungalow I went back to camp about 3 years later for a visit It was every bit as beautiful as I remembered it I couldn’t resist jumping in the lake I got entirely tangled in seaweed This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fallingtenderly.substack.com

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Broadening the context through which I look at the world, finding connection and wonder. We need each other to remind each other. fallingtenderly.substack.com

Creator

Falling Gently
Years Active

2025 - 2026
Episodes

135
Rating

Clean
Show Website

Falling Gently Podcast

Falling Gently Podcast

Optimums & Baselines

People are like Ice Cream

Friends Are Like Pizza

YES!

Earth Treasure Vases

The Cricket Cage

Comprehensive Hygiene

You Can’t Go Back

About

Information

Falling Gently Podcast

Episodes

Optimums & Baselines

People are like Ice Cream

Friends Are Like Pizza

YES!

Earth Treasure Vases

The Cricket Cage

Comprehensive Hygiene

You Can’t Go Back

About

Information