Category Archives: Community

Community, Growth Mindset, Inspiration, Life Lessons, Life Long Learning, Perceptions, Relationships, Social Emotional Learning

How a trip to the eye doctor helped me see the world less clearly

June 13, 2021 Catherine Matthews 4 Comments

After more than a year of constant virtual meetings, my eyes are shot—bloodshot. For fear I was doing permanent damage, I made an appointment with my ophthalmologist. As part of the exam, he placed some dye in my eyes and shined a bright light directly at them. Suddenly, I could see every blood vessel in my eye. It was so shocking, I jerked my head and nearly knocked him over. He told me that those blood vessels are always visible but that our minds block them out. They would be a constant distraction otherwise. It would be like looking at the world through a forest of branches.

What is more amazing, than blocking out all of those capillaries, is the fact that your mind fills in the black lines of the vessels to make the picture whole in our minds.

I know that we have an amazing capacity to block out sensory stimuli. It’s the reason I say things like, “When did they build that apartment complex?”, and my husband says things like “I just told you that!” (If you don’t believe me, take this awareness test: https://youtu.be/Ahg6qcgoay4).

It makes evolutionary sense if you think about it. Can you imagine being constantly aware of every molecule of shifting air as it hits your body, every flash of light crossing your vision, and every soundwave bouncing off your eardrum? It would be overwhelming. It would be impossible to think of anything else. We filter out a tremendous amount of stimuli so that we can attend to other information. The new apartment building is much less important than the stoplight, pedestrians, and oncoming traffic.

But do we all pay attention to the same sensory information? I think not. We filter information through our lived experiences, cultural and familial expectations and norms, and religious or spiritual beliefs. Without thinking, information is taken in at rates determined not just by how well we see, smell, or hear, but whether or not we drank our coffee, had an argument with our partner, got to workout, had car trouble, gained or lost a pound, have a work deadline looming…. all the things that color our mood, and interfere with or focus our attention. And yet, if I asked you to describe the world, you could. You would describe the world as you know it. Because you experience it firsthand through your senses, you see it as real and true.

According to Stephen Burnett, “Every organism inhabits a world that is the sum total of all the information being received and processed by that organism’s nervous system.”¹ For example, the giraffe and the rock python inhabit the same area, but they live worlds apart. Like every other organism, we live in different worlds because we perceive the world differently. The world of humans is even more vast when technology is present because it can bring the entire world to us. For the rabbits in my backyard, the world is about an acre of land where they must brave the King (my husband who loves his lawn) and his two four-legged, sharped-toothed beasts (my puppies who want to play with them) just to feed their families. Our oasis is their gauntlet. For humans, we not only experience the space we physically live in, but we experience the whole world filtered both through our interests and choices and through the filter of what others think we should see, feel, and pay attention to.

Part of the challenge of being human is that we believe our experiences. We trust what we see and our interpretation of it. We don’t notice the branches obscuring our view or that our mind has elegantly filled in the missing information with what aligns with our expectations and prior experience.

That makes it very hard to understand each other sometimes. When you describe a world so different from my experience, I might think that you must be wrong. For if you are not wrong, then how can I be right. After all, I have my experience as proof that I am right.

Is this duality the truth of the world or the myth of it? Can some things be both right and wrong? Is the world really black or white? If it is good for me, does that negate that it is bad for you? A weed to me, might be a flower to you. One person sees a guerilla, another person sees a freedom fighter.

Whether we are talking about our families, local communities, or the world, honoring the different and valid ways we experience the world is critical. How can we better understand each other? How can we truly see the different worlds we inhabit together? How can we let someone else’s experience fill in those blind spots in our eyes, especially when it would be far easier to let your mind fill them in with only your world view?

Listen with compassion and a desire to understand rather than convince.

See with new eyes and question your perspective.

Smell the flowers, even if you think they are weeds.

Feel what it must be like to walk in someone else’s shoes.

Break bread together (or kitfo, souvlaki, kimchi, goi cuon, biryani….) and learn the history of the dishes.

Open your eyes and relax your focus. You might be surprised what becomes clear.

¹ (Burnett, S. (2011) Perceptual Worlds and Sensory Ecology. Nature Education Knowledge 3(10):75, https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/perceptual-worlds-and-sensory-ecology-22141730/).

Community, Inspiration, Social Emotional Learning

I need a heartbeat.

June 20, 2020 Catherine Matthews 3 Comments

Like most people working from home, I have spent the last 13 weeks video conferencing. My vibrant, three-dimensional world has been reduced to grainy images intermittently stilted by poor bandwidth, virtual backgrounds signaling our desire for sandy beaches and mountain retreats, and a grid of flattened faces. To be clear, I am grateful for all of that. Without it, the isolation would have been unbearable for me. I am sure I would have, in turn, made it unbearable for my husband and daughter. Still, there has been something missing. Something I craved. Something more elemental than mere virtual communication. It took a puppy, a bike ride, and a march to help me see that what was missing was my heartbeat.

Two months ago, we brought home our new puppy, Delta. She was still in that phase where she slept about 18 hours a day. True to the breed, our little Boxer is a snuggler. She wants to be cuddled up tight to a warm body. She doesn’t much care who it is, either. When she was tiny, she fit on a pillow on my lap under my desk. She slept peacefully for hours as I worked. As she grew, she started to fall asleep sitting upright. It looked uncomfortable, and my instincts told me to gently push her into the lying position. Boxers are a willful breed. Even as young as she was, I could tell Delta was all Boxer in this regard. She resisted, insisting that she fall asleep sitting up with her head on my chest. It was awkward, but the truth was I loved it. It reminded me of my daughter as a baby, who also insisted on falling asleep on my chest. I realized they were falling asleep on my heartbeat. And that is what I had been missing – being in a room full of heartbeats. I longed to be in a room with the special heartbeats in my life- my family and friends, my team and co-workers, the children and staff in our schools. I missed all of those heartbeats.

A month ago, the early morning light starting peeking through at 5 am. Though still cold, I needed to get back on the road. My best friend, not the dawn enthusiast that I am, pumped up her tires and raised her heartbeat too with only the slightest groan. I cannot describe the utter joy of leg pumping and blood pounding, I get from a fast, hard ride with my best friend. I can feel my heartbeat in the freedom of a cold wind in my face and the silence of the morning shared with someone who gets it, gets me. Heartbeats who have shared births, deaths and marriages, wins and losses, triumphs and failures, and more than a few scars – those are the best heartbeats.

Last week, I went to a Black Lives Matter march in our community, and I was surrounded by heartbeats. I was with other staff who I saw every day, though I had not been physically near in 3 months. Actually, I was seeing far less of them at the event because our faces were covered by masks and our bodies cocooned in rain gear. Even obscured, I could feel their heartbeats. I was in a crowd of people who vibrated with hope, love, and commitment. I could feel my soul fill with the heartbeats. I was overjoyed to be standing with colleagues who I respect and admire because they feed my heartbeat. I am fortunate to work for someone who gets the importance of a heartbeat and the simple, but generous and powerful, gift of bringing heartbeats together to eat and share.

To be clear, I want everyone to be safe. COVID-19 is a horrible disease. We need to stop the spread. We should all be covering our faces, washing our hands, and maintaining social distancing. It may be annoying to do all that, but it is so worth it to feel the heartbeats in your life. Put a mask on. Sit ten feet apart across a fire pit. Go for a walk two arms lengths apart. Put out 3 tables instead of one for dinner. Shout if you have to do that to be heard. But laugh and cry because you need to do that too. Delta is not wrong. We all need to feel the heartbeats in our lives.

Community, Inspiration, Relationships, Social Emotional Learning

Birds of a Feather

November 23, 2019 Catherine Matthews 6 Comments

My mother’s psychics says, everyone essentially wants

the same thing a everyone else,

a sense of belonging, a coming home.

– Ada Limon

I don’t think you have to be psychic to know that everyone wants to feel like they belong. There is certainly a body of research to support the importance of having a sense of belonging. Sadly, if you watch the news, you can see the tragic consequences that result when people feel that they do not belong. I have been very fortunate to have worked on a project for the last few years around the social emotional learning of children and teens. Sense of belonging features prominently in those metrics. Not surprisingly, sense of belonging impacts learning.

As a teenager I moved three times in five years to radically different environments. I moved from a small Catholic school to suburban public middle school in Washington State, to an enormous public suburban high school in Georgia, to a small rural high school in Washington State. The communities I moved between were radically different. That may have contributed to my feeling like an outsider. One day I was attending morning mass in my navy and grey uniform in a highly structured and calm learning environment. The next day I was in my “after –school” clothes moving hourly through a noisy, crowded hall to a new class. Going from the Pacific Northwest to Georgia was even more jarring. Everything about me was different. I spoke with an accent. I dressed differently. I had a different understanding of what it meant to be a girl. In each of these settings, what was acceptable to adults and my peers was radically different. In the first two moves, I deeply wanted to belong. Frankly, I changed myself to belong. In the final move, I gave up changing myself and decided I was who I was. I would rather be alone than pretend to be someone else.

Those who have a strong sense of love and belonging

have the courage to be imperfect.

-Brene Brown

In my 15 year-old mind, I thought those were the only two options: morph yourself to belong in a new community or choose not to belong at all. What I did not know at the time was that I actually created the conditions for a true sense of belonging by being my true self. The truth was that morphing myself to fit their styles, ideals, and habits of others did not give me a sense of belonging. It made me socially acceptable which is not the same thing as being accepted or belonging. Social acceptance and popularity can be detrimental to one’s sense of belonging because they require one to conform to the standards of a group in order to belong. This may mean denying your authentic self in order to feel accepted by the group. It means giving up parts of yourself in exchange for being accepted. That does not give you a sense of belonging.

Our sense of belonging can never be greater

than our level of self-acceptance.

-Brene Brown

My college-aged daughter wrote a blog on sense of belonging recently. I realized how differently she conceptualizes it than I did at her age. Though I certainly would not want to imply that her experience is the experience of all young adults, it does give me some hope that we are making inroads in social-emotional learning leading to a healthier sense of self and of relationships.

It’s also about trusting deeply within yourself that not only

do you belong right where you are, but also that you belong there

as your purest and most authentic self.

To me a sense of belonging is to feel so at peace

and at home within ourselves that we can trust

there is a place for us in this world and at every step along our journey.

-Shannan foodfearsfitness.wordpress.com

As I read her words, I reflected on those times when I had a deep sense of belonging. The fact is that I have been blessed to feel a sense of belonging in many facets of my life. I belong to a pack of friends who understand what it means to be a woman raising a family while working in a leadership role. I belong to a writing group that feeds my creativity. I belong to a community on social media that inspires and encourages. I belong to a spiritual community. I belong to a sisterhood. I belong in my family. My daughter reminded me of the beauty and gift that is a sense of belonging.

I belong when I am able to be myself and be unconditionally accepted.
I belong when I am able to be vulnerable.
I belong when what we share deeply is greater than any difference.
I belong when I can be challenged in my thinking without being challenged for thinking.
I belong when we choose the greater good for each other.

Find your posse, pack, band, crew, pride, squad, tribe, family, club, circle, or flock. There is one out there just for you, the true you. Whatever you do, stop trying to fit yourself in. Find the place you fit.

Change, Children, Community, Family, Inspiration, Life Lessons, Parenting

Big Love

June 22, 2019 Catherine Matthews 6 Comments

Last weekend, our daughter graduated from high school. I brought three packages of tissues to the ceremony and a camera with a 600 mm lens. I was not going to miss her face as she walked across the stage. I was prepared to weep openly, unapologetically, for two hours. I didn’t open a single package. Actually, that is not true. I got a fingerprint on my glasses and used a tissue to clean them. I did not, however, shed a single tear.

Don’t get me wrong. I have cried thinking about graduation for the past year. I just did not cry that day, as I imagined I would. The truth is that I could not have been anything but joyful on that day.

As I confessed earlier, I was in a flurry of activity getting ready. My youngest sister and I were planting flowers and decorating the house the day before graduation.

We strung twine on the walls and hung pictures of my daughter with family and friends throughout her life. As I looked at all the big moments and the small ones, all my fears and sadness slipped away. I saw her dressed as a snowflake riding on my dad’s shoulders. I saw her wide-eyed on her grandmother’s lap reading a book. I saw her giggling in her silly uncle’s arms and snuggling with her cousin. I saw her bouncing on the bed in a cabin at Kalaloch wearing red suspenders her dad bought for her in an Ace Hardware store in Forks. I saw her growing older in the arms of her aunts. I saw her playing basketball and softball, boxing, skating, rowing, and tumbling. I saw her laughing and hugging her best friends who held her close through heartbreak and loss, and shared mischief, laughter and joy.

I saw her hand in hand walking down the beach with her dad and riding with me top down in the sun. I saw her with the teachers who shaped her education and her character. I saw her with the community of family we have made with our friends – the aunties, uncles, cousins, and grandparents not of birth but of love still the same. That string of pictures held the first chapters of a life built on love. Not much to cry about there. Unless you are crying tears of joy.

On the day of graduation, my dearest friends pitched in to get ready for the party. I could not have pulled it off without them. They worked so hard to set everything up while we were at the ceremony so that we could have the party while my family was in town. I have the kind of friends who grab their keys and are out the door before you even ask for help. They are the kind of friends who pull together for each other no matter what. I realized that she will be just fine. Because I know, in good times and bad, I am surrounded by big love from family and friends. And that is what we have raised her in- big love.

Leading up to this day, as I suspect all graduates do, our daughter has had moments of fear and sadness. She will miss her friends. She will miss the safety of a community that supports her. She will be challenged to go farther academically and personally that she has thus far. I have reminded her that she is ready. I know she will make friends. I know that she will achieve her goals. I have assured her that she has a safety net of people who love her and will be there to support her as she takes these first steps into independence, even when she is away at college.

On graduation day, I realized that we too are ready as parents. I realized that we too have a safety net of people who love and support us. They will be there as she takes these steps away from us. They will be there for her and they will be there for us. And we will be there for them when the time comes with big love.

Children, Community, Inspiration, Life Lessons, Relationships, Social Emotional Learning

Kindergarten- Where we all belong.

February 23, 2019 Catherine Matthews 4 Comments

I started my day in kindergarten yesterday. Every day that I get to be in a kindergarten is a great day. First of all, they are adorable. Right there, you are guaranteed to start your day with a smile. They bounce and bop down the halls, happy as clams that it is Friday morning and the school day has started. Everything is a fresh adventure. That kind of joy is contagious. It’s winter so they look a little like turtles with their fat backpacks, all bundled up, heads peeking out of their parka hoods. Brightly colored sneakers and rain boots with ducks and frogs fidget in a line outside the classroom door- itching to get in. They are a hive of activity storing their gear in cubbies, high-fiving and knuckle-knocking their buddies like it’s been months and not 16 hours since they last checked in. They help each other without being asked and without judgment. They accept help gratefully. They cannot wait to share- share their space, share their pencils, share their expertise in tying shoes, and share their ideas and opinions (I got quite an earful on the topic of pet ownership). A friend is picked to help with an errand. Hugs are given to someone who looks sad. They take each other by the hand unabashedly. They don’t seem to notice their differences. They are a community and it is clear they all belong.

This visit made me think about when it is that we start, as humans, to wonder if we belong. How is it that we start to feel like we don’t belong in a place or with a group of people? Maybe it starts when we begin to notice how we are different from each other. I like to play in the woods and get dirty. You like to read. I like to play basketball. You like to sing. You are quiet. I am loud. Maybe it is when we start to hear from adults that those differences have a value. She’s such a tomboy. He can’t throw a baseball. He has a beautiful voice. You’re always such a mess with dirt all over your jeans. Her painting is beautiful. You are so talented. Well, there are other things you are good at I am sure. Maybe it is when we start to identify with those values. I am good at this. I am not good at that. Whatever the process, we look for a place we think we belong. We look for a place that feels right- where we feel right. We look for our people, our posse, our pack. It feels good to belong. I think that is the natural order of things.

But wouldn’t it be great if we never asked ourselves, “Is this where I belong?” Wouldn’t it be great if we never wondered, “Is this place for me?” You see, as soon as we do that, we limit ourselves. We take ourselves out of the game. We buy the artificial “goodness” and “badness” of our individual characteristics. We miss out on the opportunity to learn new things- things we might actually like doing and even have a talent for doing. We miss out on meeting new people. We miss the chance to find out that those differences, which we think divide us, really enrich us. We miss out on the very real possibility that we have more in common than we think. We miss out on the high-fiving, knuckle-knocking, hand-holding joy that comes from knowing what every kindergartener knows – we all deserve to belong.

Maybe instead of worrying whether or not we belong, we should be thinking about how we can make others feel like they do.

Community, Family, Inspiration, Life Lessons, Life Long Learning, Relationships

Of Grapes and Friendship

October 17, 2018 Catherine Matthews 6 Comments

Last weekend, my best friend and I recruited a few enthusiastic volunteers (our husbands and one of our dear friends) and we pressed 400 pounds of grape must. I have been making wine from kits for about 20 years with pretty solid success. In addition to getting about 30 bottles of delicious vino for my troubles, I have always marveled in the process. In particular, I find yeast to be one of the most interesting organisms. The fact that it can turn sugar into alcohol is nothing short of miraculous. Don’t get me started on what it does to wheat! One tiny packet of yeast cells, a couple of weeks multiplying exponentially and out comes 30 bottles of wine. I had always wanted to start with grapes, though. Truth be told, I wanted to grow the grapes, harvest the grapes, crush the grapes….. you get the idea. We’ve never had the room to do it. Even though the yeast is doing much of the work, there is a lot of labor and we have never had the time. Last year, a friend of mine told me about his adventures in home winemaking from the vineyard and I was hooked. So, I did what I always do- I got a book. Then I asked about a million questions of my expert friend. Then I called up my best friend and said, “I am going to buy a couple hundred pounds of grapes and make wine. You should do it with me. It’ll be fun.” I always throw that last part in, even if it might not really be fun because, when we are together, we are always having fun. And she’s the best kind of best friend because she never says “No!” or “Have you lost your mind?” or “What is wrong with you?”. No matter how hair-brained my idea might be, she’s always in.

“We should ride up Mount St Helen’s to celebrate my 50^th birthday. It’ll be fun.”

“We should go see Great Big Sea. It’ll be fun.”

“We should stand in the rain all day waiting to watch a 5-minute race. It’ll be fun.”

And even at 0400 on my birthday, standing next to our bikes white-knuckled and shivering, frost hanging from our noses, wishing we had dressed for winter not fall, fixing a flat tire on the side of the road, she would say, “It’s all good.” It was a bear of a ride. I know because it took three hours up and only one hour back down. But she never complained, and I talked her into a way worse ride eight months later (after her memories started to fade). Let’s just say they advertised a mostly flat 75 miles with a couple of hills and it was a mostly hilly 75 miles with a couple of flats. I think of us as a cross between Lucy and Ethyl (if Lucy and Ethyl had doctorates) and Thelma and Louise (if Thelma and Louise were not self-destructive and made better choices where men were concerned).

Like all other things, she was all in on my grape acquisition adventure. We ordered three hundred pounds of Sangiovese grapes and the real fun began. We spent hours planning how we were physically going to manage this. By the time we collected all of the equipment we already had and bought some things we needed, we applied what I call the “20-Mile Logic”. The 20-Mile Logic goes like this: If we can ride 40 miles, we can ride 60. If we can ride 60, we can ride 80. So, if we can ride 40, we can ride 80. And it only gets more absurd from there. So, a couple weeks before the harvest, we called the vintner and asked for another hundred pounds of Petit Verdot. Because, of course, if we can ferment 300 pounds, we can ferment 400 pounds. With each passing week, I watched the Brix levels come in with an intensity I only remember in the final months of pregnancy. When will the grapes be ready?!

When the day finally came, my husband volunteered to drive over to the Portteus Vineyard in Zillah to pick them up. We really had no idea what to expect as we made the long trek from the rainy side to the sunny side of the state. As we rolled through the vineyard, we passed row upon row of vines fat with clusters of grapes. Each variety was unique- some fatter, some deeper in hue, some hanging on the vine lazing in the sun, some seemingly floating off the branches. We stopped at the tasting room purely for scientific reasons. It is important to know what your wine is supposed to taste like, after all. Then we headed out a large cement patio covered in crates of grapes. With a short lesson on filling buckets from the crusher-destemmer, we jumped in the back of the pick up and quickly started laying out the buckets. I was given a 6-inch-wide hose which I surmised was going to be shooting out grape juice shortly as the crate was dropped into the bin. As I looked at my friend, I was picturing Lucy and Ethyl trying to keep up with the candy conveyor belt. There I was precariously perched on the tailgate, gripping the hose for dear life. Instinctively I crouched down against the impending force of 400 pounds of grapes like I was preparing to be on the receiving end of a charging foul. I imagined myself shooting backward from the pressure and the viral replay on America’s Funniest Home Video. It wasn’t quite that bad in the end, but we were working hard to keep the empty buckets coming forward and the filled buckets lined up in the back. That was the easy part it turned out.

My dining room furniture was pushed into a corner to make room for our winery. Barriers were erected to thwart my curious Boxer. In the following days and weeks, we perfected testing for the Brix level, pH and tartaric acid. I felt like I was back in CHEM101. After we threw the yeast, the cap of grapes skins that floated to the top of each bucket had to be punched down at least three times a day. The cap seemed to be swelling before our eyes each time. At one point, I put out an SOS when two of the buckets had grown mountainous caps like something out of a horror movie. When the Sangiovese finished days before the Petit Verdot and way before we had a bladder press reserved, I frantically googled and then hysterically called my friend to alert her that we had an emergency- Carbon Dioxide or Argon were needed stat. After a short and awkward silence which I was sure was going to be ended by “I’m out!”, she said, “My soda stream makes CO2. Why can’t we use that?” She is brilliant. Though we had seen countless ominous videos of first-time pressers covered in raw wine from head to toe, pressing was a breeze. We had a lot of help and it went off like clockwork. So now we wait for several weeks in this last phase before aging. It will be months before we bottle and more still before we know if all our efforts have yielded the nectar we hope it will.

This has been a learning process. Making wine is a lot like life.

Sometimes the smallest things have the greatest impact: yeast cells, simple kindness, holding a baby, wiping a tear, helping someone up, cheering someone on. It is the little things that multiply exponentially- just like yeast. If you don’t believe me, try smiling at everyone you see tomorrow.

2. Think ahead and read the directions. There are a lot of steps in winemaking and they can come at you so fast. You don’t want to be standing with a siphon full of wine without a clean carboy.

3. Improvise- sometimes reading ahead just isn’t enough. Who would have thought we could use a soda stream and a fish tank tube in winemaking?

4. Have faith. Just because you cannot see something happening doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.

5. Patience. Sometimes the greatest rewards take the longest time.

6. Most importantly, everything is always better when you have a best friend you can count on who gets you.

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Women's Fiction Author