Words of Green

Official website for author Tammy Green

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The Book Is Here!

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Living Without Skin: Everything I Never Knew About Fierce Vulnerability is finally here! Click on Buy the Book in the banner above to get your copy today, or find it anywhere books are sold!

Feeling vulnerable is frightening.
Being fiercely vulnerable is phenomenal.

Most of us spend a lifetime trying to avoid pain and insecurity while overlooking the power we inherently possess. What would you do differently with your life if you knew you were failsafe at birth?

If you’ve ever felt vulnerable, weak, or like a complete failure, you can transform those feelings into fierce superpowers.

Life can leave you feeling raw, naked, and skinless. Learning to live without skin can turn you into the superhero of your dreams!

Prepare for an extraordinary and sometimes humorous journey that begins with a child’s imagination and ends with an ordinary adult’s transformation on unexpected paths.

You’ll discover how embracing vulnerability can help you:
– Learn how to find and wear the skin you were created for.
– Uncover the core of your individual insecurities, and transform them into strength.
– Connect internally and externally to humanity-defining power in a personal and public environment.
– Heal from trauma so it isn’t passed to the next generation as culture.

Step out of your old skin. Be your own fierce hero.

Rip

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The year of ripping, of goodbye, death, of the word “cruel” and being able to say “you are not who I thought you were”, the year of sickness, when the whole world stopped. The year I broke open, and my guts spilled out onto the paper, into the earth, when I learned that spirit is larger than body, and bodies are fragile. Everyone this year tells me ‘your words resonate with me’, and minds are twisted – the veil between good and evil is opened. The year that slammed me into humanity/humility, stillness, laughter, softness in the corners found underneath the shadows and the swords. Skinless and raw, with scabs that have somehow become scars, and scars that have become beautiful mosaic tattoos on my soul. The year of feeling someone else’s pain, sitting with it, holding a hand, wiping a brow, cupping a face while a hurricane boils inside me. The year of drowning in powerlessness and worry while flowers bloom, the ozone clears, the air is cleaner and fresher than ever before in my lifetime, sadness and joy weave and wind throughout soul and heart like serpents and doves. The year of evolution, revolution, mixed with flour and butter and honey-the best birthday cake ever made for the earth, and I learned through loss what love really means. The year I found my place, and I belong.

Reflections

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A decade ago, starting life over.
Love, work, school, life.
The culmination of a few years of darkness.
Painfully shedding the self I had known for 40 years.
Moving, kicking and screaming, into the unknown ahead.

Midway to end, learning, growing. screaming, learning.
Graduating, working, parenting, travelling, learning.
New friends, new family, a soul mutt, a soul mate.
Writing, photographing, living, loving.

Ending the decade, letting go of people and things
no longer helping me grow.
Surviving the most excruciating, most rewarding
experience of my life.
Recognizing the necessity of every tear, every laugh,
every heartbreak, every soul-bursting moment.
I am not lost.
I am the phoenix that emerged from the fire.

And now, I will not use accomplishments to measure.
Only attributes – kindness, empathy, listening to hear.
The next half of my life, this new chapter,
I will see the phoenix fly.


~ Tammy Green

~ Photo by Aziz Acharki

Who inspires you to be a better human?

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Who inspires you to be a better human? Is it your pastor? Your partner? A relative? Superhero? Your mom?
It’s not an easy thing to find in today’s culture in America. Inspiration? Hope? Every where we look, we see polarity. Arguments. Bullying. People who profit from and support the suffering of others. How deeply do we have to dig to find something that reminds us of the goodness of humanity in our everyday lives?
Let me tell you a story of inspiration. The story photo shown is actually a wall of canvas prints of animals. Dogs, specifically, and spirits now. They are memorialized by two people that I am privileged to know and love. I am privileged because I get to love them, and I get to learn from them each day what real love, values, morals, caring, and action looks like. All the things that most of us would like to attribute to our own religion or spirituality, these people just live every day.
The dogs include Wesley, the old man with bangs, and Patsy, the boxer with cancer, and Tater, whose back legs and hips wouldn’t let him move very far without help. There is Pops, whose tongue is perpetually dry because the lower half of his jaw is gone, and Gus Gus, whose heart wasn’t expected to function for very long. Not pictured are some of the current crew consisting of Kevin, the five legged pittie whose ears were cut too short by someone more interested in his fighting skills instead of his health, and Poo, the blind and deaf poodle dropped off because he required too much care. Also not pictured are the fur kids adopted throughout the years. There’s Jake, black lab extraordinaire; Kaya, dope on a rope who enjoys a good bag of mulch occasionally; Pepper, the gazelle disguised as a dog; Nola, the soul mate adopted during a rescue during Hurricane Katrina; Biscuit, the dog training cat; Butter, the cat who morphs into whatever you need at the moment, and countless other ferrets, snakes, mice, and rabbits.
Deb and Dave provide hospice care to elderly, sick animals that need a soft place to land on their way out of this world. For some, these people are the only soft place ever known to these animals. For all of these animals, these people give generously and lovingly from their hearts and their bank accounts. How unselfish does one have to be to fully fund, without assistance, expensive medications, food, and medical care for animals who have been thrown away essentially? How loving does one have to be to offer a home, a heart, and time to another living creature unable to fend for itself? At any given time, they nurture a minimum of three hospice animals in addition to their brood.
In addition to this, what they consider to be their life’s work, they volunteer weekly at the Humane Society loving animals that don’t have a soft place to land. They regularly transport animals from not so great situations to homes where they have a chance to be loved and cared for. Deb volunteers regularly for rescue missions with organizations, and sees situations that would break most people and render them catatonic. People like me.
I love animals. Many of us have pets that we consider family members. Our own Cora Belle, Rumi, and Bit are the family that brings constant joy to our lives on a daily basis. I know how to care for animals. I am filled with compassion, and a desire to end pain for any living creature.
But I can’t do what my better humans do. I do not have what it takes to witness the outcome of human cruelty with my own eyes, and not let it break me. I do not have what it takes to quietly take on the suffering of multiple living creatures, and emerge whole. Maybe they don’t either. Maybe they each give pieces of life from themselves to every life they touch. You won’t find a person alive who has met them, worked alongside them, or volunteered with them who doesn’t love them. There are many more out there who do what they do, quietly, willingly, without us ever knowing the cost to them. What about the people who can’t do what they do? The people like me, who just can’t. Maybe our job is to say “thank you”. Maybe our job is to hug them, and love them, and cry with them, and lift them up. Maybe we can pour into them a tiny portion of the love that they so freely give to the ones that we can’t.
Who inspires you to be a better human? Find them and say “thank you”.

“DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW SHITTY THIS IS?”

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That was the question written on his sign as he stood on the side of the road at the exit ramp. The temperature was a frigid 28 degrees. In the South, anything below 40 degrees is freezing. He was in his mid-thirties, age wise, with dark hair and a beard. His waist-length jacket covered as much as he could shrink into it, and his toboggan hat didn’t do much to hide the dirt on his face. His four-legged, furry companion sat stoically next to him wearing his own strategically ripped sweater, one size too small. 

 

I never knew his name, but he stuck with me in my mind for the rest of the day. I made up stories in my head about the path that led him to that exit ramp. How does it happen? Maybe he lost a job where he was only one paycheck away from being broke. Maybe his wife and children left him to move in with her parents. Maybe he was an addict and drugs took over his life. Maybe he tried as hard as he could, and it wasn’t enough. 

 

Could he turn it around now? How would he manage to interview for a job with no clean clothes and no transportation? How could he think about interviewing for a job when the greatest challenge ahead of him today is surviving hunger and freezing temperatures? How could he sustain a job with no place to sleep, shower, or clean his clothes? A million scenarios flutter past my eyes, but I can only feel the pain of my own experiences. Could I even imagine his? 

 

Although I don’t carry cash, I always have an assorted compilation of random things in my car. I have things like wool socks that I’ve picked up at a store, running gloves from a running expo, the occasional toboggan hat on sale, or random coats or shoes awaiting a goodwill drop off. 

 

I smiled and looked him in the eye as I rolled my window down. “Hey, Mister, are you interested in some warm socks?” 

 

He moved quickly to my car as his pup watched keenly without moving. “Yes, ma’am, I sure am.”

 

As I handed him four pair of wool socks, he smiled back at me and said, “Thank you so much. God bless you, ma’am.” 

 

The light turned green. I rolled up my window and adjusted the heat in my car. It was hard to see the road for a few minutes as my heart leaked out of my eyes. I’ve been to the place where I tried as hard as I could, and it wasn’t enough.  I’ve felt the hopelessness that comes with not having a safety net.  I made a mental note to carry one extra granola bar in my car all the time, more than one pair of running gloves, a few extra pair of wool socks, and some $5 gift cards for fast food. These are such small things, but they are strings in someone else’s safety net. Such small acts that say to another human being “I see you.” 

 

“DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW SHITTY THIS IS?”

 

No, sir, I don’t, but I don’t want you to know it alone.

Hope

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A beautiful spring day when the sky is an endless, cerulean blue with big fluffy, marshmallow clouds.
A hug so warm it seeps into your spirit, sometimes a fire that burns your fingers.
The sunlight glinting on the lake throwing diamonds in your eyes with every ripple.
A murmuration of starlings flying in a glorious pattern, weaving heaven and earth into one being.
Coffee every morning, just the way you like it – two cups exactly.
The color blue – soft, kind, and soothing as a baby’s blanket.
A day in the woods, walking slowly among the trees, marveling at every vein and tributary in a leaf.

Iced tea, unsweetened, thirst quenching in the fiery summer sun.
Belonging, right where you are, just as you are.
A swim in crystal clear water on a night so warm it feels like a cozy hug with every stroke.
The ocean in darkness with a night sky bedazzled with stars shining like beacons calling you home.
The full moon over the water illuminating trails that lead to her glow.
The sound of waves gently rolling onto shore, rocking you like an angel’s lullaby.

Fall, when the sun is a giant orange ball on the horizon sinking into the lake.
A soft place to crash, and a cannon launching you back into the world.
Belly laughter from a baby, the kind that makes you laugh so hard you cry.
The brightest light, the kind you imagine Heaven uses as a welcome mat.
Laundry, and mail, and mowing the lawn – the thing that makes a life, daily.
The thing that makes it a life uncommon.

Winter, sharing a blanket together, watching the flames in the fireplace reflect in blue eyes.
A cloak when the world has peeled you raw, and you have no skin.
Quirky – cucumber green tea bath soap, toothpaste that stands up, and wiping dog paws every time.
A campfire, drawing everyone into the circle, encouraging connection, braiding hearts together.
A single tear, leaving a trail down a face, throat constricted, unable to speak.
Drinking chocolate, savory, dark, rich, something to be sipped.

Soul food.

How My Dog Taught Me Yoga

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“Ahdo Mukha Shvanasana”. I can’t even say it. Which is probably a good indicator that I can’t even do it. At least not properly. 

But my dog can. 

Without even practicing.

Or even thinking about it.

Downward dog. Downward facing dog. Observing a 115 pound Great Dane do this truly makes one respect the art form. Large (but not too large) and graceful, this girl puts her big bucket head flat to the ground and gets the full stretch from her harlequin hued hamstrings. This is usually followed by a massive yawn and a groan that makes me laugh out loud. We’re talking about her groans, not mine. Mine aren’t that funny.

I’m training to run my first full marathon-26.2 miles of hellfire and brimstone to my feet, legs, and body. I do long runs on the weekends because I don’t have half a day during the week to voluntarily torture myself, not to mention another day and a half to recover from it. My masseuse suggested yoga to help stretch the muscles and keep my total body limber. Enter Downward Dog. Imagine lying flat on the ground in prone position. That was my first attempt at Downward Dog. Enter MY groans. Not funny at all.

How do dogs know this? How does living a simple, joyful life come so easy to them? Are they mystical creatures sent from another dimension to teach us how to live as better humans? Is that a rhetorical question? Here are 10 truths my dog has taught me about how to live.

1. Sleeping is everything. Take every opportunity you can to sleep. It works best when you can find a nice, shady spot in which to dig a hole and form your whole body into a ball that’s hole-sized. Utilize Downward Dog stretching upon awakening.

2. Enjoy food. Once you’ve found something you like, stick with it. Don’t eat the diet stuff. Just sniff it and walk away.

3. Treats are the best! Celebrate as often as possible for as many reasons as possible. Go pee outside. Come when you’re called. Sit occasionally. Bring the ball back. Sometimes lying down gets two!

4. Let people know what you’re feeling. Don’t wait to be asked if you need to go potty. Just go put your wet nose into someone’s hand. It doesn’t matter if it’s 2:00 a.m. 

5. Do what you want. If dragging trash from the bathroom can is your thing, do it repeatedly and with passion. Don’t let the naysayers bring you down.

6. Be enthusiastic. Going for a walk? Get into it. 

7. Keep your emotions in check until the timing is appropriate. No need to display shock at the turn of events in your life until the pizza delivery guy rings the doorbell. 

8. Stay in shape. Run like the wind after the ball when it’s thrown so you can let your person know exactly where it is while you wait for her to come pick it up, or, if you’re feeling festive, FETCH it! (See # 3.)

9. Size doesn’t matter. A friend’s Chihuahua will eat your head while my Great Dane hides from butterflies.

10. Be happy. Recognize how lucky you are to have people in your life who love you unconditionally.

It’s never easy balancing health living with responsibility. So often, we are pulled in so many different directions each day with work, family, socializing, and technology. Seriously, who can find the time to train for a marathon? Finding basic joyfulness in living can be a challenge at best, and can result in health issues at worst. Whether it’s exercising, spirituality, relationships, or mindfulness, dogs can teach us so much about living our best lives. Volunteer with a local pet rescue or Humane Society to walk dogs for an hour weekly, and learn Downward Dog for life.

Dog live about 12 years, and that’s why they discovered this brilliant philosophy. Because time is limited, there is no time to be unhappy. ~Mehmet Murat