“Change your verbs and you will change the landscape of your life.”-Patti Digh

Patti Digh, author of “Life is a Verb” has been one of my great teachers. Her books are works of art, beautifully written and heartfelt, filled with profound wisdom and the most deeply resonating stories.  She has the unique ability to get one moving, get one to get up and CREATE!  I knew she would be a perfect fit for the OWN Ambassadors 12 Days of Celebrating Consciousness because her motto is, “to live fully, love well, let go deeply, and know that you matter.”

Even though Patti is one of the most grounded, down to Earth, REAL people I have ever come across, she has been knocked off kilter a bit by the events of the past year. First her 9 year old daughter, Tess, was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome in June and shortly thereafter, her husband John Ptak, affectionately called, “Mr. Brilliant,” was diagnosed with kidney cancer.  Even with all these hurdles, she chose to RISE up and share everything she was going through so that we could all benefit from the lessons she has learned herself during this crisis.

She has started many online communities,  including 37 Days, Verb Tribe, and 3x3x365. Please enjoy this wonderful interview and take the time to check out her work at www.37days.com. Follow her on Twitter @PattiDigh and connect with her on Facebook at facebook.com/pattidigh37days.

Lia:  This year Mr. Brilliant was diagnosed with kidney cancer and you found yourself without health insurance after years of paying thousands of dollars in premiums annually. Your friends started an Indie Gogo campaign that raised over $100,000 for his medical expenses. I was so moved by this outpouring of love and support, so I can only imagine what you felt. How did it feel to have this community rally around you in your time of need and how did it change the way you move through the world?

Patti:  We learned what community is this year. In a rush against time, given the fast-growing nature of John’s tumor, over 1,000 friends, family, and strangers raised all the money necessary for his tests and surgery. It was overwhelming, reassuring, hopeful. After twenty years of paying $1300 a month in health insurance, we missed two payments and the insurance company canceled our coverage—just before John was diagnosed. It was a perfect storm, with his life in the vortex. I realized in this experience that I was to learn something very big and meaningful, no matter the outcome. I’ve never been someone who asks for help easily—I give help, I offer assistance, I lift other people up. It is another thing altogether to receive help—there is a sweet and difficult vulnerability in that, something I hadn’t been willing or able to experience until there was help on one side of the coin and death on the other.

To open my arms and my body and my mind and soul to the kind of giving we received was a moment of grace for me. To acknowledge that community is a structure of belonging and that so many people are agents of good—that was extraordinary. I learned vulnerability. I learned grace in accepting. I learned that being open to help is a gift in itself—providing the opportunity to others to experience the joy I feel in giving.

I emerged from that experience fundamentally changed. I understand that giving and receiving at a much deeper level. I believe more deeply in the right helpfulness we are all capable of every single day.

Lia: Along with Mr. Brilliant’s cancer, your daughter Tess was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. My son has PDD-NOS (another autism spectrum disorder) so I know how hard hearing the word autism can be and how the disorder plays out differently in each individual.  Watching you navigate Tess’s (and your) new reality and your willingness to share these experiences has been an inspiration to all of us. I know, for me, that it changed everything about how I look at the world and taught me all about living outside the box. Can you share some of the lessons that watching Tess navigate Asperger’s has taught you?

Patti:  After a lifetime of rages and struggles and days when John and I said, “I can’t live like this,” Tess was diagnosed with Asperger’s on June 19, 2012, just after her 9^th birthday. It was like a gift, this ability to say, “Yes, this is it, this explains so much.” We told her a few days later, sitting on our front porch, and we framed it not as a disability but as a different way of seeing and experiencing the world, like Mac computers and PCs have different operating systems, both of which work great and which only sometimes have difficulty when you try to navigate across those different systems. And we gave her a book that talked about famous people with Asperger’s, including Einstein, who is her hero. So she emerged from the process of diagnosis with a tremendous amount of Aspie pride. She made “I’m an Aspie and I’m proud of it” t-shirts and bumper stickers, and announced to her class the first week of 4^th grade that she has Asperger’s and told them what that means.

Here’s what I’ve learned from her in this whole experience:

1. Finding out is a gift; not knowing keeps us locked in patterns it is difficult to escape.
2. Naming something can give it power, and it can also give you power.
3. Framing is everything. Had we framed it as a disability, she would have had a very different experience. We see what we expect to see. Let’s expect great things!
4. Own it. Own who you are. Be proud of the things that make you different, not ashamed of them. Raise your hand and say, “THIS IS ME!”
5. Don’t make assumptions. About kids having tantrums in grocery stores. About people who don’t look you in the eye. About anyone.

Lia: How have the events of this past year changed your life? I see that you have totally changed your diet; what else is different for you?

Patti:  John and I are older parents of two daughters, one 20 and one 9. We fully committed, after John’s diagnosis, to do what we could—to control our controllables, knowing some things are outside our control—to live as cancer- and illness-resistant a life as possible. I’ve been a vegetarian for 36 years; John for the past 21 years; our children since birth. We focused our attention on nutrition after his diagnosis, and radically changed our eating habits to being gluten-free, eating far more (organic) fruits and vegetables, far less processed food, and in my case adopting a raw, vegan lifestyle. We may not control our circumstances (genetics, for example), but we are controlling the decisions we are making inside those circumstances. We are mindful eaters now.

In addition, this year has not been without its moments of deep depression for me. Because, at the heart of it, even when surrounded by an extraordinarily loving community, we are in some very core ways alone in our battles. So I have been mindful of this, truthful to it, and honoring the depression for what it, too, can teach me.

Lia: Your work is so heartfelt and passionate. I can always feel your heart when I read your work, has your voice changed in this past year due to all these events from the agony of the medical issues to the grace of the community that rose up to help?

Patti:  I think my voice has been somewhat silenced in the face of all this turmoil. Part of that silencing is my own doing, and part of it has come through a need to be private in the face of such exposure. I look forward to reclaiming my voice in 2013.

Lia: One of my favorite things that you do is the 3x3x365 blog. I read the blog everyday and love the sense of commitment, community, and connection that you three share. It reminds me that communities can be small, just a few people, but have a huge impact. How has that tiny act of community, love and service sustained you?

Patti:  Three friends, three states, a photo every day. That’s how 3x3x365 started in 2011. Kathy (in Indiana), Amy (in Virginia), and I had never met in person when we started, but we knew we wanted to know each other better. And so, this ritual of daily mindfulness has been the path for that to happen. It is extraordinary to see all those photos for two years, and know every story, and know how life is made up of these tiny moments. The beauty and truthfulness of this ritual has become a significant part of my life now. I love your description of it: tiny act of community, love, and service. That is exactly it.

Lia: Have you been surprised by the connections that can be created via social media?  As communities like these grow, how do you think they will contribute to consciousness and the greater good?

Patti:  I am thrilled by the capacity we have to connect, reconnect, reconfigure. What a fantastic world! I am more surprised by those who poo-poo the very idea that social media can change the world. It already has. I believe we can also be seduced into letting go of life-in-real-life by social media, and need to recalibrate periodically. I’m doing that now, with a departure from Facebook for a while—I’m not sure how long. As Camus said, “In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.”

Lia: I had one of my best friends die at age 46 of a rare cancer, he was such a light to the world and I was crushed by his death. But instead of being angry at his passing, I decided to celebrate his life by writing thank you notes to people whose spirit reminded me of him. I have never seen people so touched. I saw that you write a thank you note every day; what has that spiritual practice meant to you?

Patti:  I’m so, so sorry for your loss. Your tribute to him is beautiful. My daily thank you notes are my gratitude journal, shared with the world. Like a gratitude journal, it means that every day I look for reasons to be thankful. And I express that thankfulness and share it. So, a young member of a track team gives up her win to help a struggling team member cross the finish line—she gets my thank you note that morning. A policeman gives a homeless man a pair of boots. He’s getting a thank you note. As someone has said, happy people are not thankful; thankful people are happy.

Lia: Patti Digh, thank you so much for sharing your voice with the world. All of us in the OWN Ambassador community are so grateful to you for your work and your dedication so sharing yourself with us all! You help us all to be more conscious!

 

***About OWN Ambassador Lia Keith – Lia Keith is a wife, mother of four, Air Traffic Controller, CEO of a home based business, and the Founder of OWN Ambassadors. Her dream is to build this community into a place that will serve all who come into contact with it.  She wants to serve the world by being her best self and helping others to be their best selves, too! Come along for the ride! Here is my website.