Remembering Rembrandt
A memoir and the W.A.R.R.I.O.R.S. Method
A promise made at sixteen. A brother the world knew as Rembrandt in The Warriors. And the long walk home to the life I was made for.
This book is for the dependable ones. The secret worriers. The ones who forgot who they really are. Warriors, forged through the fires they face every day.
You are the one who said yes before you knew what yes would cost. Maybe it was a promise to someone dying. Maybe it was a newborn, an ailing parent, a family business or a whole household leaning on your shoulders.
You question the status quo. You advocate for the ones who are suffering. You follow the rules in public and explore in private: the podcast in the parked car, the video watched on mute with the captions on, the book you keep out of sight. Sometimes you even tell a small lie about where you're going or who you're seeing. Partly to keep the peace, but mostly because it's the only way you ever learned to do something for yourself. You never quite fit, too much of this and too little of that. Somewhere along the way, the role you carried became the only name you answer to. You long for the freedom to just be yourself, but the mask you wear in public has become the walls.
Some of you are still in the thick of the battle. Some of you just set the weight down and found empty chairs where your life used to be. Either way, you are standing at the edge of something unknown.
This book is for the misfits, the quiet revolutionaries and the unconventional conventionalists who are ready to find their way home.
Two parts: the reaction and the response.
The day it nearly broke me
The day I buried my mother beside the brother who asked me to take care of her, and the memories that scattered at my feet while I lived it: Brooklyn, Los Angeles, a hospital room in 1986. You'll watch me judge, rage, grieve and pray, sometimes in the same breath. You may recognize yourself, whatever promise you are carrying.
What I found in the rubble
Every crisis leaves collateral damage, and treasures too, if you're willing to sift through them. Part Two is what I found: eight steps, one for each letter of W.A.R.R.I.O.R.S. Each chapter returns to a moment from Part One, shows what it taught me, and ends with a practice called Try this.
W.A.R. for the hardest hours · R.I.O.R.S. for when the smoke clears
For the hardest hours When you're in the thick of it and can barely breathe
A personal crisis shows who we really are and calls us back to the Warrior we always were. These first three steps help you answer that call, even when you can barely breathe.
- Watch with neutrality
- Anchor yourself
- Release
When the smoke clears When there's room to rebuild
If we answer the call, it is possible to live an authentic Warriors lifestyle while still keeping the promise. These five steps help you rebuild it, one season at a time.
- Rebalance through radical auditing
- Identify
- Open to opportunities for advancement
- Remain faithful
- Serve your soul
Want to begin now? The first three steps are in the free W.A.R. Reset Tactical Guide.
What almost four decades taught me.
From transactional to transformational love
Love that keeps a running record is not the love I was made for. I had to trade it for love that doesn't keep score.
Master yourself, not others
I cannot master the people I love. I can only master myself. I had to trade the control I clung to for the personal power I was missing, and self-care in its widest sense is how I practice that every day.
Marcy and me, 1978
Marcy
Marcy, my first Warrior
The man behind the role.
The world knew Marcelino Sanchez as Rembrandt, the young artist with the spray can. To us he was Marcy, my big brother and my first Warrior.
After he died, I watched The Warriors over and over and told myself he was just traveling. Every time life knocked me down, I went back to that movie and studied it for clues. Slowly I saw it. The Warriors spend one long night bopping their way home, as they call it. Mine lasted almost forty years, and the way home began, as it does in the film, with a crisis calling out the Warrior in me, the one who said "yes" before I learned to recognize that voice. From the grave, Marcy, like Cyrus, kept calling me to find a new way of seeing who I was.
I was never meant to become him. I was meant to become me.
Mayra Sanchez
Mayra Sanchez is a Holistic Wisdom Strategist, a certified Dragon's Way Qigong® instructor and the founder of Dragon Lifestyle. Her chapter "The Mystery of Transformation," about Superstorm Sandy and letting go, appears in the Amazon bestselling anthology Healthy, Abundant & Wise. She lives on Staten Island, where she helps the dependable ones come home to themselves.
Read her storyA worrier and a warrior are only one letter apart. The difference is practice.
From Remembering Rembrandt
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In Faith & Warriors Spirit,
Mayra
From the Job of Living to the Art of Living.
Mayra Sanchez, Holistic Wisdom Strategist
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