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Detour

February 8, 2016 //
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I am the human being I am, having this experience right here. There are no promises, few ‘right answers’, and the ‘limited life-time guarantee’ is merely that my lifetime will be limited. I enjoyed a lovely quiet weekend, and crashed out at a comfortably typical time, neither late nor early. I woke some 90 or so minutes later, awakened by my own alarmed vocalization, and weeping; I had taken a detour through The Nightmare City. It happens. I once (as in, ongoing, for many years verging on ‘always’) had grimly persistent disordered sleep (nightmares, night terrors, occasional sleep paralysis, some sleep walking, insomnia…), and improvements over time don’t assure me of continued easy sleep ongoing ‘forever’. I’m still very human. I still deal with PTSD. I still have this brain injury. So… sometimes nightmares happen.

How will I "find my way home"? "Daytime in The Nightmare City" 10" x 14" acrylic on canvas with glow, glitter and micaceous oxide. Indoor light, charged. 2014

How will I “find my way home”?
“Daytime in The Nightmare City” 10″ x 14″ acrylic on canvas with glow, glitter and micaceous oxide. Indoor light, charged. 2014

I woke and began the steps and practices to calm myself, addressing the latent hysteria first, moving on to relaxing such that my heart rate would normalize, and the weeping would stop. I did things children do; I got a big drink of water, and walked through the apartment turning lights on and seeing how normal everything is. I did things adults do, too; I took time to reach out to my traveling partner to share a key feeling of insecurity, to seek reassurance and let that feeling of fear and doubt go. I kept it simple and made a point of avoiding grim details that might put me at risk of writing in a very emotive way – which would tend to ‘spread the poison around’ and also stoke my own emotional volatility afresh. I meditated for a few minutes until my heart felt lighter. All that was left was to get past the aversion to returning to sleep – and this is where The Nightmare City has it’s greatest power over me. If I am unable to sleep, I am increasingly likely over time to have more nightmares, lose more sleep, and slowly spiral downward into disorder.

After pleasantly distracting myself with some relatively studious content from favorite YouTube channels (in this case Veritasium and Kurzgesagt-In a Nutshell) while administering an appropriate amount of medical cannabis to keep my symptoms from flaring up again, I returned to sleep. I woke comfortably to the morning alarm, although it took me some time to become fully aware of the meaning of the insistent beeping. The sleep I got was restful, and I feel pretty good. I know to be mindful that I didn’t get as many hours as I likely need to be at my best – by the end of the day that may be more apparent; I check my calendar to ensure I am not over-committed later in the day.

I’m not alone with this stuff (ha! …Neither are you. 😉 ). I have learned better practices for managing it when my PTSD flares up, or my injury is aggravated (and aggravating me in return). There are still verbs involved. My results still vary. There’s no particular reason for distress over that – or futility; it is a very human thing. I just begin again. 🙂

Like moments, the cup of coffee that matters most is the one in front of me now. :-)

Like moments, the cup of coffee that matters most is the one in front of me now. 🙂

This morning that beginning began with the return email from my traveling partner, sent during the wee hours, reminding me that I am loved. It’s enough – and I start the day well.

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Categories Anxiety, art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being

And Now for My Next Trick…

February 4, 2016 //
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Yesterday the internet was connected, with some effort and a very tall technician from Argentina. Originally from Argentina, I mean – it would be silly to send someone so far, literally, to connect FiOS. 🙂 I found his exotic accent pleasant.

This morning I found my internet connection… wasn’t. 😦 Funny how little stress that ever really causes me, and I find myself wondering if that is a byproduct of having once worked technical support for a connectivity provider in my very first call center job… 18 years ago. I ponder the passage of time and sip my coffee while I power cycle the router and restore my connection to the world. It’s a simple thing, each moment of self-sufficiency in life is another opportunity to chill, to be content, to feel safe. There is something so powerful in self-reliance – without it, what do I have to offer the world reciprocally? There’s something there to think over… maybe another time.

Another day dawns

Another day dawns, and change is.

My desk here is next to a window looking out on the park, and positioned very near to the corner of the unit – and the building – and the sound of rain on the eaves this morning is loud enough to hear very clearly. I go with the stillness and the sound of rainfall this morning, adding only the percussion of fingers on keys. At one point, I find myself ‘feeling it’ almost as music, tapping my toes along with the sounds of morning. Smiling at myself when I notice, it is a moment of pure pointless joy without reason or excuse required. This room feels good for writing, for painting… it is the ‘master bedroom’ no longer. This is my studio. 🙂

I feel pretty settled in and ‘at home’ here already, which is such a different experience for me – is it really just that I slowed it down and moved in more completely while I was moving out, sparing myself weeks of upheaval and disarray? Is it that I did so much of it entirely myself? I grin thinking about the thousands of pounds of goods I moved, and the legion of tiny bruises from bumping this thing, bracing that thing, hauling some awkward bit over here, or over there; I got it done as planned, almost precisely. There’s a strange delight in seeing things unfold as planned. I think briefly of another experience – not the ‘unplanned disaster’ or the ‘unplanned but awesome’ experiences, instead I think for just a moment of the ‘carefully planned experience that becomes completely derailed, fully failed, no effective alternative, shit just going sideways on every detail full on panic’ experience… scary. I realize as my mind veers away from the sense of that experience how very frightening I find it, and far more so than the outcome of anything unplanned. I use the moment to consider how I can better appreciate qualities of the unplanned experiences in life to ease the stress of failed planning in other moments; instead of feeling the pain and fear of the planning going to pieces in some horrible way, learning to take a needed step back, a few deep breaths, and take the opportunity to let go comfortably, to go ‘off script’ in those moments, and let it become unplanned at that point – instead of fervently holding on to the failed planning, grieving the discomfort or turmoil of the changing situation, instead learning to embrace it as a chance to do something wholly new and previously unconsidered – or to find the value in what had been rejected before. I make some notes – real pen and ink on paper notes – to consider this further, later.

Yeah...but still some work to do.

Yeah…but still some work to do.

I pause to make another cup of coffee and return to my desk. I’m very aware this morning, as I sit in this one room that is not yet ‘totally moved in’, that my moving in is not yet completed; this is the one space in which that is quite obvious. There are books stacked everywhere, strange vaguely lop-sided towers of books in varying sizes that show off both some skill at balancing objects, and also some lack of good judgement. Almost on cue, a precarious stack of books topples over. I wonder that I didn’t notice that I’d brushed it on the way by, or somehow shifted it. I laugh, because it’s not as if they’ll be damaged. I feel a moment of appreciation that these were not my first editions (which are already put on shelves) and recall a conversation with someone who asked me ‘why is it a big deal if a book is a first edition?’ It isn’t of course, and that was my answer; it’s merely an unnecessary way of making a book seem special, or ‘collectible’. The words within are truly enough.

Speaking of words… On the other hand, let’s not. At least, not this morning. I do have words and language on my mind lately. Thoughts to think over about how I communicate, why it matters to feel heard, and what it says to me when someone silences me – certainly, I am a studied expert on what I understand it to mean when I am silenced. It’s likely both an experience that is specifically part of who I am myself and how I take the world’s messaging, and also probably very common and very human.

The rain keeps falling. I’ve run out of things to say. The stacks of books, and a couple of small boxes of ‘desk stuff’ that are not yet unpacked now have my attention. I’ve some time before I head to work… and it is a lovely morning to live beautifully and take care of me. I think I’ll do some of that. 🙂

I haven't even left for work, and I am already eager to return home.

I haven’t even left for work, and I am already eager to return home.

Today is a good day to be here in this moment, now. I’ll be getting on with that…

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Categories art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Perspective, The Art of Being, Words

Waking Up Fearful

January 25, 2016 //
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This morning I woke to a powerful feeling of insecurity and fearfulness that points directly at the move I am making this very week. The timing is inconvenient – and quite probably not at all coincidental. Buried in the chaos and damage are ancient reminders that I “am not good enough” and “don’t deserve this” or “can’t make this work” or ‘know’ this will “all go very wrong soon enough”. The vague uneasiness and doubt escalate then recede again and again as I work through my morning routine. My eye falls on some detail that got missed in the housekeeping, like a used tissue that missed the small bathroom waste basket, but also got missed when I emptied the trash yesterday, and instead of simply resolving the matter and moving on without concern, there is a hint of inward beratement and impatience lurking there, waiting for me. It is unusual these days for me to be so hard on myself.

"Anxiety" 10" x 14" - and she feels much bigger than that, generally.

“Anxiety” 10″ x 14″ – and she feels much bigger than that, generally.

I almost skip my shower, as though taking the time for it somehow robs me of time I could otherwise use for… what… being anxious? I attempt to make a light moment of it, and although that fails, I find myself compliant with the self-care rituals so carefully maintained, standing in the shower, doing the showering thing. It’s a step. I make eye contact with myself in the small shaving mirror mounted in the shower, and take some deep calming breaths. Change comes with the challenges and disruption of change itself – and the change that is moving is pretty much going to touch every routine of my day, all the perspectives of each angle of view I am used to seeing, the placement of every object in my personal space, the ambient noises, and shadows – yep. Basically everything but the actual contents of my home, and me – the woman living within it. The magnitude and weight of it hits me fully for the first time… everything is changing.

…The nausea hit me unexpectedly, and without argument. It was likely that I didn’t drink enough water with my morning medication, but this makes twice in the past couple weeks and so rare these days that it is almost certainly telling me something… about something. In the moment, though, I take it as a living metaphor, and hold onto the perspective of puking up all the baggage, the anxiety, the fear, and letting it go. I don’t know that it was as effective as I’d like, but I feel some better. Could be that the anxiety was impending nausea all along, and that as human primates do, I gave it a root cause from deep within that was not actually causal at all, merely correlated. I return to my coffee, undeterred by the uncomfortable moment; there is much to do.

We've all got some baggage.

We’ve all got some baggage.

The anxiety and insecurity are common [for me] during experiences that involve a lot of change. The more change, the more fear, generally. I can feel how tight my chest is, and the coiled spring of anxiety that has taken hold of the place where my diaphragm once rested, relaxed and ready for all the breathing and such. I feel a certain moment of relief that my traveling partner isn’t sleeping in the other room this morning; my anxiety permeates the room in a palpable way, or so it seems to me. It isn’t a comfortable experience to live alongside, and is the big reason I didn’t reach out for his help with the move. “I’ve got this!” is the war cry of protecting my love from the bullshit I must still wade through, cope with – and perhaps someday master. There are so many things in life I rely on help with – but this one, the ‘managing change’ thing, I tend to rely most heavily on the woman in the mirror to get the job done, to circle back and find new comfort in new routines, to practice good practices, and to recognize stability and balance when the task is completed. I am eager to welcome him to a new home, with the same lovely calm energy, that feels similarly my own…but I try to protect him from how hard change hits me getting there.

So what if I am scared this morning? This is all happening quite fast – it was already January when I mentioned the observed vacancy to the apartment manager and found out about the remodeling. My original mention was as a passing fancy, only, and it was with my traveling partner’s encouragement that I considered it more seriously, eventually embracing the idea fully as a ‘next step’ on this journey, and a worthy improvement in quality of life at the expected price. I’m ready – I check again at how the budget works – but I feel this leaden dread resting in my belly.  “Bitch, what’s up with this fucking fear?” I think crossly to myself, almost immediately hearing my therapist’s voice gently pointing out the harsh tone I am taking with myself. Yes, yes, I know… I can (and these days generally do) treat myself better, and with greater kindness and compassion than this. I am irked with me; the insecurity would have been so much more easily managed a week ago, before the move was certain, would it not? I laugh out loud at myself; insecurity and doubt don’t work that way. I set aside my writing for meditation and self-care. Words can wait.

A helpful reminder; I apply it equally to how I speak to myself these days.

A helpful reminder; I apply it equally to how I speak to myself these days.

Enough is enough. I am enjoying a life of general contentment and sufficiency. One limitation all this time has been the challenges presented romantically by my partner’s allergies, and how those are affected by much-lived-upon apartment carpeting. We discussed often how much more easily and regularly we could and would hang out together were it not for his allergies. In no small part the entire motivation for the move is to reduce the allergens in my home. It’s that simple. I’m paying a high price to do so, were that the only benefit (a very fancy air filter might do as well at a lower cost over the course of a year…maybe…), but there are other quality of life gains being made that are specific to my own day-to-day joy: the view of the park from the patio, no windows looking into neighbors windows, no shared wall on the bedroom side of the apartment, all new appliances in the kitchen, a shower insert in the bathroom that is entirely undamaged and never-repaired without a hint of entrenched mold or mildew beneath sealant, more convenient to the little community garden, and with enough additional space to move my artistic endeavors out of the living room… which also ensures that when I am painting or writing, I am not distracted by the world, so common from the vantage point of the couch in the living room.

The fearfulness hit me this morning, perhaps because I suddenly worried I am not being ‘true to myself’ by making this move? If what I have here is enough – why do I ‘need’ more? The deep breath that followed put me right at long last. This move is not about what I ‘need‘ at any minimum level; I have enough right now. Hell, after spending most of a week with my traveling partner right here, I’m quite certain this, here, is enough for me. Sharing my experience with him feels wonderful – and I want to position myself comfortably to enjoy more of that. This move is about finding my way – and learning to navigate the distance in my life between ‘enough’ and ‘more’, and learning what I want versus what I need, and making good decisions about which sorts of ‘more’ keep me on the path of becoming the woman I most want to be, living well and mindfully, taking care of me, and taking care to love well. There is a peculiar balance to strike here; if I refuse to move because of the expense, explicitly in order to hold on to those dollars in the bank account, in order to maintain a specific quantity of cash flow, unspent each month, what am I buying with my labor? Numbers? In an account? To what end does this serve me when those same dollars can also add 300 sq ft of useful living space, of a more healthy quality?

At long last my brain gets to the point; is the money I will spend on the new place being spent on something that matters to me such that the price is worth it? Isn’t that the question at the ‘bottom-line’? Is there something more or different on which I would truly prefer to spend that money, right now, every month? Do I have more urgent needs to meet that are going unmet? No, not really – and saving it as numbers in an account would serve just one purpose for me right now; to make these same sorts of changes through purchasing a home sometime down the road. Since that can be done regardless whether I make this move now, but would ideally wait (I think) until the car is paid off, this unexpected intermediate quality of life improvement is a nice option. I embraced it eagerly for all these reasons, and more, and I’ve given it considerable thought…what more is there to do with the insecurity and anxiety now, except to breathe?

Why yes, thank you, I shall.

Why yes, thank you, I shall.

I’m ready. Fear is not calling my shots today. 🙂

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Categories Anxiety, Art, art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

Investing the Best

January 20, 2016 //
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There was a time in my life when I was pretty certain that I was so entirely broken, in some fashion or another, that any contribution I could possibly make in my relationships would be a material one – or sex. That was the limit of what I thought I had to offer the world, or a partner; if I couldn’t buy it, or provide the manual labor, or do the sex thing, what else was there, really? Well, art. There was art. I am hopeful that I don’t have to point out what an incredibly limiting – and self-fulfilling – perspective that was.

Be love.

Be love.

I say “be love” as though what I mean is obvious. Perhaps it isn’t, and maybe a gentle morning over a good coffee is a nice time to clarify? It isn’t as if “be love” is something I came up with – because, if  it were…first, what a tragic state for the world to discover love so late, and second… well, damn, what about all those love songs? So, yeah, not my original thoughts, and surely there are other people who have written more better words with greater clarity on the subject of love, generally. So…if you’re after more better words with great clarity about love, I suggest Thich Nhat Hanh, Leo Buscaglia, or, if you’re ‘not there yet’ any of a number of books on loving the person in the mirror, which does have to come first, as it turns out, to love another with any real skill…have you checked out my reading list? 😉

The love thing is a big deal. It drives a lot of marketing, and therefore a great deal of profit-making goes on associated with love (I’m looking your way Valentine’s Day!). It’s clearly something human primates favor. Are you ‘getting your share’? Are you still thinking of it in those terms? I spent a lot of years stuck on the idea that if love were ‘real’ – and I wasn’t convinced it might be until well past 30, and couldn’t seem to figure out ‘how to have it’ until I was well past 40 – if love were real at all, why wasn’t I ‘getting my share’?? Ouch. Well, in fairness, there’s so much media pressure on us all regarding love we easily succumb to the visions of love we see in advertising, on television and in movies – how can what we see at home compete or compare? We are each so human – and no one is providing us handy re-writes of our script; our best moments are at risk of going unnoticed because we are so busy looking for something very different. How suck is that? You see where this is headed, right?

Mindful love. Yep. I couldn’t fathom it for a while. Mindfulness… check. Meditation… check. Awareness… check. Present in the moment… check. Treating myself well… check. Each concept falling into place, building on each other, and more than once I returned to my therapists office with this question “how does mindful love work?” It sounds like a simple enough question, and I couldn’t quite answer it in words – however many books I read. I didn’t understand that it wasn’t the part about mindfulness that I wasn’t fully grasping… it was love. 🙂

Now we’re getting somewhere! Is this the hot sexy part? With the tips for pleasing a lover? W00t!! Go sex!!

Oh… wait… nope. Sex is sex. Love is…

Love.

Love.

By moving into my own place, while also maintaining a romantic loving relationship with my traveling partner, I did something wonderful for me; I opened my eyes to some experiences about love that I hadn’t been able to understand so simply before. Some of the lessons have been complicated. Some of them have been so simple that they tripped me up while I sought to understand them as something more complicated than they were. Love matters so much that I figured I’d share some of the things I am learning – I expect that as with really first-rate self-care, learning to love well is likely a lifetime of practice, and similarly many of the practices themselves are so simple they mislead one into thinking they are also effortless – nope, in loving too there are verbs involved. Here come some verbs now…

Invest the best in your relationships that you have to offer. This is so simple and fundamental on the surface, but it is a rich deep practice that has kept me on my toes for months now, and until this past weekend, I didn’t have simple words to describe what I might mean by it. So here it is – invest the best in love. Kindness, a welcoming approach, listening deeply, and ensuring that the assumptions in my day-to-day thinking regarding my loving relationships are positive ones have nothing at all to do with money, with sex, or with material goods – without these things, though, no amount of money will buy me love.

An easy example, and common, if I am short-tempered with a loved one in a brief moment, surely it can be understood as part of being human, and an appropriate apology and making it right allows everyone to move on. If, however, my short-temperedness is a character trait that is recognizably ‘who I am’ it will likely undermine love over time. Other things work that way too; sarcasm, mockery, meanness, and cruelty have no role to play in love – defending their use by saying “it’s just who I am”, or by calling it a joke, may not be enough to stop love’s erosion over time, particularly if the user of such behaviors is unaware of the hurtful effect. (If the user is entirely aware of the hurtful effect of such things, and uses them for amusement or in anger without regard to the hurt they cause – that’s not love.)

This weekend, I mused with regret at some point that I don’t have money laying about in capital amounts with which to support my traveling partners endeavors – how wonderful it would be to be able to invest heavily in a solid business proposal, see it get off the ground, and watch his success and independence grow! I felt, ever so briefly, that I ‘don’t have enough to offer’. In material terms, that may be true (it also may not be true; ‘enough’ is a slippery concept). I realized as we talked through that particular conversation that what love asks of me has nothing whatever to do with money, and it’s never been money that was the strength of this relationship; emotions don’t work that way. Love is an emotion. Suddenly, I felt unsteady in my understanding of the world – I awoke to the vast riches I have to offer my relationships (and they are vast indeed).

If love isn’t looking for a cash investment, what is it looking for that I do have plentifully? How about – are you ready for this, because we’re all a lot wealthier than we realize, if we choose to be so – kindness. Yep. Day-to-day kindness and gentle words. Patience. Deep listening – really put myself on pause to hear what my partner is saying without ‘waiting for my turn to talk’. Hearing – really hearing my partner, the words, the intent, the meaning, the emotion – really ‘getting it’, because they matter, and it doesn’t cost a thing besides my good intentions, and a verb or two. Isn’t the basic willingness to do these things sort of implied when I say “I love you”? Making room in my experience to share the journey with another – graciously, generously, merrily – and making the good moments of greater value by savoring them, sharing them, exploring them, and giving them more of my precious mortal time, than I spend ruminating over some momentary misunderstanding, or hurt feelings over thoughtless words. How about vulnerability, too? Sharing life from the perspective that we are each very human, and being open to sharing our selves and experience in a raw and honest way – still being kind, still speaking gently, still listening deeply… it sounds easy. It’s worth practicing. It takes practice – invested, willful, engaged practice. And more of that, again and again.

Yelling, irritability, contentious disagreeable conversation, argument, fussing, insults, anger – not a bit of this is love. The love is in the quiet spaces in between, and in the laughter – and if we don’t invest the best we have to offer in the love we wish to enjoy, the love will slowly be squeezed out by thoughtlessness, negativity, anger, attachment to expectations, and disappointment when our assumption that love ‘should’ overlook our nastiness and bullshit doesn’t turn out to be true. Love isn’t a tantrum; it’s the long-term investment in what is best within ourselves.

Before we go too far, I want to be clear about one small detail – I don’t know of any way to actually ‘fake love’. This isn’t a ‘fake it until you make it’ sort of area of life, and a saccharine smile and a terse insincere “I’m fine” when that is clearly not the case isn’t love, either; it’s a lie. It is possible to speak honestly and sincerely – and also gently. (Listening helps with that.) Seriously. It is. Try it out sometime. It’s quite a lovely experience, I find. Yep. It does take practice. 🙂

Love is in the small things - strange for such a big deal.

Love is in the small things – strange for such a big deal.

Today is a good day to be love. Today is a good day to invest the best of what I have to offer in the relationships that matter most to me. Today is a good day to practice loving well. I’ll start with the woman in the mirror. Love can change the world.

 

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Categories art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, women, Words

Just Past This Headache

January 2, 2016 //
0

I am having a very good day. It’s wintry and quite cold – literally freezing – and I built my day around a practical sort of errand that didn’t turn out as planned, and another that turned out quite precisely as planned, and in between I hung out with my traveling partner for a little while. A very good day, indeed.

What matters most?

What matters most?

The afternoon sunshine streams through the patio door, heating my wee apartment nicely; it’s a wasted effort if I forget to close the vertical blinds as the sun begins to dip low, because the heat gained is quickly lost through the glass on a cold day, once the sunshine is gone. There is a luxurious quality to the passive heat of sunshine on glass that my senses tell me differs from the heat of the heater, although I have no way to confirm that very subjective perception. I just enjoy the feeling of the sunshine reaching through the glass, across the room, and bathing me in light and warmth. It’s a lovely moment, in spite of this headache, which developed some short time ago, while I stood in the cold waiting for a bus. I suspect it will dissipate with continued comfort, warmth, and a nice cup of tea or coffee… It’s a bit late for coffee; I decide on tea and put on the kettle and some classical music. Baroque – light on the ears, gentle on the soul, it fills out the background with something more pleasant that the sound of the dishwasher.

What does this new year hold, I wonder? Beyond changes in healthcare, beyond moving into a somewhat bigger apartment very soon, beyond replanting the vegetable garden in spring or pruning the roses next fall, beyond the days and weeks of everyday chores and everyday fun, I know the year holds surprises and changes that I have not anticipated or planned for. I wonder what those will be? How convenient if I really could plan for those, too! I can’t plan for the unknown as fully as I might for what I deliberately undertake, but there are a lot of little ways I can keep myself ready, generally, for all manner of changes. Taking care of me is a pursuit with a lot of layers, and a lot of potential to support me through periods of change, or a real crisis. I took time to think over a lot of that yesterday, meditating on what demands on my resources and time the move will make, and how best to prepare for it without throwing my current quality of life into the trash. Ideally, no matter what changes come my way I will stay focused on my longer term goals, and my everyday taking-care-of-me needs by maintaining the good practices I have worked so hard to build.

Again and again, I find value in the concepts of ‘perspective’ and ‘sufficiency’; I can’t know everything another person is going through, but I can listen deeply and be compassionate, and there is little chance I can ‘have it all’ in life – the vast amount of wealth required remains out of reach for me – but ‘having‘ has proven to be rather irrelevant once basic needs are met. There is so much more to a rich life than expensive goods or exotic services. “Enough” matters more than ‘more’. My understanding of ‘quality of life’ has changed. The smile on my face matters more than ‘being right’, and contentment has proven easily achievable once I let go of expectations and assumptions about life’s entitlements, and stopped letting experiences other than my own have any weight in determining my path.

There are a lot of questions still to ask. The best answers I find tend to involve kindness, compassion, treating myself and others truly well, and being engaged and present in this moment right here, with the human being(s) physically in my company ‘in real life’ – and getting enough sleep. It’s probably not a coincidence that when I began taking a closer look at how I treated people and making changes in favor of treating people better (including me), people began to treat me better, too. It’s worth noticing. It doesn’t hurt to mention that when people do treat me poorly, I no longer internalize that experience, making it about me; people who treat others badly are making a statement about themselves, and although it is an unpleasant experience to have, it isn’t ‘about me’ at all. These are small things, each taken individually – but they have mattered so much! The Four Agreements was a good starting point on this journey. I smile, recalling the day my traveling partner recommended it to me, back in 2010. We have come so far together!

Soft music, the warmth of a fire, a pleasantly fragrant cup of tea, and quiet time in which to write...enough? So much more than enough.

Soft music, the warmth of a fire, a pleasantly fragrant cup of tea, and quiet time in which to write. Some of life’s riches don’t have a dollar value.

It’s another winter day. I have a headache, but so far it’s not affecting my mood. There is a fire crackling in the fireplace now, and an early dinner in the oven. I have no special plans, and no need for entertainment or distraction; the day is fine as it is. Quiet. I am content. This is enough. 🙂

 

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Categories art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, winter, women, Words
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