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Forgive Some of This Right Here

July 14, 2015 //
0

…Or, well, don’t. I can’t really help much on the topic of forgiveness. I’m not an expert on it – hell, I barely understand the concept, and I am pretty sure I suck at ‘forgiveness’. (I hear the recollection of 20-something me, in the distance past, snarling at an associate “there are things even your god does not forgive!” in a moment of unreserved hurt and rage.) I am having to come to terms with some things about the idea of forgiveness, though. Firstly, that ‘forgiveness’ is not a religious tenet; it’s a concept available to anyone for their own benefit, at any time. Secondly, forgiveness says nothing at all about the person being forgiven – and says a lot about the person forgiving. The last thing I am coming to terms with is that to grow beyond ancient pain, and ancient rage, sooner or later forgiveness comes up as a topic; I can’t move on, or let go, without the power of ‘forgiveness’… Which means sooner or later, understanding the concept would be useful.

I resent the hell out of being faced with any expectation or demand that I forgive some heinous transgression. I’m very human. When I hurt I want it ‘made right’ with me by the person who hurt me, and no substitute will do. There is no room for ‘apology by proxy’ in my heart. These feelings give the anger a foothold to become bitterness over time, and the hurt to become a festering wound that changes who I am. That’s powerful – and not in a positive way. When I find myself unable to let go of a hurt over time, it has the power to slowly see me evolve to become that thing that hurt me so, or something worse. Hell of a puzzle there; failing to forgive someone who hurt me gives them the power to continue to influence my heart and mind!

"Broken" 16" x 20" acrylic on canvas w/ceramic & glow 2012 Once the damage is done...then what?

“Broken” 16″ x 20″ acrylic on canvas w/ceramic & glow 2012
Once the damage is done…then what?

Not knowing how to forgive, and not being permitted vengeance or retribution, I have sometimes found myself trapped, holding on to pain, frustration, impotent rage – slowly poisoning myself from within. This is not a condition in life I would wish on myself, and recognizing that one key to the puzzle of ancient pain may be this ‘forgiveness’ thing I hear so much about, perhaps it is time to consider it further?

I have some experience with forgiveness. Childhood experiences mostly, in some cases rather scripted – the parental ‘say you’re sorry to your sister’ example comes to mind, where following the steps end with just letting it go, and returning to play. Compassion may be a natural quality of human beings, but I am pretty sure ‘forgiving’ has to be taught to us. Forgiveness was not emphasized in my upbringing. Is it a process, more than an emotion? I’m pretty handy when I have the steps of a process written down in front of me for practice…maybe that’s what I need to do here? Figure out the steps to forgiveness, write them down, and…oh yeah, you know what comes next right? Practice.

Why am I on about this, this morning? I read a quote on the internet recently that got my attention, and resonated with me in the moment, and lingered:

Forgiving someone doesn’t mean condoning their behavior. It doesn’t mean forgetting how they hurt you or giving that person room to hurt you again. Forgiving someone means making peace with what happened. It means acknowledging your wound, giving yourself permission to feel the pain, and recognizing why that pain no longer serves you. It means letting go of the hurt and resentment so that you can heal and move on. ~Daniell Koepke

It is from a larger article, that I didn’t have time to read and bookmarked for later. The quote has stuck with me for days. I’d never understood forgiveness in those terms. This matters, at least to me; I have long struggled with the idea that forgiveness gave that other ‘a pass’ – they ‘get away with it’ – they ‘win’ – and at my expense! It seems so incredibly unfair. When I read this quote it opened my heart to understand that forgiveness isn’t ever about that person who hurt us, and it isn’t something we do for them – is it the ‘missing puzzle piece’ that allows me to move on, to heal, to ‘let it go’ on my own terms, and in my own time? That’s a pretty big deal. Definitely worth further consideration.

Life finds its own path, sometimes the 'obvious' choices are not the only choices.

Life finds its own path, sometimes the ‘obvious’ choices are not the only choices. (A rose seedling growing in the crook of a tree.)

Life’s curriculum continues to put the most challenging coursework I can manage in front of me for my continuing education. 🙂 I’ve come a long way to be ready to study forgiveness; it seems like ‘advanced studies’ to me. It dovetails with a recent discussion with my therapist about anger, and another that followed on that topic with my traveling partner. Anger is another very big deal, and difficult for me to discuss without rousing the beast within; is forgiveness also a path to cooling the heat and ferocity of ancient rage so that I can at last actually just talk about it? I feel a bit as if I opened a chapter in the text-book that opens with a promising paragraph that ‘connects the dots’ in a much bigger puzzle, but does so using new vocabulary that I don’t really understand. I am eager to continue.

Taking the obstacles one at a time, and taking the journey slowly; there's a lot to learn along the way.

Taking the obstacles one at a time, and taking the journey slowly; there’s a lot to learn along the way.

Today is a good day to study, and a good day to embrace new knowledge. Today is a good day to grow, and to become more that woman I most want to be. Today is a good day to take a different look at the world I live within; it is of my own creation, and perhaps it is time to change the emotional landscape?

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

Who’s Your Bestie?

July 12, 2015 //
3

If someone had asked me 5 years ago who my bestie is, I would have offered a name, maybe two. I would have made my choice from the few of my dearest friends of long-standing historical association that I recognize as ‘always being there’ for me, and figure that I had answered that question accurately. 3 or 4 years ago I would have answered that my traveling partner is my best friend, and even to this day those words feel ‘true’. If you asked me today my answer would be “me”, and sitting here in the cool stillness of a weekend morning, that feels very true indeed, although I have used a lot of verbs to get here from a very different place with myself on a journey that began not so very long ago.

The woman in the mirror and I have been through a lot together, and haven’t always treated each other well. I’ve found her actions (and her motives) suspect, more than once, and she hasn’t always ‘been there for me’, historically. We’ve worked hard for the past couple years to come to a better understanding, a ‘meeting of the minds’ that sweeps the chaos and damage aside, and it’s been worth it – because all my other friendships and associations have improved, where improvement has been an option. There is still free will to consider, and not all the choices to be made are mine. I’ve lost a couple of friends along the way, who did not find me suitable friend material as they got to know me through my growth and changes; I am not the person I once was, perhaps, or not the person they wish to know. I could take that all very personally – rejection does suck. It’s quite painfully, actually… but the woman in the mirror has a lot to offer me, and compromising that relationship is a ‘deal breaker’ in any other.

I spent yesterday wrapped in love. In the morning, I hung out with my new bestie – the woman in the mirror – and took care of me by way of mindful service to home and hearth. I enjoyed the simple practices of household chores attentively, bringing additional order to corners of chaos, revisiting prior storage solutions along the way and improving on them, doing some aquatic gardening to keep the aquarium in its usual day-to-day state of loveliness. I have at long last learned that while it is wonderful when the outcome appears effortless, this is not to be confused with any actual lack of effort. There are verbs involved in living beautifully. It was a lovely morning that finished with yoga and a shower, and plenty of time for meditation and study before my other bestie joined me for the evening.

My traveling partner joined me for the evening. We had talked about setting up the big TV, even wall-mounting it; the age of the apartment building, and the construction quality caused a change of heart on wall-mounting anything seriously heavy on that wall. (Something so permanent will have to wait for a home that is truly my own, next year sometime.) We had also talked about doing some upgrades on my laptop; the SSD for that purpose arrived safely just the other day. My traveling partner arrived and… we enjoyed the evening. That was what we did – enjoyed each other for a few hours. No work. No chores. No agenda. No planned activities. We did what I love to do with my traveling partner so very very much; we hung out, talked, and enjoyed the simplest of joys – the pleasure of each others company. It was quite delightful. It was…more than enough. I am still smiling.

I could wax rhapsodic on the topic of love and loving, my traveling partner, and endless delightful minutes spent wrapped in love…but…you had to be there. I linger on the recollection long enough to stall my writing and distract me, and I am content with that and uncritical, but there’s nothing more to say about the evening that doesn’t stray into overshare, or to details more personal that I prefer to share in such a public forum, or… writing dialogue, which I’m not skilled at. It was a lovely evening, well-spent with my bestie, loved and loving. It would be misleading to say we got nothing done – we did the one thing that truly matters; we loved each other, sharing our experience for a time.

“Communion” 24″ x 36″ acrylic on canvas w/ceramic and glow 2011

Lovers come and go. In my own life, that’s been true of partners and spouses as well. Of my 4 significantly long-term relationships as an adult, 3 ended on such poor terms we do not speak (which makes sense since those relationships were characterized by chronic mistreatment of one sort or another, each contributing in some way to my chaos and damage). I am inclined to recognize all three has having been abusive, and damaging. Of those three relationships now behind me, none began as a friendship. My traveling partner, on the other hand, was a friend long before we became lovers. Many of my friendships are relationships that span decades – longer time periods than those ‘long-term’ relationships, by far. Some of my friends have been lovers along the way, without damaging the friendship we share. I have learned something about my romantic needs; I value the friendship, and having the foundation of future romances in a legitimate friendship with a firm foundation is a requirement these days. In principle, for me, meeting sexual and romantic needs has never required the ‘permanence’ of a long-term relationship, and I am not monogamous. In practice, over time it has become clear that monogamy is not the issue for me; I value, and need, a connection on a deeper level to enjoy everything I know sex can be, and those are the qualities I crave most from sex (and love). Lust doesn’t build the kind of connection I yearn for – friendships do; there are no short cuts to emotional intimacy, even for a woman with a disinhibiting brain injury. I no longer bounce from bed to bed, or fill my nights with hook ups, as I did in my twenties and early thirties; these are not practices that meet my needs over time. I am also not looking for ‘the one’ – I found her in the mirror. She likes to spend time with her friends.

It is an interesting journey, this ‘life’ thing. 🙂

Today I am enjoying my morning coffee with a smile, thinking of love, lovers, and good connections. Thinking of friends, old and new. This morning I will have brunch with one of my dearest friends of many years – a man of exceedingly gentle character who has known me since I was defending myself from the world by being permanently on the offense, emotional weapons of mass distraction set to kill, and existing as a land mine on the journey of other unwary travelers. He has seen more of my growth over time up close than most of my friends, and has been both encouraging and delighted to see me become kinder, compassionate, gentler with myself and others, and more aware as the years have passed. I am eager to hang out over a meal and share new growth – hell, I’m even learning to listen more than I talk, these days, and he may be able to get a word in edge-wise, himself. 😀

Today is a good day for brunch with a friend. Today is a good day for love. Today is a good day to hang out with the woman in the mirror – she’s a good sort, and she really cares about me. Today is a good day to treat the world as well as I am learning to treat the woman in the mirror.

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

It’s Not a Competition

July 11, 2015 //
3

I slept well last night. I slept in this morning. I woke sufficiently early to enjoy the dawn. The kitchen is filled with the aroma of freshly ground coffee. The overcast sky promises cooler weather. The cool soft morning air fills the apartment by way of the open patio door. The morning is quiet, even serene.

Cooler weather and lovely overcast skies often come at a cost for me, and this morning this is the case; my arthritis pain is significantly worse after many days of not bothering me much at all. I shrug it off – at some points quite literally for the relief that movement gives – and wait on the kettle to put coffee nearer to ‘now’.

I look around my home contentedly, and without dissatisfaction, although it is Saturday following a week interrupted with stress; there are chores to do this morning. There generally are on Saturday morning, and I don’t offer myself any criticism that one or two things I could have done Wednesday or Thursday wait for me today. Why would I? My home is lovely and well-kept, and in any case, the rules are my own, the standards are mine, and the outcome need please and satisfy only me. I am enjoying this moment.

You see, it’s not a competition – until or unless I choose to make it one, of course. I don’t. I dislike competition [in life] rather a lot. I enjoy ‘game-ification’, and I don’t mind working to measure up to the standard I have set for myself, but frankly – there is no one else I compete with for my success, my sense of self, or my enjoyment of my experience. You can’t have what is mine [me] – and I can’t have what is yours [you] – on a level beyond mercantile goods, destination vacations, just the right schools or just the right neighborhoods; we are each having our own experience, and all the purchasing power in the world can’t change who we are. Of course, you could choose differently. You could choose to focus on what someone else has, what they enjoy, what their life looks like from an outside perspective, and you could make all your effort focused on getting there, being that, and doing those things. Let me know how it turns out? I haven’t seen any remarkable success stories on that front, mostly tales of frustration, discontent, disconnection and woe, instead. I have found that when I strive to be something or someone I am not, the less easily able I am to enjoy who I actually am – and the less easily able I am to grow or change. I consider my choice to fully embrace authenticity quite fearlessly to have been one of the most profoundly positive things I have ever done for myself.

Having said that I don’t find life to be a competition, myself, I admit that this is based on the choices I make, and what I enjoy in life personally. Perhaps you enjoy competition? I won’t [can’t] take that from you – but I won’t be keeping score with you, or making any effort to participate or ‘keep up’. I don’t invest in relationships in which it becomes clear the other person is ‘competing with me’, generally. I dislike it when people undermine someone else’s experience in order to get ahead, themselves, and don’t favor those sorts of people for relationships, either. It comes up a lot out in the world. Is your house bigger? (Probably – this place is small. And enough for me.) Do you make more money? (A lot of people do, it’s really not the focus of my goal-setting or effort, nor do I measure my own success in dollars.) Are you leaner, stronger, fitter, or more muscular? (I bet you’ve worked hard to get there! I’ve worked hard to get where I am, too. There are verbs involved, regardless of the goal.) Are you famous, expert, or highly sought for your opinion, or your charm? (Is that filling when  you are hungry? Does it secure better sleep for you at night? Are you well-loved and secure in the companionship of those you love?) I guess my point is that there is always someone with more, someone with less, and those quantities are not truly relevant to living well and being a skilled and loving human being.

Have I drifted off topic? I was thinking about housework on a Saturday morning. Ah! I was thinking about my Granny being, perhaps, appalled that there is hair in my hair brush, or that my bed is not yet made. I am thinking about my first husband as I notice that vacuuming is a thing, and that today is a good day to do some. I glance at the kitchen and recall other kitchens, in other conditions. For a moment, my thoughts turn to laundry. My wee home is quite tidy, but so small that any disarray whatever is very obvious – and I’m okay with a bit of disarray before dawn on a Saturday morning as I sip my coffee; there is no rush, and this is not a competition. There is literally, quite definitely, no competition at all – this is my home, these are my rules, this is my way. After coffee, chores – it’s a lovely Saturday morning and that’s enough.

I grin at myself thinking back to other circumstances, and being annoyed at getting sucked into the ‘housework rodeo’ because someone would be coming over; it is the antithesis of ‘being myself’ to radically change my environment to impress someone, or to measure up to my assumptions about their expectations. I can’t imagine any of my friends would be so rude as to come over to visit and criticize my housekeeping – it’d be the last time they were invited in and given a chance to do so. I feel pretty much the same about family – and every bit as willing to be very frank and to say out loud “how dare you be so rude and ungracious – get out.” lol Even my late grandmother’s spotless home filled with antiques from all around the globe lingering in my memory does not fill me with the drive needed to compete with her by cleaning my home to meet her expectations – and…um…why would anyone else’s expectations of my home be relevant to my own experience at all? Just saying.

More than the housework, the stacks of paintings not yet hung, and not yet stored, cause me some concern; I hesitate to paint because they are so very much at risk of damage stacked here and there, out in the open. If I lose myself in a creative moment, I could so easily find, later, that I have damaged existing work that I greatly love. My traveling partner is eager for me to get a loveseat, so we can cuddle and watch movies or talk. I’d like that, too. My own needs in the moment have more to do with finishing getting moved in…which means doing something about the stacks of paintings. One of the cabinets I generally use for that purpose is currently filled with my valued porcelain; I have no curio to display them in, yet, and the sideboard I lovingly hauled all over the world for 25 years is gone now. So…what is the most practical next step? What best meets my needs over time? That’s a tough one. I do enjoy cuddling my traveling partner… I also enjoy painting, and seeing my home in a very ordered state. (Stacks of paintings here and there do not seem especially ordered, to me. lol)

Enough.

Enough.

Needs of self. Needs of others. Needs of Love. Expectations. Unanswered questions. Well…it’s a good thing enjoying a pleasant Saturday does not require that all of life’s questions have answers. Today is a good day to be, unanswered questions and all. It’s not a competition, and this, right here, is enough.

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Categories art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, women, Words

The Secret to Great Coffee

July 9, 2015 //
0

One thing I do know about making a great cup of coffee in the morning is that the wait for that first sip is greatly shortened by actually turning on the stove, coffee machine, espresso machine, or whatever device or process gets things going. lol Apparently I learned this, this morning at about 6:30 am, after waiting almost an hour, not noticing the time passing, and finally wondering ‘where’s my coffee?’.

Yep. First thing this morning, 100% mindfulness fail. [Metaphorically picks self up off the playground, dusts off knees, straightens clothes, moves on.]

This morning, also very uncharacteristically, I ‘hit snooze’ when my alarm went off. Not the easy way, with the snooze feature; I don’t even know how to use that when I am not quite awake because I don’t use it. Instead, I squinted at the clock next to the lamp I had turned on out of habit, and reset the alarm for a half an hour later. If I’m going to try to grab more sleep, I’m not playing around with 6 minutes! It’s a rare choice; it means cutting into my leisurely morning time, but I slept badly, and my interrupted sleep did not provide the rest I needed. When the alarm went off this morning, I was not able to wake myself more than it took to reset the alarm and return to sleep. I didn’t even turn the lamp off.

These are some of the effects stress has on me that quickly worsen if I don’t practice really excellent self-care. Today is a day full of opportunities to choose – what are the choices that will result in the best self-care outcomes over time? I sip my coffee and consider it. The weekend is almost here – it’s tempting to shrug off my needs and push taking care of me to the weekend, but doing so likely would be more compromising than self-supporting, and could have hidden professional consequences due to noise sensitivity or loss of emotional resilience.

Yes, supporting me is important to me. I’m not afraid or ashamed to say so; I’m just not reliably skilled at it. One of the things that stressed me out so much yesterday (that is truly a small thing in the moment, but that for me presents real terror in the future) was a news article quoting a presidential candidate as saying Americans ‘need’ to ‘work more hours’ – what a load of bullshit! If anything, it’s criminal we’re not all happily thriving on a 32 hour work week, with overtime prohibitions, at a higher hourly rate of pay. There are certainly enough other people who would like to work, and many of us are indirectly robbing the marketplace of job opportunities by continuing to be pressured into working longer hours as it is, instead of insisting businesses hire the staff they really need to do these jobs, and go ahead and take the appropriate hit to their bottom-line. Human beings are not components, and exploiting them for profit ought to result in the exploited similarly profiting, themselves. Okay, okay, end rant. I know I should not be reading the news – definitely not on a therapy day, when my emotions are out in the open, and I am all raw nerve endings and shards of damage. It’s at least not a best practice for me. Media trolls bait me way too easily.

I continue to sip my coffee and consider my day. I am tired and not well-rested. My head aches, as does my back. I could quite possibly go back to sleep right now with great ease, even after my coffee. [Speaking of coffee, this morning’s words are fueled by St John’s Coffee Roaster‘s Misty Mountain Hop espresso, a roast with an interestingly complex flavor. I enjoy this local coffee roaster both for their coffees, and their great customer service.] I may choose to leave work ahead of my usual end of day and try to get the rest I am needing, rather than pile on more fatigue and stress and risk aggravating my symptoms, or finding that I have exceeded my ability to manage my injury efficiently. It’s a hard call; like so many working adults, I often find myself capitulating to the needs of the business that employs me, to my detriment both short and long-term. I often ask myself what a paycheck is really worth, and whether I am being appropriately compensated for expending my limited life force – and time – in this way.

As with great coffee, the tasks I face  – large and small – have steps, and between the steps there are choices. The choices matter. The ability to choose matters. The outcomes… yeah, those  matter too – and it isn’t always clear to me which outcomes are connected (truly) to which steps, and which choices. Lab rats in mazes have a much easier time of things, I suspect, although perhaps it is very similar. I am learning that when I can let go of the expectations and assumptions that drive reflexive choices in favor of employment, in favor of social image-craft, in favor of mainstream society’s demands (or frankly in favor of anyone/thing but what I want for myself and the world I live in), over time my outcomes tend to sort themselves out in a positive way without much other investment beyond generally choosing as mindfully as I can to take care of me while doing no harm. (That’s ‘doing no harm’ to people, living things, and the world we share; I am not bamboozled into thinking corporations are people. They are not.)

Flowers do not have to be cultivated, or bred into complex forms, to be lovely. It is enough that they are flowers.

Flowers do not have to be cultivated, or bred into complex forms, to be lovely. It is enough that they are flowers.

It’s a lot of words to say ‘today I will take care of me the best ways I can, and I will put me first’, isn’t it? 🙂

Today I will tend the flowers in the garden of my heart.

Today I will tend the flowers in the garden of my heart.

Today is a good day to take care of me; when else will I get to it? Today is a good day to recognize that the world, too, is part of me and needs my very best care, my best choices, and a handful of verbs.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Metaphors, Mindfulness, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Sleepless Nights, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, women, Words

Untitled

July 8, 2015 //
0

I would write more than I will, if I could. It’s been a peculiar day, and more stressful that it had any right to be. Any deep dive of the details I might attempt would only go too far, and say nothing meaningful or of lasting value; I am tired, and I have been through too much today.

Let’s be fair about the day? It wasn’t tragic, just trying. It started well and finished with a cascade of challenges interspersed with a couple of things that were quite nice, and turned out well. The things that went awry weren’t crises of any magnitude – it was all small stuff, unworthy of stress. I simply found myself pulled down, anyway.

The morning was lovely. It’s enough to say that, and linger on the lovely morning, without thinking about the strangely disturbed night’s ‘sleep’ that wasn’t really sleep which preceded it. The morning wiped all that from my consciousness for many hours, and the challenges of the day were simple reminders that I must be vigilant and assertive about taking care of me.

Reset! Let's try again tomorrow.

Reset! Let’s try again tomorrow.

I’m tired now. I’m home and safe. The water in the community is back on – a shower at the end of this hot day will be just the thing. It’s chill time, and there is nothing to fear or to doubt. Tomorrow will unfold on its own merit, as days generally do.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, grief, Hormone Hell, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, women, Words
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