Archives for category: Post Traumatic Stress
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Out Changing the World, brb…

March 25, 2013 //
2

Did you miss me? Ran out of internet while I was gone? Printed word long forgotten in the wake of local political scandals, fear-mongering news-media, and the impending zombie apocalypse? It is possible, perhaps, that someone out there in the wide world rolled out of bed, flipped on their technological connections to the world, and felt bereft of this fleeting handful of words we share between us so regularly… I might have doubted it, but for two things that were delightful reminders that we do indeed make our presence felt in the world, however small our piece of that puzzle happens to be; an email, and a conversation.

Saturday, as I rode the train home from a visit to a lovely big local farmer’s market, I had a casual meeting with a young man who, as it turned out, reads my blog. That was a little odd, and very serendipitous – what a privilege and an honor to see and connect with someone unknown who reads my words, and gets his own value from them…a stranger on a train…a moment of connection. I felt so open to the world, to my experience, to all the potential that exists for each of us as we move through the connected spaces in our lives.  It was profound and moving. [And hey, please thank your Mom for me for sharing my blog with you – and good luck with life and tough choices!]

Sunday a simple email from a cherished friend; a playful inquiry and a loving reminder that there really are people out there, reading my words, hearing me, and preserving our connection through this space.  I felt, for a moment, a tad neglectful of friends and loved ones, and let that go quickly; it was a wonderful weekend of connecting with people and experiencing moments.  It was a weekend rich with love, Love, fun, humor, and a very good slow roast of beef, and I can’t find fault with myself for enjoying that with my whole heart. 😀

Now, Monday arrived rather gently, and I woke slowly to a later alarm and enjoyed a solitary coffee as the dawn broke. I took time to meditate, and it seemed only moments had passed when the rest of the household woke, too, and we shared a few minutes of smiles and harmony before I headed to work. Even the walk in seemed gilded with love itself, and the birds enjoyed it with me, sharing their songs of morning, losing my attention only now and then – I am sometimes distracted by the sparkle of frosty dew on blades of grass.

I am finding today to be a very good day indeed.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Menopause, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Spring, Turning 50, women, Words

The Spring in My Step

March 20, 2013 //
1

Welcome to Spring!

Spring Flowers

Spring Flowers

The rain fell more aggressively this morning than I expected from the gentle patter on the skylights before dawn.  I enjoyed the life lesson as I walked to work; a lesson about raincoats, freewill, and adulthood.   It was delivered wrapped in a memory, a delightful enough gift, on a spring morning.

I walked in the rain, frustratedly fussing with the hood of my raincoat, and irritably noting with some amusement that somehow the designer had failed to understand that a hood might be more effective if it were to stay up over my head when a breeze comes up.  Each time I tugged it back up, something nagged my consciousness until a wee crystal clear memory of actual childhood reached my awareness – to my great delight (I don’t have many).  I recalled a rainy morning, leaving home – specifically the glass vestibule of an apartment building – to walk to the bus stop to go to school.  My hood fell down, I pulled it up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Then the clear recollection of my thought in the moment; a sort of ‘When I’m a grown up, I will not wear a hood at all!’ kind of thought.  I grinned to myself at the recollection of petulant childhood frustration with a world that seemed then to seriously favor ‘grown ups’.  Being ‘a grown up’ myself now, more or less, I understand that the reality of it has often failed to live up to my childhood expectations…and I walked on considering that.

When I was younger than adult, I lived with a fantasy that someday, when I was ‘a grown up’, I would live my life based on my own will alone. I would choose my apartment, my job, my friends, my life style – I would live entirely based on my own values, my own desires, and my free will to choose.  It sounded beyond exciting – it also sounded like the only possible outcome.  Adulthood and I did reach some sort of wary meeting place, at about 18 years for me, and my ‘menu’ of choices seemed immediately to be unexpectedly limited by my resources, my opportunities, choices I had already made, and a whole assortment of ‘have to’ ‘supposed to’ and ‘need to’ things that I didn’t anticipate being obstacles.  The whole mess was frustrating and vaguely disappointing.  This morning, though, it flooded back to me with the Spring rain – the promise inherent in becoming adult, the potential in the very real opportunities of choice, itself, and of free will.  I laughed out loud, and let the breeze blow back my hood. I grinned into the dawn through rain spattered glasses, and my stride relaxed and became natural and free; and I gave myself the further gift – and respect – of choosing to live up to my own values and pleasures, and disregarded the rain, the hood, and any sense of propriety or decorum regarding ‘keeping my clothes nice’.  My walk to work stopped being an internal list of reminders about work, life,  or concern about damp socks, damp hair, or rain drops tickling the back of my neck, and became the pure joy of experiencing a beautiful, rainy, spring morning – and here I am.  For the moment, whole and happy and content to be human, content to be female, and content to be ‘a grown up’, all of which seems quite simple and natural having remembered that now that I’m an adult, I do get to live my life based on my own values, on my own choices, and that those choices are only limited by the limits I acknowledge and accept for myself.  A nice reminder – some internal spring cleaning, of a sort, and a welcome re-assessment of small frustrations in life.

So, here I am on a Wednesday, on the Vernal Equinox; damp socks, damp hair, and for the time being an unbeatably buoyant feeling of contentment with this fragile vessel, and it’s precious contents.

Welcome to Spring, indeed.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Spring, Turning 50, women

There’s Sand in My Oyster

March 19, 2013 //
4

I woke in an ok place this morning, after an ok night’s sleep. I’m feeling better, but…small things…I am struggling with small deviations from the routine, small chronic frustrations with every day life, minor mishaps and disappointments, more than seems appropriate.  I want to shrug it off as being ‘a little cross’ with myself, or ‘waking up on the wrong side of the bed’, or anything at all that minimizes it and ‘makes it go away’, but those things are not true.  I’d rather be disappointed to the point of heartbreak that my brand new blow dryer didn’t work this morning, or irritated that my cell phone battery didn’t recharge, or anything at all that isn’t what is really grinding away on my consciousness, in the background.

I don’t know that I have the words, or the appropriate forum, to discuss what’s on my mind – rape.  For me to discuss rape honestly requires the willingness to face a level of information sharing that is ‘too much information’ on multiple levels, and possibly damaging to hear, for some people.  The internet is buzzing with it anyway, and that’s why it’s grinding away on my own consciousness –  I’m a rape victim, myself. How can I not be affected by politicians negotiating whether or not I can have an abortion if I get pregnant from a rape? How can I overlook that there are people who actually think the consequences of a rapist being convicted are worthy of more serious dialogue than the consequences of the rape itself for the victim? How can I overlook the horrible numbers, the statistics, the historical data – the strong likelihood that just about any woman, anywhere, is probably going to face some kind of sexual assault at some point in her life? I feel agitated and ‘trying not to be’. I feel fearful and struggling with a veiled feeling of hostility. I feel anxious.

How did we ever come to this? ‘Civilized’? Hardly. I could almost feel the smugness mingling with the horror of so many voices in the wake of one heinous Delhi gang rape in December…but Steubenville was already seething in our cultural undercurrent, it happened in August.  Where are the good guys? Where are the heroes? Where is the country where there is no rape?

I feel sad. I feel wounded. I feel lost.  I will fill my ‘now’ with the day’s work, and hope that the distraction from ancient hurts will ‘be enough’… I need to feel wrapped in love, in the arms of lovers who would never hurt me…but for now, fluorescent lighting and the low steady din of ‘busy as usual’ will have to do. I am learning more about living mindfully every day, and practicing meditation, learning compassion…but just at the moment I feel rather as if I am attempting to apply a small band-aid to a sucking chest wound…or gasping for air in a vacuum…or drowning…

…Wait..wait…am I missing this moment? Is there a lesson here, too? I will take time for me, before I move on soaked in fear, and just breathe…I mean, hey…it’s just a Tuesday. I’m certainly worth a few minutes of my own time and compassion…it hasn’t all been easy, and hurting sometimes is probably a given. I hurt right now, but I don’t always…

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Rape, Relationships, Uncategorized, women

The Parable of Poison

March 18, 2013 //
10

A Person comes to a Friend bereft because a Loved One offered poison to drink, and having consumed it, this Person was in terrible pain and agony. The Person and the Friend commiserate at length the nature of the crime, the motive to offer poison, the sort of poison it was and how agonizing the pain. For days they spoke and there was no relief from the agony. The Person and the Friend went to the Law to address this grievance, and the Law spoke at length on the punishment suitable to the crime, depending on the sort of crime it could be determined to be. For days the Law spoke and there was no relief from the agony. The Person went far and wide with the pain and the agony, speaking at length with other persons, looking for agreement that a crime had been committed. The Person railed at and against the Loved One, demanding redress, acknowledgement, change and even vengeance, and shared the anger and pain and terrible agony far and wide with many other Persons.

One day, the Person met a Wiser Person and related the tale and the pain and agony of having been given poison by a Loved One. The Wiser Person listened carefully, and asked “Why did you drink it?”

Hmm…

I read something recently that gave me some clarity around the emotion of anger, but differentiating clearly between the emotional experience (‘the feeling’) of anger, and how it moves us to behave (‘the expression’) being called hostility, instead of also calling that anger. Nice wordsmithing, actually, because that actually gave me a foothold on greater understanding of a complicated piece of my experience.  Anger isn’t pleasant, but the emotional experience is pretty personal, and limited to the individual experiencing it – until they share it with another, in the form of hostility, and it isn’t all that different from offering someone poison… but if I am offered poison, in theory, I don’t have to drink it. 😀

Yesterday I woke in a good mood, but considerably sicker than the day before, and drained, exhausted, and suffering a pretty horrible headache, too. The morning went sideways when my limited emotional reserves met real-life unexpectedly – and it really was as if someone I love had walked right up and handed me a cup saying ‘here’s this poison, I made it myself, have some?’ and sure enough – I drank it right down. lol. Learning compassion and practicing mindfulness haven’t put me beyond the realm of human experience, for sure, and I not only took the whole mess quite personally, I over-reacted more than a little. As sick as I was, my supply of good decision-making was also diminished and I found myself out in the world, walking and crying like a madwoman, and under-dressed for the weather, which was a dumb choice since I was already ill. All too human, right? lol. I sort of ‘forced myself’ to make some better choices; to go home, to have some calories, to rest, to let the small stuff go, and sure enough things sorted themselves out – because it wasn’t my experience that had me wound around the axles in the first place, and I didn’t really have to drink that poison.  I am hoping to learn how to politely say ‘thank you, no’ when I find myself ‘offered poison’ in the form of someone else’s anger being directed into my experience as hostility…

Other ‘cups of poison’ being handed round recently include a variety of news articles about rape and rapists, after the news about the Steubenville rapists being convicted.  Another blogger really ‘gets it’; being sympathetic to the convicted rapists rather than to the victim is more than inappropriate, it is offensive. They said it better than I would have, and it’s definitely a share-worthy message.  I’m glad I’m not reading/watching media news right now – the heinous insensitivity of the talking heads on parade could easily have triggered my PTSD for weeks, and I just don’t need it.

It’s a good Monday, in spite of being sick, and I am eager to be well and able to enjoy spring.

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Categories Anxiety, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Rape, Relationships, women

Le Sacre Du Printemps

March 10, 2013 //
1
Spring blossoms

Spring blossoms

This morning I woke with a headache and a snarl. Unpleasant. Very real. Very human. A quad latte and a couple hours later I’m over being snarly, at least. I still have a nasty headache. Not much to do about it besides treat myself well and with compassion and patience.

It was a sweet gesture that one of my partners put on Larry Coryell playing Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’. I love his version of that piece of music (so much that I’d have linked it, but couldn’t find a good YouTube video of it).  Chilling with coffee, talking about projects shared and individual…’making love’ on a level that isn’t about sex, and is about family and connection. In spite of the headache, I feel pretty good.

It’s been a very good weekend. I have been enjoying my experience so much that I didn’t realize I hadn’t written a post on either Friday or Saturday…there are so many people sharing so many moments and so many words, though, it seems unlikely that the world ran short on reading material. lol. It has been an interesting couple of days, existing in my now, and sharing time with my partners; love, Love, and practicing mindfulness. I figure I’ll be practicing indefinitely, too.  It doesn’t seem to be the sort of thing one can ‘achieve full proficiency’ at with the end result of stopping…it’s an ongoing thing…unless I am seriously misunderstanding the how/why of it.  It is interesting to see the small things I’ve misunderstood in life to the point of causing myself pain or confusion, or throwing weird roadblocks in my own path. Like…learning something; I’ve spent a long time thinking that the point is to ‘know it’ or become ‘good at it’ to the point of some level of expertise or ‘completion’ then stop, show my work, and get my grade, certificate, compliment, affirmation, acknowledgment, pat on the head, promotion, award, trophy…something that makes it an ‘achievement’ more than an experience or point of ongoing progress and growth. ‘Ongoing’. Life is ongoing. Even the noun is more a verb than a noun, because nothing about ‘life’ stands still.  Through the headache I can feel a glimmer of something I didn’t understand trying to peep through the fog of my filters and weirdness.

I cooked dinner the other night…mindfully. That was…interesting. To be really committed to the processes and really focused and aware of the elements of the experience made a very simple meal a different experience in both preparation and enjoyment. I had the subjective experience that the food tasted better, although it was a very simple meal of fettuccine pesto with chicken and red peppers. My partners sure seemed to enjoy the flavors of it more than just about any other meal I’ve prepared for them.  I’ve been exploring a lot of every day experiences with more…I don’t know, call it ‘mindfulness’ or call it ‘self awareness’ or call it ‘commitment to the moment’, I’m not sure it matters what name I give it; it is the doing of it that seems to change things. I can’t help but wonder why I didn’t ‘get it’ sooner? I know it isn’t that no one mentioned it, or that there were no books about it, or that mindfulness practices didn’t exist…was it a lack of readiness on my part?  Did it fall into the set of ‘things the TBI put out of reach for a while’, like algebra in my teens and twenties? Was I unwilling to understand or unable? Does that matter? I’m getting more comfortable with questions, and less hung up on answering them; I find myself speculating whether there may be a correlation between the lack of impulse to answer all the questions, and my generally reduced anxiety level the last little while, then I let that go, too, and chill in this lovely quiet time and space.

Tonight I hope to be in the kitchen making a simple meal for my family, and enjoying love and family and making ready for another week of work and life.  I’ll be seeing an old friend on Wednesday, and I’m excited about it.  We’ll also have a house guest this week, and I feel relaxed and comfortable with that, which isn’t always the case with me. I have dreams and plans and goals, and a life to live with a smile. That feels awesome. 🙂

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Turning 50, women
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