Archives for category: Turning 50

Sold As Is

May 6, 2013 //

There are no guarantees, right? No promises carved in stone. No ‘happily ever after’. No Utopia. Only people, mostly doing their best, whatever that is at the time. Life doesn’t come with a warranty.

This morning manages to suck just about exactly as much as yesterday was awesome. 😦 Save the labels and bi-polar crap – it isn’t a good fit for me. “We’ll get through this.” Yes, we will. “We’ll figure this crap out.” Probably. Maybe not. Maybe it is the attempt to understand, and caring enough to try, that matters more than succeeding at explaining the challenge of the moment, the hour, the relationship, the decade, or the lifetime? “I love you.” Well, that matters the most. It matters a lot. It will even be the important thing that lingers in my recollection long past this distress of right now. Right now, however, sucks.

Still a lovely morning, and flowers bloom without regard to my mood or experience.

Ok, ok. I know I could get my ass up from this office chair, and find a quiet space and take a few minutes for me… I probably will, too, once the routine of the morning is well underway. During office hours work must come first…or so it seems. I resent the hell out of the perceived requirement to ‘put a good face on things and get on with work’, when more than anything I would like to take time for me. I hurt. I want to take all the time for me; every minute, every hour, every day, until my heart is healed, until I am unafraid, until I am whole and healthy, until love can always find me, and until I can always feel how loved I am. I hear a bitter refrain from my own voice in another life … laughing angrily “how does it feel to want?” It doesn’t matter what I want. What matters is what can I do with what I have?

“Baby Love” blooms. Beauty exists and thrives.

Mindfulness…how do I grasp hold of that life raft right now? What does it mean to feel discontent, dissatisfied, frustrated, hurt, anxious, sad, disconnected, or angry in a mindful way? I know that the mindfulness practices and meditation improve my experience… and that’s completely been driven home this morning. I woke, I showered, I made a latte…and I didn’t take time to meditate this morning. 😦 Stupid choice, apparently. Stuck with it for now, I suppose. Maybe a walk at lunch time… or something. I feel adrift and unhappy. Shit. Welcome to Monday.

…I’m starting to feel like I’ve set myself up to make a series of shitty choices that I can already see are not going to be ideal for me if I go that direction… I feel a bit like I ‘got on the wrong bus this morning’.

All of the potential of spring…still doesn’t count as ‘roses in bloom’.

Where’s the reset button? How do I force myself to choose well, when I really just want to throw a tantrum? I could use some romance right now…or poetry…or something that lights me up from within and puts a smile on my face that can’t be denied or argued with. Is that just a hurt soul looking for a distraction, or something more profound? Oh well. For now, I will set myself aside as ‘not my highest priority’ and ~~go whore myself for a dollar~~ get on with work.

Damn it…I can do better than this for myself…

Tags being and becoming, ch-ch-changes, I can't get no, meditation, mindfulness, potentially mindful, spring flowers

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

Stillness and Solitude

May 5, 2013 //

I woke gently, alone, wrapped in quiet luxury. Spending a night in solitude, meditating mostly, writing some, finds me feeling content and balanced this morning, and centered in my own self. It is a nice treat and I used the opportunity to figure some things out about me, about me now.

Luxurious solitude and a convenient work space.

Sometimes I feel a little challenged beyond my challenges, a little encumbered beyond my baggage, as if I am at risk of ‘out growing what I know about myself’. Last night I took an unexpected opportunity to spend some chill time alone, really focused on me. I came prepared to paint. Prepared to write. I brought an important book I am reading. I had only the loosest plan – start with meditation, make some written observations, and go with my sense of ‘taking care of me’ for the rest. It’s been a lovely night. I spent a lot more of it in quiet meditation than I expected I would, and it was what I spent most of the last 16 hours doing. Meditating. Being. Allowing awareness to exist. I did take moments to step outside that gentle experience a few times to make a note about something that suddenly seemed very clear to me, but again and again I returned to meditating. It was very late before sleep caught my attention; I was neither tired nor sleepy before midnight. The earliest light of the new day woke me, and so gently that it was pure bliss to feel myself slowly wake to the day, and feel the sum of the evening’s calm, peace, and progress as a firm piece of who I am.

Coffee now. I listened to some tunes in the shower, and gave a moment afterward to the technology that connects me to so many people who are dear to me. I found myself wondering where the greater value is with digital connections in our social lives – is it with the freedom to step outside who we believe we are, or who we are seen to be, to take on a new self, a new facade, to walk in new shoes? There’s a lot of that sort of thing on the internet – hell, there are songs about it, and it has its own internet rule. lol. Is the greater value the ability to connect real beings to each other over great distances, mind to mind, and share what is, more directly with more people? Is it as simple as how honest we choose to be as a global society? As individuals? It’s a hard one. Genuine, honest, open – these are amazing values to have; harder to live up to for a world that values deceit as a tool for control and advancement.

The quiet still morning unfolds, I write, and sip my coffee. The still beautiful place I find in myself when I meditate for long periods is vast, but not empty. It has a similar feel, after the fact, to that sensation of getting to know someone new and exciting, finding out their favorite color, or a place they like, or discovering that you share something amazing…except it is ‘all about me’ on a level I’ve never known how to allow myself before. How many times have I cried out in frustration and rage that I didn’t feel important or valued, that I didn’t feel heard? I am discovering that the person I likely could have cried out to, with more helpful results, was me. I wasn’t important to me, I wasn’t valuing myself, and I sure wasn’t taking time to be heard, by my own heart. It was a brutally painful awaking of mind to reach that place where I was at least able to recognize how desperately I needed my own attention, and how urgently important my own needs are to my own happiness and balance. More than once since that awakening, I’ve wonder how fair or reasonable it really is to be in romantic relationships at all, if I was unable to even attend to my own needs, emotionally? Love, fortunately for anyone experiencing it, doesn’t seem to be that sort of thing. Our lovers may be demanding people, we may, ourselves, be demanding. Love seems different than that to me, more compassionate, and accepting, and nurturing – more like a homecoming than an award show.

I am learning to hear myself, whispers or shouts, tears or laughter. I am learning to accept this amazing woman I have become over the years, and to help myself along, and reach out for the help and wisdom of others, and to walk my path willfully with my eyes and heart open. I feel more comfortable with my body and my mind than I have before, and I am no longer afraid of the relentless gaze of cameras or mirrors. I am no longer afraid of the question “who am I?”

A lovely morning is unfolding, and soon I’ll return home. For now, there is time to meditate and grow.

Tags finding the core in core values, meditation, morning coffee, relationships, who the hell do I think I am

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

Building the Foundation

May 4, 2013 //

It is well past dawn. I went to bed angry, probably more than a reasonable amount. I slept restlessly, frustratedly fighting my demons in my sleep. I woke with residual anger left unexpressed from the night before. I am human. I struggle with anger. I’m taking on my own anger, and my relationship with the emotion of anger, in a serious way as a ‘next step’.

It is worth observing that I do not face the challenge of anger in my experience as an indication that I have any perception that I’m ‘done’ with ‘everything else’, or that I am comfortable that I mastered other challenges in my life. It’s just time to take it on. I think I can make improvements and learn and grow, at long last, where anger is concerned. I am ready to stop running from anger, whether it is my own anger, or someone else’s anger. (Wow – saying that just made my heart pound in earnest. Anger – still scary. lol)

I’m not sure how much I’ll share about this particular challenge of mine, at least initially…and hasn’t that been part of the issue, for me, all along? I reject anger, refuse anger, deny anger, avoid anger, run from anger, cower in fear from anger, wish it away, rationalize it, fight it with words and actions, ignore it, take any conceivable step to dissipate it…even to the point of injuring my own heart, disrespecting and dishonoring my own experience, and damaging myself, and my relationships…all in the name of protecting myself…from…what exactly? An emotion. Of course, it doesn’t work out well in the long run. You know where it leads, right? I’m sure anyone who has ever been in a relationship with me knows… it explodes out of nowhere, unexpectedly, uncontrollably, and often disproportionate to the event of the moment, due to the impetus of long-time resentments that have built up from…wait for it… unresolved anger from earlier events. 😦 Not ok. And since I do understand that it isn’t acceptable to fuel conflict with ‘old business’ that isn’t relevant to the conflict of the moment, the frustration, helplessness, and ancient lingering rage of residual anger rarely gets addressed in a fair and honest way… I end up stuck with it.

I may be one of the angriest people I know…I don’t actually know for sure, though, because I have refused for so long to give myself the courtesy of really hearing myself and tending to my own heart and needs on issues of anger. (I wrote a lot of very different words here, initially…and deleted them. They were raw and visceral, and such an intimate look into my relationship with anger and explicit about my trauma history I couldn’t really consider clicking the ‘publish’ button. I am not that strong. Is it enough to say I am damaged and anger is a challenge I want to face next?)

I did something new with anger this morning. I told someone I was angry. Simple, clear, honest – no games or bullshit – I said “I feel angry about…”. Interestingly, doing that, and having the experience of being heard without any objection or rejection, or argument, seemed to allow the actual in-the-moment emotional experience of anger to dissipate. I would still say that the thing that I felt angry over would still be something I consider hurtful, and as an experience unsatisfying and unpleasant, but I don’t still ‘feel angry’. I feel a little lost though, at the moment; like so many things lately, I wonder what else about anger will prove to be very different than my fears.

Human endeavor; a complicated metaphor.

Where does anger fit in with my ‘Big 5’ for my relationships? (Respect, Reciprocity, Consideration, Compassion, and Openness) Lately three other words that don’t typically come up for me have been regular points of contemplation with regard to my own growth; holistic, coherent, and integrated. They seem important concepts relevant to my journey, but I feel rather like I did the first time I heard the term ‘mindfulness’…they are words. Something about each one seems urgently important to understand and to understand in the context of my own growth and healing…but for now they are simply words.

Building on what is…

50 isn’t far off now, just 39 days, barely more than a month. I’m eager to get there, eager to prove to the cynical 14-year-old me lurking in my memories that I lived to see 50, in spite of my grim certainty that seeing 35 wasn’t likely. I spend a lot of time building a better foundation for the next 50 years than I had for the first 50. I’m more fortunate than I can measure that I have so much support in that endeavor, and no noticeable resistance to it.

Hoping for something splendid and wonderful, however humble, however simple.

Tags anger, anxiety, ptsd, rebuilding, relationships, song and dance, TBI, words and music

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

Observations, Connections, and Being

April 30, 2013 //

A mossy wall; a tiny world all its own.

Here it is, already Tuesday. I feel vaguely annoyed with myself that life got my attention with such a firm grip that I simply haven’t taken time to write about it, too busy living it. I’ve been immersed in experiences of a variety of sorts, some definitely share-worthy, some definitely too personal to make that attempt. So…pictures and words, and a handful of observations…some without the context that would render them fully meaningful, but perhaps the words themselves have value.

I rode on the train with a young woman on Friday. She was headed somewhere unfamiliar and asked about the stop. She was strikingly beautiful – always difficult for a woman her age (not older than 14). Unexpectedly, she complimented my eyes, although rather shyly. I stayed open to the possibility of connecting with this interesting young stranger, and we conversed as we traveled. She shared her challenges with ‘the mean girls’, from whom she had heard how ugly she is. I assured her that my experience was that ‘the mean girls’ are no more secure in themselves that she herself feels, and that the greater likelihood for many of them is that they will blossom at a young age, treat themselves poorly, settle for less than their dreams out of fear and insecurity, and slowly fade away into mediocrity. lol. She seemed reassured that she wasn’t alone, rather than pleased that any ill might befall even these who treat her so ill. A very pleasant young woman, and I’m glad I met her. I hope she does well in life.

I ‘had a moment’ the other day, and really needed to connect with some very special women in my life. I took time to email them, reaching out as though we could just sit down for coffee – I miss that closeness with old friends; so many are so far away. The first email I got back was rich and warm and long… and felt like we were ‘just hanging out’ talking. Wow. How is it that a few words between friends can have that power? I have so much to learn. I have hurt so many people who are dear to me. 50 seems a good age to be a better person than I have been.

A favorite rose is already blooming…still? Have I already shared? I have, I see. Not that I think there is a real limit on the number of times a rose is lovely. 🙂

‘Baby Love’ in bloom

The sunny days in the garden over the weekend didn’t do enough to distract me from things on my mind. I’m having a hard time ‘finding my way’ on a couple of things very dear to me…and one of them will require skillful confrontation to address, resolve, improve, or act on… so… rather than that big big bummer to deal with, I took lovely pictures of the sunny garden.

Even in real life, some flowers are ‘magenta’.

Some of the pictures are quite mundane – I’m an artist, but I don’t consider myself so with a camera. lol

Some blue flowers.

…it isn’t as if there’s some huge crisis happening around me (aside from the usual this-n-that we all struggle with)…still…lovely flowers, sunny days, wholesome young women, friendly strangers…any distraction is enough some days.

More purple than blue, still flowers.

I have things on my mind that are important to me. Hard to communicate the urgency or magnitude sometimes…at least to people who ‘matter’ to me. Why is that? I so want the easiest communication to be with those I love, those who are significant, those who ‘have a place’ in my life…it so isn’t. I meditate…and sometimes find myself holding my breath, struggling to ‘figure it out’ instead of just taking a moment to be. I’m already learning – and it seems solid and true like the surface of a rock or a table or the embrace of a trusted friend – it is being that makes the difference for me. I can think anything. When I take time to still my mind, breathe, just ‘take it all in’ and ‘let it all go’ – I find myself.

Future blueberries…very promising.

Tags all that I am, being a better woman, friends, gardening, getting better with age, mindfulness, turning 50

Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Relationships, Roses, Spring, Turning 50, women, Words

Life and Love and an Old Black Sweater

April 25, 2013 //

The first rose of spring has opened in my garden. It is just 48 days until my 50th birthday, and for some unclear reason 50 feels rather like ‘the middle of life’ – although I am hopeful about living well past the century mark. A beginning, a middle…and an end; I am wearing a long-favored, old black sweater, and I am considering today to be it’s ‘last day’…

‘Baby Love’ is the first rose to bloom in my garden this spring.

My old black sweater is an ordinary enough black sweater, of mixed synthetic fibers, soft and worn and comfy, with rather mundane cable stitch down the front, and quite large. I bought it some 15 years ago, during a career change, and a point in my life when I was heavier than I am now. A lot heavier. This is a size ‘3X’ sweater. It’s huge on me now, mostly pretty shapeless, and not particularly flattering. I’ve never cared about that – it has also been reliably comfortable, effortless to care for, and predictably rather invisible, in the sense that wearing it allowed me to fade into the background at a point in my life where anxiety and unpredictable temperament so ruled my experience that I appreciated having a way to hide from the world in plain sight. Now, though, life feels very different and I am less inclined to hide. I also feel…healthy, beautiful, and alive – and I’m ready to say good-bye to being so wounded and afraid of the world that only being wrapped in a comfy old black sweater feels safe and warm. Hugs are better. lol.

A sweater is only a sweater, after all… it isn’t a time capsule of memories and events associated with the wearing of the sweater, it isn’t the embodiment of who I am, or who I was, and it isn’t a cherished object of sentimental value clasped relentlessly by possessive withered hands frightened to let go for fear of losing beloved memories to the passage of time. (I may have once thought it was…) It’s just a sweater: too old, too worn, too big. It doesn’t fit me anymore.

I still like sweaters. I still like black sweaters. I even still like this sweater… but it is time to move on. Time to let go of some things that are not helpful to hang on to. Time to let go of things that get in the way of better things. Time to accept and encourage and nurture change. It is time for a new black sweater; sexy, fun, soft…and perhaps in a ‘slightly darker black’?

…Or perhaps not black at all. In 48 days I shall be 50, and I’m clearly not a little girl, anymore. Some of it has been rough, but I think it will be fine if I stop wearing black…beginnings, middles, ends…this is what 50 looks like through my eyes, reflected in my mirror, considered in the context of my experience.

…on the other hand… approaching 50: my right hand, my right mind.

Tags a favorite old sweater, change, curling up with a good book, mindfulness, on the other hand, the hands of time

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

Sold As Is

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Stillness and Solitude

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Building the Foundation

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Observations, Connections, and Being

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Life and Love and an Old Black Sweater

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