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Mountains and Molehills

June 2, 2014 //
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I was not up to taking my new backpack for a test hike yesterday, when I started my day. I was also not really up to it a bit later in the morning, after yoga, and when I walked – without my pack – to the neighborhood farmer’s market, either.  Afternoon came around, and a partner asked me what I thought of the hike at Cooper Mountain, and handed me a map.  I looked it over pretty fearlessly; I wasn’t even considering it as a ‘right now’ option, just looking at a map. Could I do the distances involved? It looked like it. Could I handle the terrain? That looked okay, too, with the possible exception of some steeper bits, that I felt sure I could work  up to pretty quickly…

Oh - hello right now!

Oh – hello right now!

In moments we were off, headed down the road toward adventure.  According to the hiking app I installed on my smart device, by day’s end we’d managed more than 3 miles of varied terrain (3.4 for me, 3.8 for my partners who took on one more loop of trail than I did). It was good fun, and my pack fit well, felt comfortable, and delivered on the utterly necessary hydration piece I was concerned about.  I felt far more capable in practice than I had convinced myself I was.  It felt extraordinary to knock down that damaging notion and replace it with a sense of strength and capability.  Old skills and knowledge were at the ready, and I found being open to learning new technologies far less stress-inducing than hanging on to ideas that are now out-of-date (good-bye cotton, hello modern wicking fabrics!). It was fantastically fun and I am already eagerly exploring maps of the area for hikes that are easily within reach. It felt fantastic to be outside, with my partners, walking through the lovely countryside.

The wild roses were in bloom, pretty much everywhere.

The wild roses were in bloom, pretty much everywhere.

There were endless vistas...

There were endless vistas…

...paths to points beyond...

…paths to points beyond…

...cool forests...

…cool forests…

...sun-dappled trails...

…sun-dappled trails…

...and lovely expanses of meadow filled with every possible wildflower.

…and lovely expanses of meadow filled with every possible wildflower.

It was an afternoon well-spent, savored, and enjoyed in good company.

It was an afternoon well-spent, savored, and enjoyed in good company.

I wasn’t sad to head for home when we reached our vehicle; I was beat! The drive home was punctuated with laughing comments about sleeping well that night. It was a lovely experience.

Strangely… I did not sleep well. Okay, to be fair, I slept well enough, but not for very long, and the remaining many hours of night were spent split between meditation, and wondering why meditation wasn’t resulting in sleepiness. Ever. lol. For now I am awake, alert, content, and facing the work week feeling good.  Perhaps I’d simply had enough rest? I guess it is possible, although 4 hours is rarely sufficient for me; I may notice the lack by day’s end.

Until then, though, and even after… today is a very good day. It’s a very good day just as it is, and that’s a nice way to begin it.

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Categories Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Love, Menopause, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Roses, Summer, The Big 5, women, Words

About That Verb…

June 1, 2014 //
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Strange night. I crashed pretty early, and pretty sleepy. I woke fairly frequently, returning to sleep with minimal effort. I experienced the night as alternating unpredictably between ‘frozen wasteland’ and ‘sweltering tropical swamp’, a common enough experience these days as I trudge the last mile of real estate in Hormone Hell.  It wasn’t ‘a bad night’, just strange.

I woke abominably early, especially for a day off, and figured I’d go ahead and get up; my first choice of activity was meditation, and I spent quite a while practicing Savasana; it’s exceptional for a deep down level of relaxed awareness. It’s also exceptional for returning to the land of dreams, and indeed I found myself ready and able to cash in that token for another hour or two of sleep, and dreams.  I woke later, made coffee, and settled in for some quiet study time in the twilight of dawn. Books and blogs, catching up on old favorites, and exploring new ones. I do love words.

I woke with plans to explore a local nature park on foot with my new hydration daypack, getting used to the weight, and encumbered movement; I prefer to travel light when I’m out and about, sometimes eschewing even a handbag, in favor of a lighter, smaller, card case or simple folding wallet (or my id and a handful of badly folded bills shoved into a pocket, let’s be honest).  My partners recent interest in outdoor fun got me excited, too. Yesterday I shopped for a pack, and eventually found what I was looking for to get started with.

It's purple!!

It’s purple!!

I am amused by how often one partner or another has to remind me I am not in the Army now. lol. I am delighted by this compact hydration pack and it’s very very purple color; it is not OD green. 🙂  It’s also not a man’s pack and fits me better than anything the Army ever issued me.  It’s not a big pack, and it isn’t intended for weeks of forward deployment. What it is, is large on water at 100 oz, and compact at 10 liters of volume. I was so excited that as soon as I got home I filled the reservoir, fitted it, packed the few odds and ends from my basic gear list that I’ve already got and wore it around the house for a while, like a kid with new super hero pajamas.  I eagerly planned, then, to spend much of today out and about, walking the trails of a nearby nature park, and getting acclimated to walking with weight on my busted up back; safety first.

There is so much to explore...

There is so much to explore…

Real life is not what our desires and expectations dictate, it is what it is. I woke this morning, early. I woke this morning content and serene. I also woke this morning with stiff knees and ankles and a noteworthy backache. So. Maybe not today; there are more days ahead on the calendar, and time for life and love. Today, perhaps, is a better day for reading, writing, laughing, and for laundry, and gardening, and a second cup of good coffee. Today is a good day to be patient with myself, and to enjoy life gently.

Today is a good day to change the world.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Menopause, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Sleepless Nights, The Big 5, Uncategorized, women, Words

The Dark Side of Desire

May 30, 2014 //
4

This morning I am sitting here in the quiet of dawn, and contemplating this sweet chill moment of satisfaction and contentment; I want for nothing. At least right now, this very specific and limited immediate moment of now, I am not experiencing desire, hunger, craving, yearning, or any urgent sense of need. It’s lovely.

It got me thinking, though, of recent tragedies, and lives lost to the dark side of desire: entitlement, jealousy, possessiveness, attachment, and yes, craving, yearning, wanting, ‘needing’ – those urgent hard-to-resist feelings that say there is something amiss in the world when some object, experience, or person is not available for ownership, possession, or purchase. I doubt it is the desire itself that is the challenge. My own experiences tell me that the difficulties (and horrors) develop when a person is overcome by the conviction that some outcome is their due. Expectation. Demand. Entitlement.

I’ve struggled with it, too. It’s very human to want something or someone so badly that it takes over reason and good sense, destroys compassion and consideration, impedes respect, or seems to justify bad behavior; it isn’t appropriate to take action on those feelings in any way that encroaches on someone else’s will, personal liberty, control of their own body, sense of safety, or freedom to withhold consent.  Rapists are a problem, and the lack of consent is the defining thing, and even in the face of the obviousness of it there manages to be discussion about it, as if there is some permissible amount of non-consensual conduct that is acceptable. (There isn’t.)

It took me a long time to get here. I have been wading through a lot of wreckage, and looking back on me over the years, I owe a number of very good-hearted people apologies of one sort or another; damage doesn’t truly excuse being a shitty human being.  I have struggled with myself, and I still do, figuring out the consent piece, for myself, as I find my way in the world.   I wasn’t exactly brought up to respect my own boundaries, to expect that my consent – or lack of it – would be respected, or even to say no and mean it in clear, explicit terms.  The result? I sometimes didn’t treat other rape survivors well; I treated them as badly as I treated myself. I didn’t understand the nature of consent, or that the word ‘no’ had any power to change events. My own experiences didn’t support that. I didn’t understand it is my right to choose, to say yes or no, and to have those choices be accepted and honored.  I spent years as an unwitting accomplice to rape culture; the survivor-apologist, so busy being ‘accountable for my own actions’ that I was willing to excuse my violation.  Getting past that and building a healthy understanding of the sanctity of my consent has been a complicated battle.

[Are you listening? It isn’t too late to show yourself compassion, to respect your own pain, to stand on your values and say ‘no’. It’s okay, too, to feel shame at the damage you’ve done as a tool in your own destruction – and to choose another path, now. You said it would matter if just one woman, one survivor, would say “I’m sorry I made things worse.” I’m here. I’m one woman. I’m sorry.]

So… here we all are… talking about the issues more openly, more insistently, more frankly. That, in spite of the pain and the circumstances, is an important step forward.

In the midst of pain, there is still beauty.

In the midst of pain, there is still beauty.

Today is a good day to talk about difficult subjects honestly. Today is a good day to be compassionate and concerned. Today is a good day to respect myself, and others. Today is a good day to change the world.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, grief, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Rape, Relationships, Roses, The Big 5, women, Words

What It Is. What It Isn’t.

May 28, 2014 //
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I woke this morning with a headache, aching knees, aching ankles, aching back… funny, the thing that is on my mind is not the everyday pain of aging, or paying for youthful mistakes. I am thinking about love. Love is precious and peculiar, and for all the years I daydreamed about love, while dismissing it as fanciful bullshit for children, I had no understanding of what it might actually be, if I had it, practiced it, or experienced it. Love is a verb and a noun. Love demands much of us as beings, and the penalties for poor decision-making are very high. Totally  worth it, though, totally worth it.

Love is not what we think it is; love is what it is.

Love is not what we think it is; love is what it is.

So sure, I woke in a lot of pain this morning. That seems irrelevant every time I glance down at the orange knotted-cord bracelet one of my loves fashioned for me as we sat talking, while he packed his hiking kit.  Love isn’t a diamond tennis bracelet. Hell, love isn’t even this bright bracelet of sturdy nylon cord. Isn’t love the movement toward giving, the inspiration, the desire to take someone’s needs, interest, fancy, and delight and make them important to one’s own experience, and then taking action?

How is this orange knotted cord bracelet not the most precious of ornaments, simply because it is love?

This token of love doesn’t go with anything I wear regularly. It stands out boldly from my flesh. I don’t generally wear bracelets at all; I feel it as I move through my morning.  I am moved by, and aware of love with every small motion that brings the orange back into my view, or shifts the cord against my skin.  I feel a little silly, a little giddy, no different from feelings I might have were I 16… love excites me.

This morning, the pain vanishes from my awareness most of the time; because I am reminded so simply, so frequently, of how much I am loved. Love, and loving, are a pretty nice distraction to deal with on a Wednesday morning. I’m sure not complaining about it.

How often do we mess with the goodness in our experience at one moment or another because it isn’t what we expect, or what we dream of? How many tender joys are lost because they were one thing, and not another? Would you turn down orange knotted cord because it isn’t something fancier that you dreamt of longer? Are you truly open to love? To being loved?  I have to admit, to be fair to love itself, all those bitter years of certainty that love was a lie, a pretty illusion, a pointless treasure hunt – I wasn’t open to love, or being loved.  I had defined ‘what love is’ and because it wasn’t presenting itself to me in the form I demanded, I couldn’t see it when it did turn up. That is one of the saddest things about being lonely; it’s often a choice.

So, this morning I am aware of my pain, and in spite of that, I’m choosing love.  Taking a moment to feel the connection to a love nurtured, shared, grown over time; connected by a simple orange knotted cord, on a very early Wednesday morning.

Today is a good day to love.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Big 5, women, Words

Love Potions & Miracles

May 27, 2014 //
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Are we all secretly counting on miracles to make things right? Are we all after some sort of patent nostrum, magic potion, or a pill to make everything better? It’d be damned convenient, wouldn’t it? I mean, compared to having to build skills, habits, work through baggage, be accountable, and make good choices… a pill seems much simpler.

I’ve tried the pills; they don’t work. Well, they work, if by ‘working’ we agree to mean ‘have an effect of some kind’ for ‘some people’. Sometimes the effect they have fits the loose definition of ‘working’. Pharmaceuticals didn’t work out for me, personally. They tended to be too much, or too little, or had other more pronounced effects that were uncomfortable, unacceptable, or needed medication of their own. Over time I ended up taking a lot of pills, and for a net effect in improvement so slight that I was little more than a poster child for giving the medical community ‘a chance’.  I still struggled. I still suffered. I still hurt. I had a level of emotional volatility that wasn’t comfortable for anyone who had to live with me, and threw tantrums rivaling the most highly irritable three-year old, and did so with a ferocity and frequency that raw honesty requires me to admit was abusive to live with. I wasn’t okay.

This past weekend was a walk down memory lane, and serves to highlight how generally good the past year has been. Practicing mindfulness, meditating regularly, and learning different skills to identify and communicate my emotional experience in an appropriate way has done far more than any pharmaceuticals ever did. Still. This is a journey – and I’m far from reaching my destination.

So… pills don’t work. How about those miracles? Well, frankly, after this morning, I’m wondering if I should sign on to the miracle side of the argument… I woke early, damned early, crying in my sleep. The hot flashes the last couple weeks have been… extraordinary.  Over and over again, I find myself drenched in sweat, and right on the edge of freaking out because I’m overcome by feeling ‘too hot’.  Beyond being socially a bit awkward to be dealing with it so openly, it’s just seriously uncomfortable.  Take something for it! Sure! Except that medical science lags so far behind the hopes, dreams, and needs of women that it is little more than comedic at this point (are scientists even trying?). I mean, seriously? ED drugs are widely available, but in spite of the pure misery of billions of women dealing with their hormones and the effect that has on their relationships, there’s not shit of any real effectiveness available to deal with symptoms of menopause. Nope, we can all collectively go fuck ourselves, science is content with ‘bitches are crazy’ and leave it at that. Sorry. I’m feeling a tad bitter about the state of medicine and womanhood just at the moment.

I got distracted… by hot flashes. Go figure. The hormone thing is pretty attention consuming, honestly.

So. How about those miracles? Yep. Sitting here this morning, finding a moment of comfort staring at my monitor in the dim light of early morning, just sitting.  Taking a few minutes to calm myself and shush the infernal demons that woke me ahead of schedule. Feeling very alone. Feeling incredibly insecure about the future. Feeling pretty sad and overwhelmed. Wondering what the hell I could possibly ever do to make it up to people who love me, then feeling mired in suppressed rage that being female should feel like something I need to make up for… it was a rough start to the morning.  There was a quiet scratching at the door; at 5 am we’re all pretty cautious about keeping things quiet; everyone in the household has their own sleep challenges, and we all know how much it matters to get the sleep we can.  A wakeful partner checking in, a quiet ‘how did you sleep’ and a follow-up ‘are you up?’ from me.  Ordinary love, aside from Love never being at all ordinary… he headed back to bed, hoping for more rest. I resigned myself to continuing to face my challenges until the time came to leave for work.  I was settling in to breathing, being, meditating… and he quietly returned, crossed the room, and just stood near enough to touch, his tenderness palpable.  He said “I feel so helpless to do anything to help you with the menopause thing.” Honest. True. Loving. He headed to bed, and now I am writing about miracles.

It was a simple enough miracle of love; I felt lonely, my love connected with me, intimately, gently, honestly.  I need that, more than a cure, and feeling it matters so much this morning.  My demons have no real defense against love.

Today is a good day to love.

What time is love?

What time is love?

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Logic & Reason, Love, Menopause, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, The Big 5, women, Words
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