Archives for category: women

Myths and Realities

November 17, 2013 //

It’s a lovely morning and I am still aglow from the fun of making ‘fairy gardens’ with one of my partners yesterday. We visited the home of a lovely artist for this shared activity, along with a couple other women and a younger girl, who arrived separately. The girl had a beautiful name, and was very shy. The woman teaching the activity has her education and vocation in ‘horticulture therapy’. I’d never considered it as a possible line of work to be in, and it delights me that not only is my own garden a haven for my serenity, and a source of peace and contentment, but that somewhere ‘out there’ people are ‘led down the garden path’ figuratively speaking, to their wellness, too. Pretty awesome.

A garden in miniature.

We had a lot of fun talking and creating tiny gardens, sipping tea, and no kidding – coloring. Like children, we chose pages to color, selected colored pencils with great care – because in those moments, the very colors themselves were up to our choosing, and seemed to matter. It was quite calming and wonderful. I wonder when I stopped coloring? 🙂

This morning I find myself struggling between a rather practical-minded grown-up within trying to resist constantly wanting to clarify ‘of course fairies aren’t real‘ – and can’t quite do it. It has little to do with any legitimate reality or lack thereof of potentially unseen wee beings lurking in the shrubbery, honestly. Could there be? Why couldn’t there be? There was a time when as a child I was quite firm in my conviction that there was a ‘coffee brownie’ hiding in my Mother’s coffee cup. I could see her pert nose and bright eyes looking back at me when I looked down into the caramel brown of my Mother’s coffee, any time. Real? Not real? My own reflection. Well, okay, sure, but…

We live our myths with as much ease and certainty as we live our realities. We have as little comfort with having either toppled through ‘proof’. Look at the creationist movement in the United States – people of such firm conviction that the earth is quite young and was created from a void, in a motion, by the will of an entity, that they fight fiercely to have that perspective taught, even to the sons and daughters of Science. How odd. On the other hand, Science fights back with all the forces of reason and data at its command, captured succinctly in a t-shirt slogan, “Science doesn’t care what you believe”.

We are each having our own experience. We define our world – define it? Hell, we create it! We create what we can and can’t see with the words that we use to tell ourselves what is, and what is not. We change our opportunities in life by defining who we are, ourselves, with our state of being statements and self-talk. We limit our relationships with our un-tested assumptions about others, about their will, their intentions, their abilities, their knowledge.

I used to get quite furious with people about Reality. It was not, I would insist quite emotionally, whatever we choose to make of it. It has unquestionable substance and character independent of what we understand or recognize! That’s probably true. Maybe that’s true. I’m 50 now, and I understand the world differently these days. The closest I care to come to ‘unquestionable’ at this point would be to acknowledge that there is little chance I can recognize, understand, know, or be aware of enough of the stuff of pure absolute reality on an ‘unquestionable’ level to ever be certain that indeed that is what I’d gotten hold of. I would have been so angry with this being I am now – and ready to do intellectual combat at the suggestion that we could change reality with a change in thinking. I made progress philosophically and emotionally to gain an understanding that Reality was really more likely ‘reality’ – lower case ‘r’. That ’emic’ and ‘etic’ realities were a pretty easy distinction to make, and possibly needful. People do have their own experience, and their experience does color their perceptions and understanding of their world. So… easy enough. Their personal individual emic reality would stand somewhat separately from the theoretically immutable etic reality. That meant a lot to me. A foothold on something real the understanding of which I could at least strive for.

What a mess. How could I ever be sure? Somewhere along the way, the pursuit of Reality cost me a lot of humor and whimsy – and fun. Somewhere along life’s path I stopped being wowed by Greek mythology, by allegories that teach and delight me, by wonder itself. On a rainy Saturday I found myself ‘finding my way home’ in some hard to describe way. Stories are important, too. Fictional characters have their own ‘reality’. Brownies in coffee cups play their role in who we are. Perhaps it is irrelevant whether a faerie ever visits my fairy garden, and important only that it is a small and beautiful garden, and representative of possibilities and whimsy and great love for a delightful moment in the company of women on a rainy Saturday? And were a faerie to visit, and be taken by surprise by my keen eye open to the possibilities and wonders of the world, wouldn’t that be okay, too?

Today I face the world ‘open like a child’s mind‘.

Tags coloring books, etic and emic, fairy gardens, fantasy and fiction, get real, it is what it is, it's a small world, mindfulness, myths and legends, open like a child's mind, ptsd, TBI, the best brownies ever, The Crystal Method

Categories Allegories, Art, Brain Injury, Fiction, Free Will, gardening, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Turning 50, women

You Know It Ain’t Easy…

November 6, 2013 //

…You know how hard it can be…” Thanks, John.

This morning sucks more than a little bit. Well, for the moment. It’s nice to have a steady reliable understanding these days that moments are just that – momentary. Thank you, Mr-Therapist, Sir, and thank you Jon Kabat-Zinn, Andy Puddicombe, Russ Harris, Brene Brown and Timber Hawkeye. Thank you thousands of years of meditation, decades of hippies, and one loving partner with more willingness to try than seems human.

This morning still sucks. Welcome to Hormone Hell. Fuck I want to be done with this! I’m tired of feeling frustrated by, and ashamed of, being female because men who matter to me have their own struggles and challenges with what it is to live with and love women. Thanks, Dad, I definitely owe you one there.

I’m doing my best to ride the wave, allow myself room for my emotions (frustration, hurt, anger, resentment, and just enough yearning for intimacy and closeness to set my teeth on edge because it isn’t easy). A few good deep breaths sounds easier than it feels. My chest feels tight, and the tears waiting to fall are making me angry – it still feels like a weakness to cry ‘for no reason’. It’s hard to allow myself the self-compassion to understand that ‘reason’ isn’t what drives tears.

My coffee is growing cold. With an interesting measure of spitefulness directed inward, I punish myself by petulantly allowing it, observing that choice with a measure of wonder, and some tiny bit of humor lurking in the background, because it is an empty gesture affecting no one but me.

This is about as close as I get to a good solid rant these days. lol. The breathing thing, as simple as that seems, really helps and just a bit less than 300 words later, I find myself growing calm again. No tantrum today, just some lingering sadness. i feel vaguely as if I am ‘just not what he’s looking for’. What an incredibly ugly feeling to have about someone who loves me so much. This is a morning when I would very much like to tell being female to fuck right off.

I woke in a pretty good mood. I’m regularly frustrated and challenged by how volatile my mood can be. That volatility, at other points in my life, has resulted in some incredibly poor decision-making, and real desperation to find balance and peace, decades of wasted time in therapy that wasn’t effective, years spent on medications of one sort of another intended to ameliorate some particular symptom, even hardcore psych meds – all because hormones on top of PTSD added to a TBI is a difficult experience to manage. Hell, I’ve had PMS so severe that I was actually a threat to people living with me, other times so severe I actually felt suicidal. That’s not okay. I sit here trying to make sense of that and I feel my feminist rage rise up inside myself – what about me, Medical Science? I want to make someone listen! Why don’t we matter more? You’d think as popular for relationships as women are, that someone would give a shit about helping us be well and whole and comfortable in and with our experience as beings. It’s disappointing to me that I’m 50 and there’s still no real progress to speak of in understanding or improving women’s experience of themselves as sexual hormonal beings, or improving our place in the world.

Oh, hey, there’s that rant. I guess I’ve still got it in me. Push the right lever, a pellet pops out. God damn it.

I’m still a student of life, of love, of the world… and it is making a difference in my experience, every day. Over months it has grown difficult to be provoked to aggression or confrontation, and I rarely trap myself in always/never thinking, or spiraling internal arguments where my hurt feeds the fallacy, which drives the hurt. It is a pleasant change, and a morning like this affords me a good opportunity to see the changes within. So, okay, in the process I am human. I am human.

So are my lovers, and they can only take what they can take. That seems not only obvious, but reasonable. I’m still sad to be alone right now, and that will pass. I often choose solitude over difficult interactions, myself, and I understand walking away from tension. Love is strange stuff. I take care of me with deep calming breaths, with a few thoughtful words, some mindful observations, and gentle reality checks. Before more than a few minutes pass, my heart is serene, and my compassion is for my lover. I still feel a current of sadness tugging at my heart, but now it is for the price he pays, as much as for my own challenges and regrets. It isn’t easy. Love is so worth all of it – but it isn’t easy. We choose love. It isn’t a choice we only make once. That is the nature of commitment, not simply that it isn’t a one-time choice, but that it is worth choosing again and again.

That latte is definitely cold now. That’s okay. It’s a small price to find that still calm place in my heart.

Today is a whole new experience. I hope I choose wisely. Today I am kind. Today I love well, and with my whole heart. Today I am compassionate. Today I will change the world… or…at least my morning. 😀

I have come so far from this place.

Tags ACT, do you miss me when I'm gone?, living and loving, mindfulness matters, MSBR, OPD, postcards from hormone hell, ps I love you, ptsd, right down the line, TBI, you know it ain't easy

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

The Pen Is Mighty

November 1, 2013 //

I’m still contemplating an epiphany of sorts, a developing understanding, a hint of something broader than I know just on the horizon of my awareness of self. I’d like to write. I feel eager. I feel motivated. I feel. That’s really it; I feel this from my core to my consciousness. I am also feeling just a bit unworthy, or unready or ill-equipped to handle the topic just yet.

The topic dominates my thoughts. Something about the nature of identity, the nature of language and words, the effect of definition, the precious and necessary confound of ambiguity and uncertainty, or the outcome of unanswered questions being a larger part of my experience than the answers to questions ever have been… or… something like that. The substance and the weight of it, still a bit incomplete and unformed in my thinking, is so massive that I feel ‘crowded’ cognitively, and continuously compelled to write, only to find myself still not yet ready to ‘lay it out’ and take a look at it as words on a page. It’s a strange sensation. It is that ‘can’t quite put my finger on it’ sensation of being unable to recall the name of a favorite movie in the midst of an exciting dialogue with a dear friend, or being unable to ‘name that tune’ even though it is a favorite song. A creative gadfly.

The pen: a might artifact, a weapon, a tool, a magic wand, a toy, a treasure.

So, although words elude me for now, I celebrate them, and language. So much of who I am, of what we are as beings, of our potential to experience the world and our ability to share it, is in our hands in the form of a pen.

Yesterday’s loveliness lingers in my memory as a secure stronghold against insecurity and fearfulness. I love, and I am loved in return. Today I will embrace serenity and calm, and that still place of observation without judgement that is within me.

Today I will change the world.

Tags all my favorite writers do it, be the change, buddhist boot camp, fearlessly loquacious and frightfully verbose, I had something for that, mindfulness matters, ptsd, TBI, the pen is mightier than the sword, the stillness within, who am I?, words words words

Categories Art, Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, women, Words

Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise

October 26, 2013 //

Another relaxed lovely morning, quiet and serene, unfolding gently within and around me. I woke easily, and even ‘slept in’ a bit, which feels very nourishing and luxurious. The house is quiet. My latte is warm and tasty, falling nicely into the ‘just right’ category. Yoga first thing, and meditation.

As an extension of my meditation this morning I found myself considering each person dear to me for a moment or two, and feeling grateful to know them, and giving some time to contemplate the joy they bring me, to remember shared experiences that have helped me grow, to honor their existence and reflect on the meaning of their life if they are gone. I didn’t plan this, it began as a simple heartfelt ‘thank you’ that my partners are part of my life, each as they are, with their struggles and imperfections, and the great value they bring to my experience, and it cascaded from there through all the relationships I have now, or have had, and their importance to me. I feel moved, and supported, thinking about all the amazing people I know.

You are one of them. (Even if we’ve never met in the flesh, here you are now, reading my words and connecting with me through them. That matters to me; I thank you.)

Today feels good. There isn’t much more to say about that, beyond observing the feelings: contentment, balance, serenity, comfort, quiet joy, hopeful, friendly, open, relaxed, and something softer than happy, less boisterous than joy – but very much on that end of the emotional spectrum. It used to be incredibly rare to feel anything even a little like this. Somehow, then, I thought that fighting to get here, screaming in hurt and rage when it felt ‘taken away’, struggling endlessly to force this experience to exist would ‘make it happen’. I didn’t understand. I still lack ‘certainty’ about ‘how it all works’. I am learning, and in learning is progress. That’s enough. I am learning to be comfortable with uncertainty, and unafraid of unanswered questions; it is the questions themselves that have the greater value to me, at least for now.

Now. Now is something I am becoming pretty comfortable with. Mutable and timeless Now – it suits me more than I understood it could. Yielding to Now. Surrendering to Now. Embracing Now. Learning the amazing difference between ‘giving up’ (or ‘giving in’) through futility, apathy, or pain, and the wide open vista of experience and emotion in yielding and surrendering through openness, through acceptance, and through perspective in this precious Now. It’s powerful, and so far… incredibly difficult to share. It’s a puzzle. All I have are words, and it isn’t about words.

I am not a missionary.

I find myself filled with conviction, hope, and experiencing my life very differently these days, and no amount of word-sharing actually has any real potential to communicate that every bit of what I have gained is freely available to anyone who chooses to embrace it for themselves. It is incredibly hard to watch people I love choose to suffer. It is a whole other lesson in life’s curriculum that the choices of others belong to them entirely as much as my own belong to me. Another facet of ‘we are each having our own experience’, certainly, and it simply isn’t productive to shout ‘Be the change!’ 🙂

So here it is, a lovely morning. Today I am kind. I am content. I am compassionate. I am eager to embrace the new day, mindfully, and savoring each precious moment.

A lighthouse is a good metaphor today.

Tags a convert a novice and a missionary walk into a bar, a soldier of peace in the army of love, be the student, buddhist boot camp, choose wisely, love devotion and surrender, mindfulness for beginners, mindfulness matters, ptsd, read a book, save yourself!, speak softly, TBI, words words words, yoga and meditation

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

A Day After the Day After A Day at the Beach

October 19, 2013 //

Words or pictures? I have both. I have observations and thoughts. I have anecdotes and memories. I have moments of incredible heart, of epiphany, of transcendent serenity and wholeness, of unexpected tears. My day at the beach was an important day of self-care, characterized by free will, and pure experience of undefined identity; seeing those words in text I find myself doubting they can be ‘understood’. Sort of a ‘you had to be there’ thing, perhaps – but maybe you have been there?

Dawn came before I departed. I left my devices behind, except my smart-phone, which I shut down and put away. I reached my downtown transfer point and realized that stopping for a coffee was suddenly a bit risky – how would I know the time?? I dispelled the moment of panic with laughter, remembering how many watches I used to own, and how incredibly tied to time I once was, long ago. My recollection was that the ‘local drugstore’ would have cheap watches… up and down the aisles, no luck… the man at the counter, when asked, pointed a surly finger toward a lonely small carousel of reasonably priced time pieces. I grabbed a simple one that did not offend my eye and went on my way, finding myself actually quite delighted with its simplicity, and my freedom.

The bus trip was quite pleasant, and at this time of year predictably uncrowded. I spent the time in meditation, and found myself enveloped in the warmth of my own real regard and compassion for my experience, soothed and loved and feeling very safe. I arrived at my destination and felt as if I stepped off the bus into a new world; I was at the beach, and on my own.

Like a whisper, a horizon more implied than visible.

I found the misty, foggy morning quite appropriate to my mood and my mission; to take on the day fully mindfully, to spend it in meditation and consideration of ‘where I am and where I am going’, and to use the solo time to take care of me. The gray sky blotted out the prominent local features on the coastline: the large rocks, the lighthouse, hotels and houses along the shore in the distance. There were a small handful of people along the beach, and plentiful footprints in the sand to remind me that no one of us is every truly alone.

…and I walked…

As if every morning’s commute and every evening’s return home were in preparation for this, I walked along the beach in silent contemplation and soft awe. I walked the beach up and down from where Ecola Creek pours into the sea, to a place called Silver Point, a couple of times over the course of the day. The map gives the impression the distance between those points is about 3 miles, when I look at it now, but at the time I had no sense of distance.

As seen on a map, ‘my beach’ on this day.

As the day unfolded, the mist began to lift (in the late afternoon it would even be sunny and clear). The pictures reconnect me to my thoughts in-the-moment. I have long counted on pictures to do that for me.

As the mist lifts…

…and I continue to walk…

…the looming dark features of Haystack Rock are revealed.

The day was more than the sum of my pictures, though, and as I walked, I observed the waves crashing in, on the shore, and the understandings evolving within as well. I was open to my own heart, my own understanding, and feeling myself awaken as I walked on.

I took a seat on a big driftwood log for a time, to meditate, and breath deep of the sea breezes.

This guy joined me for a while, just standing there, next to me, gazing out to the sea with me.

Watching the waves crash in, one by one. Hearing the sounds and feeling the grandeur of it.

…Watching…observing my own thoughts as waves, themselves…

…one after another…peace and contentment settling in.

The waves gave the appearance of surging forth directly from the sky, or the horizon. Rested, I resumed my walking, and began to consider things; applying new understanding to old hurts, testing time-worn assumptions that have not served me well, nurturing my will and my intention – and my good heart.

The tide recedes, as tides do; forces of nature are difficult to deny.

I realize I am hungry. A bite of lunch becomes more than an intention, it becomes a plan. I walk up from the beach to the street above via a beautiful staircase, chuckling at the tsunami route warning sign. Realistically, if I had to run up those stairs to be safe from a tsunami, I would probably drop dead from the effort before reaching the goal; I am not yet quite that fit, and running up a long staircase doesn’t sound likely to ‘save my life’. lol

Sometimes getting from ‘here’ to ‘there’ requires a climb.

A bite of lunch and a cup of tea later, and I headed back to the beach. The sun had broken through the morning fog, and the landscape had changed.

Changed by the afternoon sun.

I found a staircase down to the beach; an unlikely surprise, itself, whimsically mysterious.

Strangely mysterious…

…I descend…

…the descent becomes a gentle meditation of its own…

…a metaphor about journeys and transitions… and becoming.

I look back from the beach, and as with so many mysteries, it seems to have disappeared.

I repeated the journey of the morning, up and down the beach, returning to the joy and moments of unexpected emotional depth as I walked.

The day continued, and evolved. I met people, and spoke only honest heartfelt words. I shared myself freely. I met love, in person; she was grieving her loss with grace. I met terror and rage wearing some face other than my own, but contained within a heart that knows some of the pain I know, myself, and in our meeting there was calm and healing. I watched children play in tide pools, utterly without fear. I spoke with artisans and artists who were also war veterans, and I met aged beatniks, who had lived, loved, and played with great heroes of intellect of another time. I heard words spoken that were worth hearing. I saw great beauty, both natural and crafted, and I felt healing happening within myself – because I allowed it, and accepted it. It was a tremendous day. There are so many more pictures… so many more words. The thing is, though…

I can share a picture of an object of great beauty…

…or a photograph of a moment of inspiration…

…I can share my experience in great detail…

…or consider it in the context of much bigger things…

…but I am having my own experience, and walking my own path.

I can only share with you as much as you are open to, and not a word of it, not a single image, has more value than you take from it, yourself, by choice. It isn’t about ‘being right’ or convincing, or persuading.

There’s still so much to feel, to experience, to choose or not choose. But…

A walk on the beach doesn’t last ‘forever’, however timeless it feels.

Evening did eventually call to me.

I take a last look at the beach.

The wait for the bus heading home was interesting on its own. I shared the time and space with a woman, probably about my age, and it was a strange happenstance. A sort of fun house mirror of selves staring back at each other across a strange gulf in values, and mismatched appearances. Me, the middle-class looking middle-aged woman in a beige trench coat over a practical black hoodie, emblazoned with the name of my corporate overlord, and she, more timeless, yet strangely stern of visage, wearing the uniform of hippies and flower-children, with just the most vague hint of affluence peeking round the edges and seams; we surprised each other. Our conversation lead here and there and ended with an understanding that we were not at all who we appeared to be. Me, the seeker, the student, a work in progress, a kitten in a strange house… She, convinced, certain, unyielding, and subtly disapproving. That’s okay with me; I already knew how deceiving appearances can be.

The night bus ride was uneventful and quiet. I was tired, and eager to be home. I wanted more than anything at that moment to be welcomed home into the warmth and light of home and heart by my loves, imagining them to be eager to hang on my every excited word. After a day alone I yearned for intimacy and connection, feeling very much like I would somehow be so much better at it for having had the day at the beach…

I arrived home, tired. The house was quiet. One partner awake to greet me, another lost in sleep and dreams. A pleasant enough homecoming, although truly I was too tired by that time for any real enthusiasm for it, and more emotional than I realized. My TBI occasionally fucks me over on those sorts of moments, happening as they often do at the end of an arduous or tiring experience, or simply a very long day. My fatigue results in more volatility, less understanding, more confusion, less resilience. It was time to rest. I’m grateful that I have partners who understand. First one, then the other (who had wakened to greet me), slipped off to bed and I was again… alone. I gave in to exhaustion, hormones, and emotion, and quietly wept for a while, not really understanding why, and not finding any real need to investigate or inquire. They were harmless tears, heartfelt tears, gentle tears, that told only of fatigue and tender humanity, and no great despair or pain. I felt clean and whole, and simply capable of feeling powerful emotions, beyond what I could contain, and so, they spilled out from my eyes, slipping down my cheeks, past the smile that sill lingered from the power of the day.

That’s really it… my day at the beach. I’m still turning it over in my thoughts, finding my way to greater understanding, cherishing the moments. I doubt my words or pictures have any hope of doing the experience real justice. I’m okay with that. You are having your own experience, too, and you will find meaning where you do, and take it as having value if you will, and if it serves you. I’m delighted with this morning, with the writing, with looking again and again at all the pictures; choosing just the right ones to share.

Today is quiet. The house is sleeping. I woke, unexpectedly, ahead of my alarm clock – which wasn’t turned on at all. lol. The dawn unfolded unnoticed as I wrote, content within my own thoughts. My latte grew cold. It is the weekend, and for me, the end of that – tomorrow is a work day, and today is committed in advance to making ready for another week. Whatever the day holds, I hope to find contentment, and to treat myself and others well, with consideration, kindness, and compassion. They are also having their own experience.

Today I hope to choose wisely, to love well, and to build rather than to destroy. 😀

Tags a day at the beach, appearances are deceiving, Cannon Beach, fog and sunshine, Haystack Rock, love, meditation, mindfulness, ptsd, sound and vision, taking care of me, TBI, tell me of your home world, time, timeless, what matter most, when I'm alone with you

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

Myths and Realities

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You Know It Ain’t Easy…

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The Pen Is Mighty

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Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise

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A Day After the Day After A Day at the Beach

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