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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 //
8

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

All Too Human

March 16, 2013 //
1

I’m home sick today, plans cancelled, wrapped in comfy clothes and a bathrobe, unconcerned with much of anything besides being comfortable. It’s no dire illness. It isn’t terminal. It won’t be chronic or particularly prolonged, I’m sure. It’s really just a cold virus of some sort. Miserable, irritating, fatiguing, but it isn’t a crisis. It is, however, very human.  So here I sit, pretending I am still drinking my tasty mocha, but it went cold a while ago, and started to become ‘decor’, poised on the coffee table, reminding me how nice being loved feels when I am not feeling well, myself.

Yesterday was a good day, and I spent it working on things that matter to me, heart and soul, mind and body, and I didn’t write at all. By the time I got to thinking the sorts of thoughts that inspire me to write, it was late, I was clearly already ill, and sleep seemed the more rational, nurturing choice. I did get my hair cut, and it was an incredibly fun experience, as it turned out, and I love the new look. Funny what we hesitate to do over our fears and insecurities.  I’m a little glad I’m sick this morning, in one respect, it tended to temper  my first sight of my short hair ‘first thing in the morning’. lol. Oh my… I did not really think ahead to ‘morning hair’!  Yeah, I admit, that first look, first thing, was far more startling that having my hair cut short in the first place, and being ill kept me from taking it at all seriously.

I find myself bouncing between amusement and annoyance that it took me so long to be in a place to heal my heart. Pain sucks. Meditation practices and mindfulness practices have been around for thousands of years and are the basis of multiple cultures and philosophies, and yet, somehow I got to be 49 years old before ‘mindfulness’ became a word in my vocabulary, or a concept for living well that was within reach for me…one day I will be well and whole enough to contemplate the meaning of my life’s experiences, trauma and all, and have a sense of the value it all has, to who I am in my here and now. For now, I am content with making progress, with learning new practices that bring me more balance than I had before, more peace than I understood I could experience, and the gentle warmth of love and compassion for this amazing vessel I am wrapped in, this loving heart contained within it, and this rich life I am privileged to experience.

I hope your Saturday is a good one, and if it sucks, I hope that has something of value for you as days go by.

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Categories Healthy Living, Menopause, Mindfulness, Perspective, Relationships, Turning 50, Uncategorized, women

Troubleshooting My Connectivity

March 14, 2013 //
2

“Thank you for calling technical support…”

Today I am contemplating all the times in my life I have endeavored, with limited success, to ‘troubleshoot my connectivity’ in relationships.  This year I finally recognized I was not sufficiently skilled, knowledgeable, or experienced with what makes connecting emotionally with another human being work, to successfully complete troubleshooting my challenges with building healthy relationships.  I certainly didn’t have the right tools to fix glitches, programming errors, or resolve the issues I have regularly found myself facing. This year I ‘called technical support’.

Before I say more about that, I’d like to say something about the way our choices in language, even grammar, can influence our thinking.  Consider the sentence “I learned X about relationship building.” It implies, fairly specifically, that the learning is completed, and in the past, and that something is now known – and tends to limit change and additional growth, by expressing the gained knowledge as a static thing. On the other hand, the sentence “I am learning X about relationship building.” equally clearly implies that learning is ongoing, making it subject to additional potential for change and growth. I rather like change and growth; it is taking me new and wonderful places in life. I am discontinuing the practice of referring to learning in the past tense, since I don’t think I can conclusively show that any one thing I have learned is truly static and unchanging (except, perhaps, Euclidean geometry, but even there – I just don’t know everything!). So, onward to the future, hopefully always learning.

So…I called technical support, metaphorically speaking, and got some help with ‘troubleshooting my connectivity’. I am learning some important things about healthy relationships, and building and sustaining close connected relationships. I am learning:

  • that mindful listening is not about preparing a reply, waiting for my turn to talk, or ‘getting a word in edgewise’. Mindful listening requires my entire devoted attention to the person talking, hearing their words, and giving my attention to understanding their full intended meaning.
  • that hearing words is different than listening, and often results in urgent replies, or interruptions that are not relevant to the key point being communicated. Listening is about meaning, and may require clarifying questions before a response to the communicated points is appropriate. ‘Communication’ is about the meaning, not the words.
  • that when I am immersed in my own emotional experience, and stray from being mindful-in-the-moment, I find it difficult to listen to someone else, to be compassionate, and to connect with them.  (That experience is not about whether or not they – or I – want to connect, but more whether or not we each allow and accept that connection.)
  • that compassionate observation of others’ experiences with connecting with each other is a valuable ‘blackboard’ at the front of the classroom of life, and as with any other classroom, in front of any other teacher, if I am passing notes or daydreaming I may miss something important – and every day of life is a learning experience, but every day is also a pop quiz – being mindful results in a much better experience. 😀

Thursday… and it was a short night, but I woke in a good place in spite of that. I’m feeling a bit under the weather, but my health through the winter has been good, so I guess I’m overdue for a sore throat. lol. It’s hardly worth mentioning, although if I end up quite ill, I probably won’t write for a couple days. It still looks to be a lovely day.

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Categories Anxiety, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Turning 50, women
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