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A Good Night’s Sleep and a Cup of

January 13, 2016 //
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…Well…hardly ‘coffee’ … and you may be sipping something quite different. (I’ve read somewhere that more people drink tea than coffee, and considered it myself this morning.) Maybe you didn’t even sleep well? I woke in the night to the sound of a cough next door, which caused me a moment of concern before drifting back to sleep; my neighbors are elders of many years – and my bedroom is separated from their by the differing floor plans which put their living room between the bedrooms of the two units, I find myself hoping no one is seriously ill. When the alarm goes off, I am alert – reaching to switch it off, and listening for sounds of wakefulness next door. Still, generally speaking, I woke feeling well-rested in spite of that.

Wait…why ‘hardly coffee’? Because I’m out of coffee beans, and don’t keep instant in the house. lol I noticed last night before bed, and took no action on the basis of ‘I can get caffeine at work soon enough’. We’ll see, eh? This cup of dark warmth here next to me is half decaf – in order to get enough beans through the grinder for a whole cup of coffee, I added decaf to it so… yep. It’s not the usual brew, and it won’t have the usual wake-me-up factor. I begin sipping it almost reluctantly, as if my brain is guiding my will via ‘who cares’ signals, but once I overcome my vague feeling of dismissiveness about the coffee this morning, I am finding it quite tasty and suitable to the morning. Assumptions, expectations – humans. (Note to self: just go ahead and give yourself a chance to enjoy things without forecasting the outcome, would you please?)

My back cracks and pops through my morning yoga, but the pain I am in is somewhat diminished having gone ahead and practiced my way through my practice – each change of posture accompanied by an assurance to myself that “I can always stop after this one…” I just keep going until I am finished. (Is it going to be that day?) I shower, dress, take medication… each step in my morning routine feeling subtly forced, like a child being pushed along on a school morning. I am the grown up in this house! Yeah… but I am also the laughing naked child dashing through the house, resisting ‘what must be’ for all those other opportunities… to play. I earnestly want to ‘skip school’ today – just not go to work, just not do ‘the thing’. I don’t really want to be the grown up today. I’d like to stay home and paint, or read, or listen to music, or garden. All the truly worthwhile things life offers for our enjoyment – and for which I do not get paid. LOL “Welcome to Adulthood” I hear the woman in the mirror mutter back to me – out loud. Considering I am alone with my thoughts in this wee haven, that just seems mean – it wasn’t at all necessary to speak the words! Besides… I haven’t really had my coffee yet, and I don’t want to hear conversation just now.

If I only see what is unpleasant, if I only hear unpleasant words, will it be a surprise if my experience is also unpleasant? I can choose my perspective.

If I only see what is unpleasant, if I only hear unpleasant words, will it be a surprise if my experience is also unpleasant? I can choose my perspective.

It isn’t a bad morning. It is a fairly ordinary, very human, sort of morning. I’m okay with that – as I said, it isn’t bad. Is it good? My traveling partner would most certainly point out that I am phrasing it in the negative to say the morning ‘isn’t bad’ (“How is it?” he might ask…) I might answer “It’s okay, better than bad… not noteworthy…I’m enjoying it well enough.” All rather vague, but all… okay. 🙂 It is in the nature of contentment that the fancy adjectives and superlatives get a little dusty from disuse. lol

The work week is at a half-way point. I am eager to hear word on the apartment I’d like to move into, but I am not impatient about it, since it is happening rather faster than I expected as it is. The weekend is ahead of me… a date with my traveling partner Friday night… friends over to plan shared hikes this year on Saturday…Sunday…well…I’ve no idea. The housekeeping doesn’t do itself around here, so perhaps Sunday will be spent on practical matters, and invested in myself entirely? I find myself wondering… once the chaos and damage has all been sorted out, and put away, and once the gates of The Nightmare City are closed permanently and locked, and once life has proven it’s point about lasting contentment… then what? Does such a thing ever occur in life? Would I stop writing? I haven’t really had to look at any of that realistically in earlier years; it wasn’t a realistic likelihood in the past – it may be the future. Life isn’t about perfection and standing still, though, and I am confident that life’s curriculum is more vast than any single lifetime, so… yeah. Probably still writing for a while. LOL 🙂

I tend to think about work and life very separately, and sometimes wistfully imagine that I make my living doing something profoundly important to mankind, something remarkable, or something meaningful… I wonder what that would be like? Ah, but I remember in this same moment things that do matter. The gratitude of the young employee whose needs were met using unconventional solutions. I remember a day when some particularly elegant piece of analysis improved efficiency by illuminating a challenge in a way that allowed it to also be easily addressed. I remember great moments of partnering with colleagues on exciting projects. I start feeling renewed excitement and commitment as my thoughts shift toward the professional side of my life. It’s complicated. I’d like more time to paint, more time to live my own agenda – I don’t actually hate what I do, as much as find that it competes with what I love. Perhaps I am almost grown up enough to tackle this one, too? 🙂

Today is a good day to live each moment right here in the moment I am in, enjoying the thing I am doing now with my entire awareness. Doing so tends to change my view of the world. 🙂

 

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, Words

Finding a Way

May 6, 2015 //
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Another lovely quiet morning follows a lovely quiet evening. I have feelings that fit figures of speech such as ‘I’m really on to something!’ or ‘I found it!’. I am aware that these feelings, like any feelings, are feelings – lacking substance or reality independent of my experience. I enjoy them without becoming invested in them, or building expectations that this sensation of comfort, contentment, and some not yet clearly defined feeling are permanent or lasting. No emotions are permanent or particularly lasting. Emotions come and go.  Our inner world is very fluid, very malleable, very changeable. Change is. For now, though, these are the feelings I am experiencing, and it is a pleasant quiet morning.

One moment, one flower - we each blossom in our own time.

One moment, one flower – we each blossom in our own time.

The title is not ‘finding my way’ this morning…because somehow that implies there may be only one such way of  my own, and I am coming to understand that while ‘my way’ is my own, and my journey is my own, and my choices are my own…there are so many options on a such vast menu of choices that this morning I feel less comfortable implying that any one way is the only one, mine or otherwise. I am my own cartographer, and I choose my steps, choose my path, choose my actions (and even choose what I think those choices may be).

This week I have had multiple opportunities to do what I can to be ‘supportive’ for friends suffering one or more of life’s hurts. (I am not very good at it, although I mean well.) People hurt. People suffer. Sometimes people even choose to do so. That’s hard for me to watch. I want to say ‘hey, choose differently…’, and sometimes I even do say something quite like that, but I know from my own suffering that it can be hard to hear messages of free will and choice and good self-care when we hurt. What is it about the suffering that can make it so difficult to turn away from it, when we suffer? It is undeniably true, in my own experience, that practicing mindfulness, meditation, and good self-care are often quite enough to ease my suffering, however much I am hurting. It is also equally true that knowing this is not enough to ensure that I reliably take advantage of that knowledge, myself. I see the challenge reflected back at me in the suffering of friends and those dear to me; they, too, find it difficult to turn away from suffering, and to choose good self-care, balance, perspective, and to take advantage of the tools in their emotional toolkit to sooth their own suffering through careful application of some verbs and choices (and many of them are not even a little bit ‘broken’).  Life’s curriculum, this week, is enhanced by case studies. We are each having our own experience… we are all in this together.

What is it that stops us from embracing all our choices, or from maintaining broad perspective, or from remembering that ‘this too shall pass’? I am still more about questions that answers.

There is value in considering the vastness of our potential, and our options.

There is value in considering the vastness of our potential, and our options.

Today is a good day to share without pushing, and to listen deeply. Today is a good day for affection, good-natured appreciation of the small things, and kindness. Today is a good day to be practical, and to be hopeful. Today is a good day to make good choices. Today is a good day to enjoy what matters most, and to invest deeply in what I love. Today is a good day to change a world.

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

Yesterday’s News

March 24, 2015 //
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There’s a quality every yesterday shares with all the other yesterdays; they are in the past. Sometimes that’s a sad thing, because we enjoyed the day so much while it was ‘today’. I will admit that yesterday – the yesterday that was most recently today, and is not now, having become yesterday in the most clearly defined way – is not a day I’m sad to see in the past. Yesterday was a difficult day. I hadn’t slept well the night before, but woke feeling good and enjoying the morning, it didn’t last because… well… hormones, mostly, I guess. Not much to be done there but wait it out, treat myself gently, and show great consideration and courtesy to others – and hope for the best.

The evening was okay. No big blow ups, no significant stress, no baggage; I retired for the evening shortly after I got home, moodily wrote for a while, and crashed out early. The writing won’t see sunlight; it was hormone-fueled, angst-y, discontent, and sad. Not share worthy, just very human. Keeping to myself was more a matter of caring for my family, than a self-care practice; the storms and tantrums that sometimes result from the combination of fatigue, hormones, and a disinhibiting brain injury are pretty nasty to go through – and quite possibly worse for the loved ones who must helplessly bear witness. It is by far the easier to choice to reduce the potential for such things completely, by withdrawing to a quiet private space with less stimuli. I kept an eye on the clock and was firm with myself about going to bed ‘on time’; I needed the sleep, for sure, but the routine itself provides structure that helps me maintain balance.

I slept last night. I slept deeply, and I slept through the night. I needed the sleep. I woke with some difficulty when the alarm went off, and I suspect if I were horizontal right now, I’d be asleep in seconds. The hormones are a component of my sleep challenges, which is more obvious now that they are entirely of the replacement variety. At some points in my natural cycle, as well as on this replacement, there’s a particular point at which my estrogen level seems to drive wakefulness; I don’t know with any certainty if it is the high or the low, or an intermediate level that complements some other feature of my biology. I’m not doing the science – I am living the experience. My observations are subjective.

We all need restful moments, and real rest, to recharge for the next challenge.

I need restful moments, and real rest, to recharge for the next challenge.

When I am tired or run down, great mornings hold greater potential to become difficult days later on; I lack emotional resilience when I am fatigued. By the time I am really aware that the emotional weather of the day is changing, I’m often already drenched in the sudden downpour, unprepared. I think I could easily address the ‘unprepared’ piece, though, if I go forward with more awareness of how fatigue does affect me – and that the effect is often not felt immediately, but later in the day. Being prepared is sometimes enough to change the outcome of events that tend to follow a pattern. 🙂

Today is a whole new day. I am still dealing with the hormones; hot flashes and nausea this morning. I’m in a decent mood, though, and I feel rested. Being well-rested is a very big deal.

I hear the household waken, early. I resist the impulse to rush into morning interactions; I’m quite honestly not at my best first thing, and I’m still waiting for my pain medication, and morning coffee to kick in for the day. 🙂 Good self-care is sometimes about simple practices, and discipline learned over a lifetime; I try to stay to myself first thing in the morning, until I am really awake.

It’s interesting to note that I’ve been finding a great deal of value, recently, in reading literature regarding development of executive function in children; it tends to shed light on the tantrums, the fury, and loss of emotional regulation…things we see, and even expect, in young children but that appall us in adults. The literature has enhanced my understanding of why some practices do seem to genuinely improve the state of my overall executive function over time, while other practices provide soothing, comfort, or ease the social impact of behavior widely viewed as uncomfortable or inappropriate from a woman of 52 (even by family members). Even practicing good practices, there is a desirable balance of outcomes to find; if all my best self-care practices are focused on easing the impact on loved ones, rather than improving my own experience, I could predictably be facing a whole lot of resentment down the road – and no real change in my own experience, internally. If I focus entirely on self-care practices that tend to take a longer view, improving my emotional resilience over time, potentially building lost executive function, but take no steps to ease the day-to-day stress of living alongside this injury, complicated by post-traumatic stress, I am less likely to make the progress I am seeking – because I will likely lack support from loved ones who don’t ‘see the work in progress’ as easily day-to-day, and don’t benefit from it, themselves.

A lovely spot for a moment of meditation; is that about time or place?

A lovely spot for a moment of meditation; is that about time or place?

Balance. Perspective. Verbs. (Your results may vary.)

Today is a good day to smile. Today is a good day to practice good practices. Today is a good day to exist right now, unconcerned by yesterday’s moments. Today is a good day for good practices, and the secure knowledge that incremental change over time can be a subtle thing – but it is a thing. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Hormone Hell, Menopause, Mindfulness, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights

Me First

March 14, 2015 //
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I’m still sick. I’m taking advantage of the weekend to take care of my health. I have no other plans today. I am still hopeful that I’ll be over this in time for my camping trip in a few days…if not, I’ll have to decide whether to cancel or just go and tough it out – maybe find out just exactly what I’m made of under even more trying conditions.

I giggle at myself thinking about my middle-aged, suburbanite, white-collar self considering a few days of camping in a state park very near to home to anything like ‘trying conditions’ or a test of endurance of any sort. Somewhere in the distance of time long past, a much younger, more rugged me looks on with some measure of friendly disdain – not meaning to be mean, but me then was just not that patient with people’s notions. lol

Not quite wilderness close to home.

Not quite wilderness close to home.

So sure, today I am putting me first, but that’s not the point of the title at all. “Me First” is a practice, and it’s one that I am currently turning over in my head to add to my SuperBetter  game; I haven’t decided if it serves best as a ‘Quest’ or a ‘Power Up’. Over my morning coffee, I answer some basic questions for myself, such as ‘is this something I do for a course correction, or an emotional boost, or is it something I need to practice, reach for as a goal, and strive to achieve?’ and ‘is this an experience?’ and ‘can I put a face to it?’ Most of my ‘Bad Guys’ are issues and challenges (personal demons) that I can easily ‘face’ more effectively if they wear actual faces. lol

“Anxiety” 10″ x 14″ acrylic on canvas w/ceramic 2011

“Anxiety” 10″ x 14″ acrylic on canvas w/ceramic 2011

My “Me First” practice is a cognitive tool to improve emotional resilience by building a sense of perspective, improving my ability to respond to others with compassion, and to foster quick recognition of shared human experience, when I may be inclined to react in a judgmental way, or feeling resentful. “Me First” is simply the practice of observing the judgment or resentment with a high level of honesty and acceptance, and mindful awareness of how I, myself, experience a similar circumstance ‘if the shoe were on the other foot’. I put myself in the other person’s experience very deliberately, and challenge myself to understand how it may be something we have in common, and how human it is. Before I start emotionally or intellectually ‘stoning’ someone, I practice looking to myself – is there really room to criticize? (There rarely is.) Is there room for compassion, encouragement, a moment of humor or Schadenfreude? (There usually is.) Instead of being critical – and understanding that criticism is generally a poorly worded request for change – is there something I can do meet my own needs more simply (like making a clear and gentle request for change)? Can I apply that understanding and perspective to this other human being and possibly do something to meet their needs? That’s the lovely thing about my “Me First” practice – it’s not ‘me first over and above whatever you need, and go fuck yourself for your trouble’, not at all; it’s ‘let me take care of me first, work out some of these issues I’ve obviously got, get my head right and see what we can do together, to meet shared needs, and understand each other’.  Before I criticize someone else, I launch this practice and I check myself – and use the object lesson to work on me, first – because realistically, I don’t actually get to work on anyone else. None of us do. Not really – and attempting to take that power of self management, and autonomy away from someone with criticism, judgmental remarks, or intimidation and controlling behaviors is in a category of ‘bad acts’ I consider emotionally abusive. I definitely don’t want to be doing something to other people that I consider abuse.

What a wonderful thing – you get to make all your own choices about these things, yourself, and my notions of what is or is not abusive doesn’t dictate your choices! Fantastic! Ideally, it’s all sort of self-adjusting, isn’t it? If we treat someone poorly, or abuse them (physically or emotionally), surely they don’t stick around for that, and we find ourselves bereft and alone, as we would surely deserve for our bad acts…right? Well, not always, and sometimes tragically so. Learning not to stick around for more abuse is one of the things I work on, myself. It’s not always easy. My sense of loyalty is far more well-developed than my sense of when I may be over-compromising my values, or allowing myself to be mistreated emotionally. As a younger woman, some portion of my identity was wrapped up in whether my relationships ‘succeeded’, but the definition of success wasn’t my own, and I stuck around for some heinous shit. We are each having our own experience, too. What injures me, or hits damaged bits related to my PTSD, or may be of more concern because of my TBI, may not at all be what hurts you as an individual. (Clearly there are some experiences that could universally be recognized as abuse, but this is not about that.)

Learning good self-care, for me, also means learning to recognize when I am treated well, when I am treated poorly – and what amount of poor treatment is unacceptable, rather than an incidental and unintended by product of someone’s humanity. So I practice treating myself well, and I also practice treating others well; because I am not a blameless victim in my experience of life – I am living it, and I too make poor choices, or fall short of ideals, or ‘drop the ball in the big game’. I’m very human. I honestly don’t find it acceptable to criticize someone for issues I have myself, things I am also prone to do, or stuff that’s just shared human experience needing to be managed or learned from; so I am practicing doing something differently, and walking my own path to be the woman I most want to be, myself, on my own terms.

We each walk our own path, paved with our own choices.

We each walk our own path, paved with our own choices.

I’m also not smug about this stuff, and I struggle. These are my challenges, more than my triumphs, and I have more questions than answers. You’re welcome to take whatever value you find in my words; your results may vary. There are verbs involved. 🙂

I tried learning to treat others well, without taking care of me, without addressing my own needs first, without really putting in the time to learn what treating others well really meant. It was not an effective effort.  I don’t find attempting to care for me to the exclusion of treating others well to be a good fit; it nearly always feels like I am treating people poorly as a default decision. Balance wins again, and perspective; treating myself well matters a lot, and treating others well isn’t even truly possible to do with skill if I don’t start with me…but putting myself first by taking good treatment away from others turns out not to be very good self-care at all. It’s quite an interesting puzzle.  I found the realization that ‘good treatment’ is defined by the person experiencing it, rather than the person taking the action being experienced, very valuable; it’s not about the intention of the person delivering the words or behaviors at all, and that’s important to understand.

Endure the journey, or embrace it, this choice, too, is yours.

Endure the journey, or embrace it, this choice, too, is yours.

I am sick today, and it’s raining; today is a good day for puzzles. Today is a good day for first-rate self-care. Today is a good day to treat the hearts of others just as well as I treat my own – knowing that I treat my own heart very well indeed, well… practicing the practices, at least. There’s still a journey ahead. 🙂

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Categories Anxiety, art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, solo hiking, Spring, The Big 5, Words

The Trick to Balance

March 6, 2015 //
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Weird day. I don’t know that it could easily be called ‘good’ or ‘bad’; it was the sort of day that defies such simple judgments. Perhaps that’s best. This moment here is very pleasant and quiet.

Evening on the edge of spring.

Evening on the edge of spring.

I recently went to a yoga class at a nearby studio. I enjoyed it greatly, and it gave me some cool things to work on – one of them is balance. I’ve tended to skirt postures that test my balance ‘too much’ out of fear of falling. In the class I attended, balance was central theme of this particular teacher’s sequence that night. Simply balance. Simple balance; most of the time we were focused on simplicity and elegance, and none of the poses were notoriously difficult or fancy ones. I didn’t exactly excel, but it opened my eyes to the need to improve my balance.

I love a good metaphor.

Tonight I am treating myself gently, and enjoying the evening quietly. From this quiet chill vantage point, it’s even tempting to smile when I think of the day; there is a lot to appreciate. Balance doesn’t have to be fancy.

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Categories Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships
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