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Just One Thing

December 19, 2013 //
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Yesterday I spent the day gently, most of it, on mindful service to the small creatures in my life. I spent hours on aquatic gardening: doing a water change in my community tank, some pruning, planting, tidying things up, acclimating the new tetras that have been in quarantine, and generally spending the larger part of the day with the fish.  It was soothing and serene, and I definitely needed to support my inner stillness after a morning of unexpected turmoil.  Tending the aquarium was a good choice to get back on track and feeling calm and balanced.

The secret life of shrimp.

The secret life of shrimp.

It was a moment of shared humor to find myself discussing the aqua gardening, and commenting that I doubted there were any shrimp surviving, since I simply never see them…I gestured to the tank and…there’s a shrimp, right up front! LOL I took a moment to snap a picture, because I wanted to be sure later that I didn’t doubt my recollection of having seen him. 😀  All that cleaning and moving things around must have disturbed any shrimp in the community. I found several more lurking quietly in the Java fern. 🙂

What made yesterday sort itself out in such a wonderful way wasn’t heartfelt apologies, or emotional ‘laying down of arms’, or occupying time in spaces away from conflict, although those things generally help.  For me, it was more about taking time to be deeply engaged in a favored activity, a needful task of some complexity, that I gave my entire attention to for a while to a ‘greater good’. Mindful service. In this case, mindful service to my own needs, and my aquarium. Simple gardening on some level, and gardening is something I know puts my heart and head right, when I take the time to allow it, to pursue it, and to invest in the good in it.  (Experience tells me I could pay lip service to the idea of ‘mindful service’ and just go through some motions, and perform tasks to completion, while investing in being hurt and angry, and get nothing in return but a sense of futility and resentment – will and intent matter; results also require action.)

The day was a good one, morning challenges passed quickly, comfortably, and were quickly forgotten. That’s more progress, and it feels like something I can begin to count on. 🙂  I admittedly enjoy tallying up the improvements in emotional resilience, reductions in volatility, new tools, new skills, new experiences of living in a general state of contentment, and comfort within myself…it’s been a year (368 days) since my sense of self began to unravel in a terrible way, a process that took weeks, consumed the holiday experience, and ultimately found me as only a shell of myself, considering choosing to end my own life… What a difference a year can make!  I don’t discuss those dark days in any detail with people, even people I love very much; too much pain to share, too few words to express it without sharing the pain more than the understanding. I feel hopeful that those days are well behind me now, and nothing more than a memory.

The mindfulness thing was the key. Still is. There are so many times I wish I could convincingly say “no, really, try this“, to friends and loved ones with their own challenges, their own suffering… but generally, as with my own experience in my own life, there is a state of readiness needed to even hear the suggestion in a usable way. I was once someone willing to say, with conviction and based on my own experience, that I had ‘tried meditation and it didn’t do anything for me’.  “I tried meditation…” No, no I had not. Not like this. I had always been focused on focus, focused on concentration, focused on clarity – focused on thought. I did not understand ‘awareness’, ‘stillness’, or observation. I did not understand the importance of breathing. I’m not sure what I ‘understand’ now…but I practice. 🙂  It is enough.

A lot more is ‘enough’, now. I hope to more deeply explore ‘sufficiency’ in 2014, to be more deeply and mindfully in service to home, hearth, and to myself, to ask more questions, and be more comfortable with uncertainty, to continue my studies of life and love, and to connect more deeply and more intimately with my loves, with my friends, with my family. I’ll get started today – it’s a lovely day to change the world.

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

Days Go By

December 17, 2013 //
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I rather expected writing daily would become almost effortless simply by gaining 40 hours of my time back to my own calendar, my own agenda, my own experience. I apparently had an oversimplified understanding of time, effort, and my ability to set cognitive and practical boundaries with loved ones. It’s the holidays! Admittedly, my attention is easily diverted toward The  Holiday Express railway I was surprised with this weekend, circling the heavily laden tree (would it be possible to hang even one additional light or ornament?). I have entertaining daydreams of scale homes and businesses, a future holiday village, some kind of year-round display. Yep. I do actually dig the train that much. I find myself wondering if my partners are surprised by how much joy it brings me.

The holiday train my partner surprised me with this year. :-D

The holiday train my partner surprised me with this year. 😀

My musings bring me back to history, and the contemplation of ‘who I am’ relative to my current relationships, relative to former relationships, other times in my life, other careers, jobs, homes, other trains…We each have such a rich history, such an amazing personal narrative to share. I feel a momentary pang of sadness knowing that my loves were not – and can’t ever be – ‘with me there, then’ in other times, other places. Funny thing that ‘past’ bit – it’s over. It hasn’t all been good stuff, but it has been part of who I have become as I waded through the best and worst of my experiences.

I live very much in my ‘now’ these days. It has even grown to be a very comfortable fit, over the past year. The excitement and adventure of 2014 is beginning to develop as a sort of ‘horizon’ in the not-so-very-distant future.  I consider it each morning as I wake and unfold with a new dawn, briefly, before settling again into ‘now’. There are some opportunities to grow that have my attention, like “The Year of Enough“.  My own annual One Hour Facebook event is already on the calendar.  Articles about New Year’s resolutions are beginning to become common.  It’s the time of year that ‘the world’ gives us free rein to reconsider who we are, what we want, where we are headed. For a few weeks people seem more positive, more encouraging, more hopeful, more compassionate…like a soap-bubble, however exciting, colorful, and perfectly wonderful it appears, it bursts so easily, and is gone – generally in a fairly predictable way, and usually before the end of January. That is a sad thing. Let’s do it differently this year, shall we? Instead of resolving this or that, perhaps we can each simply choose to be the best of who we know we can, each day, each decision, each relationship…and see what comes of that? We’ll talk about it at the end of the year, share notes, and continue on. 😀

I’m hurting a lot this year, but it’s just pain. I made a good decision to take a few weeks for me, turns out I’m needing it just to be comfortable and well. I even find myself able to see ahead to a future in which I am not in therapy…not because I gave up on it since it wasn’t working, but because I will have learned what I can, and don’t need the ongoing significant support from outside my relationships, and my own self-care. That is quite possibly the very best gift I am getting this year.

I would like to write something more significant today, but I likely won’t.  (As I put a period on that sentence, I find myself smiling along to the beat of the song in my head, and thinking ‘what could be more significant that becoming awake, and aware, with my will and my values in harmony’?)  I don’t have words for the smile I feel on my face, and in my heart.

I have so many words to choose from, and I do love them so. This morning, though, I am thinking, too, about silence. I would also like to give that a try. Maybe next year…

Today I am content. Today I love with compassion and joy. Today I am humbled and awed by the simple beauty of being alive and aware. Today I will change the world. 😀

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Love, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, winter, Words

Somewhere Between

December 14, 2013 //
0

This morning I am somewhere between things. I’m between giving thanks and Yule gifting. I’m between the dark of night and the light of day, sitting in the pre-dawn gloom. I’m relaxing in a strange place somewhere between calm and pain, not quite in a great mood, not quite cross from being uncomfortable. The pain is what it is – it, too, is somewhere in between – between ‘as bad as it’s ever been’ and ‘really not so bad’. The morning is quiet, and there is nothing to move me from being between things to any extreme – and I am comfortable with that.

I am up early. Without the inflexible requirement to be up at a point early enough to prepare for a specific work schedule, I find I am waking just a bit later. 6 am isn’t exactly ‘sleeping in’, but it feels more relaxed than feeling my eyelids snap open sometime between 4 am and 4:55 am for an alarm that is set to go off at 5 am.  I still set my alarm – for 7 am. It has yet to actually go off. I wake at 6 am. It feels like sleeping in. I am content with feeling like I slept in and waking at 6 am. There is some quiet morning to time to explore my thoughts, to exist in silence, to tread lightly where the angst-y bits might find foothold, to meditate, to chill… to be.

Strange handful of days since I left the workforce. Some snow. Some fog. Some rain. Some twinkling holiday lights – more of that than much of anything else, happily, and the neighborhood is alight with holiday splendor. Time at home with family has been relaxed, gentle, easy… so little turmoil, so little of the everyday push-pull of grown people all ‘working on their shit’ and finding their way in their personal darkness. It’s chill and good and filled with the qualities that define ‘family’ and ‘love’ in the best ways. Happy Holidays, indeed.

Some snow.

Some snow.

Another view of the snowy day outside my window.

Another view of a snowy day outside my window.

Snow, gone. Fog follows.

Snow, gone. Fog follows.

I haven’t had a ‘Christmas vacation’ for years. I had reached a point, years ago, where ‘the win’ as a professional was to work partial days, or  perhaps a handful of work-from-home days, through the holidays rather than take real time off… I short-changed myself there. I didn’t understand ‘what really matters’ (at least to me). So. I am home for the holidays. It’s lovely.

Taking time to savor holiday memories.

Taking time to savor holiday memories.

I often find myself sifting through scraps of holiday memories of childhood with great delight and wonder.  My parents made some major holiday magic over the years, and every year I find myself astonished by the feats of Yule merriment and celebration they managed on such limited resources.  I enjoy celebrating the winter holidays, myself, and over the years I have also learned to make some holiday magic. This year, it is wonderful to also really relax, take a few deep breaths, and simply enjoy the days.

Today is a good day to be merry, and a good day to love. Today is a good day to be joyful. Today I will share smiles and words of encouragement. Today I will appreciate what I have. Today I will embrace contentment and sufficiency. Today I will change the world. 😀

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, winter

335 Days

December 9, 2013 //
7

It’s been 335 days since I began this blog, this journey, this cycle of change and growth. 335 days.  A bit less than 47 weeks. 8040 hours, give or take. More than 482,000 minutes. Time measured, time spent, some of it wasted, all of it precious, and limited; I am living a more deliberate, mindful life than I had been living. I continue to practice new skills, continue to refine new practices that I value, and that seem to enhance my every day experience. There are a lot of small changes in the way I experience my life, the qualities I bring to my relationships, the value I place on the experiences of others, their challenges, the lessons they offer me when our paths cross along the way.

Now there is time to consider it all as the end of the year approaches.

It has long been my practice to take time on New Year’s day to consider the year past, and the year unfolding ahead of me. An hour or two, at least, to really put some attention on whether I achieved my goals, where I’m headed, what I can improve, what my challenges are. Funny, I’ve been doing that since I was about 14… it wasn’t as helpful a practice as it could have been, because for so many years I let my thinking self control the agenda, the tone, and the outcome, and left no room for my observing self to bring stillness, calm, and insight. Light without illumination, in a manner of speaking. This year I have come so far, and much of the journey on a very different path than any before. I’m eager to sit down with myself this New Year’s Day, look 2014 in the eye and say “Let’s do this thing!”

I slept badly last night. I didn’t, however, experience the stress of ‘how will I get enough rest to…’, which often complicates the bad sleep picture by throwing additional anxiety and something rather like ‘performance pressure’ into the mix. It was a pleasant relief to realize that just getting up and doing something other than ‘trying to sleep’ would be inconsequential to the day that followed.  I feel groggy and fatigued, predictably enough, but the morning is pleasant and comfortable in spite of that.  I’m an analyst by trade, which had tended to foster a rather simplistic notion that somehow ‘data fixes everything’ – if only there is enough of it. It hasn’t proven to be the case in practice. I spent years gathering sleep related data on my own experience: hours of sleep, hours disturbed, the nature of sleep disturbances, when they occurred by type, where my hormones were, my diet, exercise, medication, even details about the weather or environmental conditions, all sorts of stuff. I carefully analyzed the data for trends, looked for patterns, even found some; none of it mattered, because none of it had the power to affect the outcome in my experience. I struggled with missing pieces, undeveloped skills, correlations I wasn’t aware of, didn’t recognize, or didn’t understand were relevant. In my experience of my own life, mindfulness beats analysis for enacting change and improving my experience, easily. It’s not even close.  2013 has been the year that mindfulness became something, for me, and I, in turn, am becoming someone I enjoy being – sleepless nights and all. 😀

This morning seems a nice one to take a moment for gratitude, and a smile. The path isn’t always easy, and sometimes I still feel like I’m walking in the dark, banging knees, shins, and heart on unseen obstacles, but I no longer fight the needful journey.

Where this really started, back in 2010, and a moment of gratitude for the love of the man who shared it with me, then, and remains with me, still.

Where this really started, back in 2010, and a moment of gratitude for the love of the man who shared it with me, then, and remains with me, still.

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

The Parable of the Rain Barrel

November 26, 2013 //
1

Emotional strength and resilience don’t seem to be limitless in my own experience. I got to thinking about it as I walked home last night quite exhausted following a rather ordinary day.  I thought, too, of watering my garden with rain water next year, collected in rain barrels, very green friendly… the thinking got all jumbled up, and of course, a parable resulted from the cognitive disarray.

A rain barrel [image from lifehacker]

Consider the rain barrel.  Rain falls plentifully in some places, less so in others. Collecting rain water allows it to be used later, and applied where most needed – I would water my greenhouse with rain water.  If I set up my rain barrel well, and it collects water efficiently, and I have plentiful reserves, my garden remains lush and well-watered, nurtured and capable of supporting life.  The rain barrel must be open to receiving the water, and must also be able to contain it – to build a reserve.  If I set up the barrel to collect water, but I leave it open, too, at the bottom, so that the water is continuously used as soon as it is received, no water is stored, no reserves are built, and when a dry time comes and no rain falls, my garden is dry and at risk of dying, and unable to support lush and fertile life. Crops would be bitter and less flavorful.

Don’t our emotional reserves, the strength of our heart, and our ability to ‘bounce back’ work similarly? If I am constantly at war within myself, or having to buoy loved ones in times of personal turmoil, with no support for myself, my own heart, my own needs, without taking time to ‘refill my rain barrel’, I become bitter, exhausted, and unable to support life. The very real personal rewards to growth and change are powerful, and capable of nurturing my heart on a profound level – unless I am unable to rise beyond constantly ‘spending my savings’, using the rainwater as it comes, instead of building stored reserves for dryer times.

Today I will love well.  Today I give myself as much compassion as I show others. Today I will also take care of me.

 

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships
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