Archives for posts with tag: love and lovers

What’s the Point?

March 24, 2018 //

As questions go, this one, “What’s the point?”, plagued me for a long while. I mean… what is the point? Is there a point at all? And, yes, even “what is it?”

Where does this journey even lead?

Hell of a transition right there, sorry about that. Here’s the thing, though, both metaphorically and in life, it’s sometimes those unexpected changes, abrupt edges, and unscripted plot twists that really lead us somewhere profound, if only we are willing to follow them. I mean, realistically, we have choices. If we’re fortunate, we’ll make choices that take us in the direction of greater wisdom, of living well, of loving with our whole hearts, and of being ready to accept the love of others… Or something very similar. 🙂

Wisdom comes with time. If we allow it.

It’s been an interesting weekend. I’ve consumed quite a lot of coffee. Strangely, it hasn’t seemed to affect my sleep… but… I haven’t been trying to stick to any sort of regular habits, so maybe I wouldn’t notice. 🙂 I spent Thursday on self-care. Friday, too, more or less, and getting my hair cut certainly counts. It was a lovely experience, and I’m delighted with the adorably subtle misty mauve shade of my hair, now. I spent today hanging out with an old friend, even enjoying my garden together for a few minutes (and it was nice to have stronger hands than mine helping me with the big bale of compressed garden soil, and his good-natured company). Together we planted three biggish bins of flowers, dividing up the seeds by color and sowing them such that summer will be festively adorned with big blooms and bright colors. 😀 More coffee. Ran some errands. It’s a been a restful weekend opportunity to reconnect with what matters most (to me) (in my own experience of living well).

Hints of drama swirl like distant storm clouds on the horizon of my weekend awareness. It’s nothing to do with me. I exchange conversation with my Traveling Partner on and off, hurting when he hurts, feeling frustrated to be far away, and feeling relieved to be distant from it, too. I’d help if I could, but… it’s very true that there’s not actually much I can do. He is having his own experience. So is she. So are they. So are we all.

I hear from him in the afternoon. I smile for almost an hour.

I contemplate a future in which a weekend down home requires no cancellation – because I will have my own space, and can easily take my ease (and whatever distance) I may need without any inconvenience to another. I let my imagination wander to carpets and cushions and a tent cozy with amenities. I imagine Turkish coffee and misty morning views. I imagine meditating as the sun rises, or sets, undisturbed except for the distant sound of bass thumping, and the nearer sounds of chipmunks, hummingbirds, or crickets. How delightfully easy it will be for my Traveling Partner to enjoy a coffee with me, if I’m only a walk away! How deliciously connected and intimate it will fill to be so near, so conveniently at hand. 🙂

I sit smiling for some rather long while recalling my first authentic Turkish coffee, enjoyed in the desert, in the early 90’s. It seems so very long ago from this moment here, and it’s much too late to enjoy yet another coffee, today, although suddenly I very much want to. lol The late afternoon light begins to fade slowly to evening, and I’m definitely not in the desert. I smile, and begin again.

Tags be here now, be love, be the change, begin again, being and becoming, Changes come, choose wisely, emotional self sufficiency, Epic, experience, good self-care, I am my own cartographer, Is this my beautiful house?, It's all about growing pains, listening deeply, love and lovers, Mahogany, MBSR, meditation, mindful living, mindfulness, mindfulness matters, Momma Sed, My god what have I done?, my home my rules my way, OPD, p.s. I love you, perspective, practicing the practices, ptsd, relationships, taking care of me, TBI, The Art of Being, The Big 5, the map is not the world, there are verbs involved, walking my own path, What is it?, what matters most?, What's the point?

Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Spring, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5

It Adds Up

March 23, 2018 //

The rain continues to fall. I woke early and got my boots on for a hike. It ended up quite short; the trail I’d chosen was slick and muddy, and the steep bits were treacherous. I turned back when it stopped being pleasant, because I didn’t head out with any need or intention of conquering a challenge; I was just out for a pleasant hike. 🙂 The rain had other things in mind, and I’m frankly not the one to argue with the weather. lol

Yesterday was delightful. I continued to tidy things throughout the day. I read. I meditated. I worked in the container garden on my deck. The experience of increasing order over the course of the day seemed to also result in a deepening sense of contentment and order in my thinking. It occurred to me that today would be a weekday, and ideal to get an appointment to have my hair cut. Today began to take shape; I would spend the afternoon “in the city”. I added a couple casual errands to my list of stops, not with any firm outcome in mind, but more a sightseer on life’s journey, today. A favorite wine shop… just to check out what sherries and ports may be in stock. A favorite spice merchant…because spices smell good and inspire me. I could get my nails done… I could go to the museum… the library… that fun little shop that is always closed when I pass by…

…I feel a wave of poignant memory wash over me and sorrowful tears spill down my cheeks unexpectedly, as I recall the first time I shared a work commute with my Traveling Partner, and shared with him my earnest desire to go to a shop at a particular train station along the way. I’d only barely pointed it out, and he was on his feet, extending his hand to me, “Come on,” he said. I followed him – because I wanted to be with him. We enjoyed browsing together, and sharing excitement over this or that artisan ware or beautifully crafted piece. Year after year, ever since, at every birthday, and every Giftmas, I’d asked him to buy me something specifically from that place. It wasn’t the most convenient location, generally, for either of us, and so it never came to be – and it never will. That shop closed permanently after the holidays were over this past year. It exists now only as a precious memory. A moment missed. I let the tears fall; it’s just a feeling. Feelings also pass. 🙂

There are still tears on my cheeks, and already I’m okay. It’s nice to be in this more resilient place as a human being. There is no particular chance that a poignant moment, a sad memory, or a regret will blow an entire day, these days – and why should it? These are things to consider, surely, but no more than that. Moments to learn from. Moments to cherish and to understand. Moments that make for a nuanced experience with real emotional depth. I reach for my Rick and Morty earrings, a cherished gift from my Traveling Partner. He “gets me”. I smile, feeling well-loved.

It’s a lovely morning to begin again.

Tags be love, emotional self sufficiency, experience, I am my own cartographer, love and lovers, love me do, p.s. I love you, perspective, ptsd, relationships, sufficiency, TBI, The Art of Being, The Big 5, the map is not the world

Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5

How’s That Experience Going?

March 22, 2018 //

My evening ended with a plot twist. Being the author of my experience day-to-day, I wasn’t taken by surprise in any noteworthy way; I am the protagonist, I am also the plotter, and the chooser of twists, in this one very human story. 🙂

I’m not on the road this morning. I’m not headed south to the countryside for a long weekend. I don’t yet know much about what I am doing, but it isn’t that. lol I chose differently.

I take my Big 5 relationship values super seriously, and I attempt to apply them to all the different relationships I have with others. Respect, compassion, consideration, openness, and reciprocity seem pretty foundational to achieving contentment and harmony (to me). I made choices about my weekend based on these qualities in my relationship with my Traveling Partner, and his Other (by extension, friend, family, and metamour). She’s having a shit time of things right now, very human. I respect my Love, and also his desire to care for this other human being. I feel compassion for his situation (complicated), her experience (difficult right now), and their journey together. I consider what she may need, what he may need, and what I need for myself. I recognize the love and respect (and consideration) that went into comfortably accommodating my need for (rather a lot of) space to live and grow and work out my bullshit without ruining friendships, love, or just the general good vibe every-damned-where, when I moved into my own place. To reciprocate, at least this weekend, it seemed pretty clear that changing my weekend plans could be the most loving-kind thing I could choose for those dear to me. Or… I could stick to my plans because I’d made them, and risk creating a more difficult experience for everyone concerned (including me). Well, shit. I not only don’t want to do that, I don’t need to, and have other intentions and desires for my own experience this weekend; I’m celebrating Spring. I made the choice to cancel my trip down this weekend.

I haven’t yet planned the weekend, and now I am sipping coffee, and listening to commuter traffic pass by on a dark gray misty rainy chilly spring morning, that, in the abstract, had seemed a likely one for a hike in the early morning (not so much, actually, as it turns out).

I woke at 4 am feeling “ready for the day” – and such was my original planning that this would have been “time to go”. lol I went back to sleep content to sleep in as late as I cared to… and woke up at 5 am. I made coffee. Watched the sleepy gray dawn grudgingly admit day break had arrived. I did dishes. Tidied up. Made a second coffee. Put away some laundry. Purposeful but without a clear agenda. Relaxed and feeling easy in my skin.

…Still no idea about the days ahead. I think I’m even okay with that. It’s a good day to take a trip. To find an adventure. To pursue an unexpected novelty or fanciful notion. It’s a good day to paint. To write. To finish this book I am reading. It’s a good day for exceptional self-care. It’s a good day for leisure. I’ve been needing this. Not just the leisure between work shifts, or the leisure of time enjoyed with loved ones wedged between work weeks, but also the deep satisfying soul-healing leisure of time spent mindfully with self. So far, so good.

Really, though, my point this morning is not about what I am specifically doing with my time and my experience. It’s about a question. How’s your experience going for you? You know; the one you are having. The one you are choosing. If it isn’t what you’d hoped it would be, there are some options. My favorite first option is to take a closer look at expectations and assumptions; are you heavily invested in some outcome, or an assumption that is untested, or an expectation that is unstated? Are you attempting to force real life to comply with your narrative? (Don’t forget; you made that shit up in your head, and possibly without even fact-checking the details.) Totally something that can be corrected. If you choose to. The second great option when having a less than ideal experience is also about choices – your choices, your actions, your verbs. Don’t like what you’re doing? Do something different. Don’t like the outcome unfolding around you? Choose another. I’m not saying this is as easy as using words – your results may vary. Here’s the thing, though, you’re already choosing – and what you are choosing is this. If you don’t like it, you do have other choices. Tons of them.

I think where a lot of us get stuck (I know I do) is that the menu of choices is pretty vast, and the easiest way to manage that cognitively is to pare it down to the most extreme choices, or the most obvious choices, or the choices that “get a reaction” in some seemingly useful way – instead of legitimately, authentically, sincerely, considering our choices in a wholesome positive way that truly contains the potential to change things up for the better. Sometimes we aren’t even aware that we are shunning authenticity in favor of manipulation, control, or chaos. It can be hard to watch another human being go through that (and put everyone around them through that), but I don’t know how to shake someone out of those shenanigans, and can’t force anyone to “be authentic and real”. Certainly shouting that at people hasn’t worked well for me (yeah, I’ve tried that). lol

I hope your experience is a lovely one. I hope you are content and satisfied in life, day-to-day. I hope you feel, deeply, heartily, and with great awareness – and I hope you reason clearly in spite of your strong feelings. If not, and you want more or different from life, why then I hope you choose something different. 🙂

I’ll be over here, enjoying Spring, and this opportunity to begin again. ❤

Tags are you going my way?, be love, be the change, begin again, being and becoming, breathe, choose wisely, emotional self sufficiency, good self-care, I am my own cartographer, listening deeply, love and lovers, mindful loving, mindfulness matters, p.s. I love you, practicing the practices, ptsd, relationships, sufficiency, taking care of me, The Art of Being, The Big 5, the map is not the world, there are verbs involved, walking my own path, what matters most?

Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, Healthy Living, Hormone Hell, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5, women

I Don’t Know That

February 16, 2018 //

Expectations and assumptions are a fast track to some shitty experiences in life. Most people move through their experience seemingly unaware, much of the time, that the outcome they are railing against is built, in part, on their implicit expectations, unexpressed emotions, and unverified assumptions. It’s so easy to make up the larger part of what we think we know, entirely in our own heads, of bits and pieces we’ve cobbled together from fragments of awareness, something we heard, and things we think we recall reading. It’s not an ideal approach to living well, I think.

Maintaining a comfortable awareness of the vastness of all that I just don’t actually know is something I practice. Seems worthwhile; I tend to be less annoyed with people as a result, generally. I tend to cry a lot less. I don’t feel so hurt, so often. I enjoy the day-to-day of life as a human primate a great deal more without attempting to do so leaning into the disappointments that are so inevitable when I’m holding on to carefully crafted expectations and assumptions.

…I still have nightmares that seem to be about nothing besides uncertainty, itself. (Fucking hell, even many of my nightmares are weirdly meta) I dislike being uncertain – and I’m grateful to have learned at some point that the opposite of “uncertainty” is not “feeling very certain of the made up narrative in my head”. lol (Because it isn’t that, at all, emotionally; the opposite of uncertainty is being comfortable with not knowing.)

I chuckle to myself and sip my coffee. I don’t actually know that stuff, either. I’m guessing, maybe, or coasting on new assumptions and a different understanding of things, until those also fall to a failed attempt to check them against reality. Cycles of growth and learning. Incremental change over time. The understanding of life and love that met my needs at a teenager, are unlikely to be at all similar to my understanding of life and love as a growth woman past 50, and will also be, most probably, quite different from those I’ll have as a woman of 90.

I’m okay not knowing. I avoid tempting myself with guessing to fill in the blanks – definitely where people are concerned. We are each having our own experience. We filter our understanding of the world through our limited lens of that experience, framed in the context of our fears, and whatever lingering childhood brainwashing we’ve hung on to over the years. We are each so similar. So human. We have much to share with one another. Stories to tell. Trails to walk. Lessons to teach and to learn.

It’s Friday. A busy work day. Another doctor’s appointment. A long weekend ahead. A trip down to see my Traveling Partner for a couple days, and hang out where love lives, watching the shadows on the mountain shift, and the many tiny chickadees picking between the gravel of the drive. It’s been a couple weeks, and although I definitely needed the break from the frequent trips down, and time to really rest and also care for my current residence, I have missed being there.

Each trip down to the The Place Where Love Lives feels a little more like “real life” and less like being a welcomed guest, which is lovely. I make a point each trip to find some new way to feel more at home, to be more appropriately prepared for life there, and inevitably I leave a bit more of my heart behind when I return to The Place Where I Live, myself. This time I am taking art down with me. 🙂

I notice my coffee is finished. The clock advances the day minute by minute and it’s time to participate. 🙂 Enjoy the weekend! (Hell, I think this weekend, I’ll even write…)

Tags be here now, be love, be the change, begin again, being and becoming, choose wisely, emotional self sufficiency, experience, good self-care, I am my own cartographer, love, love and lovers, MBSR, meditation, mindfulness, mindfulness matters, p.s. I love you, perspective, practicing the practices, ptsd, relationships, sufficiency, taking care of me, TBI, the map is not the world, there are verbs involved, walking my own path, what matters most?

Categories art and the artist, Brain Injury, Fiction, Free Will, Healthy Living, loneliness, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5, winter, Words

Happy VD!

February 14, 2018 //

Well… Happy Valentine’s Day, at any rate. Try to avoid getting VD (venereal disease) – it would be sure to detract from any potential holiday joy. 😀

“Lovers” 8″ x 10″ watercolor on paper 1992

I have a lot of thoughts about Valentine’s Day, few of them are G-rated. My personal take on Valentine’s Day, as a holiday, is that it is the one holiday on the calendar specifically devoted to sexual love. Romance. Not “family life”, not little kids giving paper cards, not “hearts and flowers” in any casual sense (“I sent my Mom flowers for Valentine’s Day” is definitely not in the spirit of the holiday as I understand it, myself). Valentine’s Day is a holiday to celebrate sensual pleasure, sexual pleasure, physical connections and bonds, the delights of romance of all sorts, and not some watered-down Hallmark holiday at all.

Is love a journey or a destination? Or… is love a verb?

Having said all that… I’m alone this Valentine’s Day, and lacking co-celebrants of any sort in any near-at-hand physical sense. LOL 😀 Somehow, I manage not to be bitter about Valentine’s Day. Some years I’ve been partnered. Some years I’ve been solo. Some years being partnered hasn’t resulted in sex on Valentine’s Day… which is like the worst way to celebrate this holiday. LOL At least have some smooches and snuggles, y’all. 😀

Be love. It’s a choice. Love is a verb.

Somewhere a long the way, people seem to have gotten the idea that “inclusion” and “inclusivity” means everyone can, and must always have access to be able to, celebrate and/or enjoy everything available to be celebrated and/or enjoyed by anyone at all. I don’t think life really works quite that way. This is a really good example. I see Valentine’s Day as a specifically quite carnal sexual celebration of love… I also don’t have a partner at hand with whom to celebrate this holiday, on this day, in this year. Those are all true things. Does this, then, mean I am entitled to celebrate nonetheless and all such celebrations must now be tailored to enable and accommodate my participation? And what if the pre-requisite for such requires that I be fundamentally other than I am? What must change? Just something I turn over in my head now and then. I’m a huge fan of inclusion – sorting out what precisely that actually means is tougher. I mean, I will nonetheless “celebrate” the holiday – by noting that it exists, and quite probably enjoying a lovely meal later, and maybe a very tasty glass of sherry or port – but it is a pale comparison to my preferred ways of celebrating sexual love. LOL 😀

Love matters most.

Valentine’s Day-wise, Love gets to lead a lot of the conversation. Love has a lot to say. I don’t know what it says about love – or folks who read my blog – but this post on Valentine’s Day, from 2013, is my most popular post ever of always to date. So, this year, remember – even if you can’t “get lucky” this Valentine’s Day, how lucky you are simply to be, and to be you; you matter. Celebrate with the person in the mirror (<groan> lol, sorry, I could not resist, but sure, if you’ve got the time and inclination, do you. LMAO). Enjoy you. Lavish yourself with your own affection this year – why not? You may begin the best relationship of your life, by beginning a better one with the person in the mirror.

Tags be love, begin again, being and becoming, don't be cruel, don't make each other cry, emotional self sufficiency, Happy Valentine's Day, hearts and flowers, listening deeply, love, love and lovers, love hacks, love like you mean it, love me do, love wisely, mindful love, mindful loving, p.s. I love you, perspective, ptsd, relationships, romance, sufficiency, tell her you love her, The Art of Being, The Big 5, the map is not the world, there are verbs involved, tips and tricks for loving well, Valentine's Day, what matters most?, yelling is not required

Categories Allegories, Art, art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, loneliness, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

What’s the Point?

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It Adds Up

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How’s That Experience Going?

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I Don’t Know That

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Happy VD!

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