Archives for posts with tag: love and lovers
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It’s Okay to Love

February 14, 2017 //
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It’s okay to love all year long. It’s okay to love with my whole heart. It’s okay to smile, even every day. It’s okay to be kind, any time at all.

Go ahead. Love.

Go ahead. Love.

Valentine’s Day is here. Love isn’t about that, although Valentine’s Day is about Love. No reason to love on an annual basis. I plan to love all year. There are verbs involved. Opportunities to choose. There are choices. Practices. Moments to reach across a divide with intent, and affection.

Each moment is another opportunity to love again.

Each moment is another opportunity to love again.

Rationing love hasn’t ever helped anyone love more deeply, or feel more loved.

Every day is another chance to walk a path paved with love.

Every day is another chance to walk a path paved with love.

Valentine’s Day or not… today is a good day to love. ❤

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Categories Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

That, But Without the Panic

February 10, 2017 //
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I woke abruptly, disoriented in the darkness, and suddenly aware that today is Friday, one more work day left this week, and the icy certainty I had shut off my alarm and gone back to sleep, oversleeping some portion of the work day, gripped me fiercely. I took a deep relaxing breathe, then another, and let myself wake enough to look at the time through bleary eyes. It was hard to process what I saw. It said… 11:23… pm. Wait… 11:23? How is it not daylight? P.m? Did I sleep through the entire day and beyond? That wasn’t making sense for minutes. Then I understood. Just a sleep disturbance. I went back to sleep relieved not to have shot out of bed as if fired from a cannon to careen around the room pulling on clothes clumsily in my haste to exit the building. (I have so been there!)

I used to have those weird ‘lost in time’ dreams not-quite-a-lot-more-often-than-rarely. If I were sharing the night with someone else, their sleep would be ruined, too, because in my panic I would usually be verbalizing my stress and anxiety – and I had serious baggage around “time”, in general, back then. A panicked shrieking freak out over having ‘overslept’ a work shift, or an appointment time, that resulted in me being both entirely irrational and completely inconsolable until I recognized my mistake about the time would ensue, guaranteeing no one could feel calm enough to return to sleep with ease. Last night was different; I never even got up, and returned to sleep. Granted, my sleep last night was restless and disturbed, but I did sleep, and I do feel sufficiently rested.

I’m glad it’s Friday, though. I’m clearly ready for the weekend. lol

Practicing calm, renders me calmer over time, less reactive. I like it. It’s a change for the better. I enjoy the recollection of my disturbed sleep as if it were a good report card.

The view from the office.

The view from the office. Perspective matters; it looks very different in the picture than it does when I am just looking at it.

I spend more time than usual meditating this morning. It’s a lovely quiet morning for it, the rain quietly continuing to fall outside these walls, beyond these windows. I recall the rain shower that drenched me last night, soaking me, and leaving me to step through puddles in sodden jeans the rest of the way, happy to have waterproofed my winter coat – because it too was quite soaked, in spite of that. I smile with amusement at being taken by surprise by the sudden down pour; I’d been watching them pass through town all day through the big windows in the office. I am fortunate that I enjoy rain. However much I do enjoy rain, though, I was glad to arrive home to a hot shower and dry clothes.

The view as I headed for home.

The view as I headed for home.

The morning commute had been so different from the drenching soaking aggressively windy rain storm that took me by surprise on the way home. I had strolled in through the peculiarly mild weather, hood back, hair loose in the breeze, feeling the misty rain on my face with a big delighted grin that lasted the entire 1.97 mile walk across town to the office. I felt free and whole and eager to embrace the entirety of life’s experience, looking at the world through rain-spattered glasses. I know, I know – not especially “grown up”… on the other hand, how silly would it be to arrive at death’s door regretting things like not feeling the rain on my face, or the wind in my hair? I will certainly have my regrets in life, but I’m doing what I can to embrace and enjoy the simple pleasures, so easily within reach. I’m still routinely taken by surprise how much they matter.

The view through a misty morning rain.

The view through a misty morning rain.

I think about my Traveling Partner. I’m hoping to see him tonight, this weekend, dinner on Valentine’s Day, after work. I take a moment to appreciate being so well-loved. I think about his eyes, his smile, how much he cares for me… I think about how delightful it will be to have a little place of my own, and to enlist his help on projects to make it more mine, more livable, more a home than a house. Daydreaming about love, smiling, sipping my coffee.

Today is a good day to be fully where I am in life. If it isn’t where I want to be, it is nonetheless where I must start to go somewhere different. If it is somewhere I enjoy, then I’d be foolish not to enjoy the moment. I am okay right now, and that’s enough. 🙂

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships

Finding My Way Home

February 4, 2017 //
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I woke from a long night of sound slumber. Rare, restful, delicious. I slept in. After yoga and meditation, and putting out peanuts and birdseed for my weekend brunch visitors, I sat down with my coffee and the latest real estate search list from my realtor. It’s exciting to be house-hunting for a wee place of my own.

I look over each listing in the search list very carefully. I imagine waking up there. I imagine walking through those rooms in the dark of night after a nightmare. I consider what the floors will feel like on bare feet, and whether the layout of the kitchen is going to fuck with my head for weeks or months, remembering how confusing it was to move from #27 to #59 – with all the light switches and appointments mirror imaged, and how long it took to stop clawing at blank wall for a light switch that wasn’t there. Those details matter for quality of life. Will the windows let in the dawn? The evening light? Will the house bake in the sun unrelentingly, or offer comfort and shade? Will the winter winds chill the floor with peculiar drafts? Which details are easily changed? Which less so? What matters most? It’s an interesting meditation, to consider with such care what living in a particular space might feel like. I easily rule out some of the listings I see by doing so; if I can’t feel living there with any comfort, I am not interested. (I trust that feeling – some of my PTSD triggers are fairly mundane things or circumstances. If my senses begin to squeal in my head that a space doesn’t feel safe, and I’m only looking at a photograph, I know to move on.)

I chat a while with my Traveling Partner, sharing pictures of places, getting his thoughts. Our individual aesthetic overlaps quite a lot, and his engineering background results in a first-rate reality check on things I am less likely to notice. Helpful, and another way to share love. I am eager to find a place to call home that he will feel equally welcome in, when he is spending time with me. As a woman of 53, comfortably and contentedly living alone, I have learned that “home” is something I bring with me, something I create for myself – houses are what I’m shopping for – the container in which to put my home. 😀 Honestly, that makes the shopping much easier. At 18, and even at 35, I shopped for homes, and felt endlessly disappointed not to find one.

I finish my coffee smiling. Enjoying a few moments of conversation with my Traveling Partner before moving on with the day. I’ve some adulting to do this morning: laundry, vacuuming, cleaning the kitchen and bathroom. Home-making. Good skills to have, worthy practices for taking care of me. First, a hike in the mild Pacific Northwest winter. Today that’s enough.

 

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

Appreciating What I Can

January 19, 2017 //
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Appreciating what I  can in life seems best paired with not taking the shit I don’t appreciate at all personally. It is a decent arrangement, generally, resulting in considerable calm and contentment. This morning, I am appreciating sleep – the sleep I didn’t get last night – and I’m not taking at all personally that I didn’t get the sleep I needed, which, while I don’t appreciate that, wasn’t at all personal. Sometimes I can’t sleep through the goings on in the world, however local or remote, and sometimes I can’t sleep through what’s going on in my head. I really do enjoy deep restful quality sleep, though. 🙂

With regard to the sleep I did not get last night, it matters far more that I am awake now, alert, feeling merry, and more or less ready for the work day. With just Friday (and today) between me and the potential for sleeping in (on the weekend), this is doable. There’s no tragedy here, and barely any inconvenience. My lack of sleeping is not associated with anxiety or tinged with negative emotions. I am in a manageable, minimal, amount of pain. “My glass is more than half full”, meaning to say that I enjoyed the evening in the company of my Traveling Partner, and feel cared-for and well-loved. Even with the poor night’s sleep, the day begins well. I definitely appreciate that. 🙂

The snow melted away slowly in yesterday’s steady rain. The commute to work was treacherous and slick; the thin layer of water on all the accumulated ice was far more slippery than ice or snow alone ever could be. I skated awkwardly along the walking portions of my commute, appreciative of bus service that kept the walking portion shorter than usual, by far. As the day went on, the snow continued to melt. The journey home wasn’t especially treacherous, slippery, or complicated – just wet.

Coming home to real partnership is something I appreciate, too. My cardboard recycling had begun to pile up, bins were full after the holidays, and later an icy parking lot I could not safely cross on foot with my hands full prevented me handling things. I felt uncomfortable with the clutter, and it had begun to aggravate me. I arrived home to find that my Traveling Partner had taken care of it, and any number of other things: putting away clean dishes, hanging the closet door that so recently came loose unexpectedly in my hands, installing a replacement external hard-drive (he’d also taken time to locate as many of my old back up files and images archived on his network as he could identify, and had already put them on the new drive for me). My quality of life when I returned home was notably improved over when I departed for work in the morning. It’s lovely to be cared for. I appreciated, too, the sweet relief of connecting and sharing time in the same physical space after two weeks of being kept apart by circumstances, pain, or bad weather.

Small things that frustrate or annoy me may have been piling up over time… now, this morning, embracing a moment of appreciation for what is working, what is going well, and what I enjoy in my life, it’s hard to give any weight to small frustrations and inconveniences. It’s a nice change.

My thoughts turn to moving and I find myself wondering if my frustration with not yet finding a new place have been stalling other healthy processes; frustration is my kryptonite, and I try to be mindful of its sway over my thinking when it becomes prominent in my experience. The lease here runs out at the end of the month. The weather has been intensely crappy for house-hunting, or searching for a rental home closer to work, and there are so few hours in the day available for the purpose, at all. There is little time left. Do I sign a six month extension on the lease here? I don’t want to live here anymore. I want a place of my own – really mine, a home. I know so much more about what I want, and what I need, and what is enough… and I haven’t found it, yet. I’m also… not quite ready. I meant to be. The holiday season got in the way of being more prepared, and I made a practical decision about supporting my Traveling Partner’s goals ahead of my own, short-term. We do that for each other now and then, because… love. So… yeah. Six more months here now seems the pragmatic choice, the practical, feasible, doable decision with the least upheaval, for the time being. I would, in all honesty, prefer to move during the summer months, anyway. Less rain falling on paintings being exposed to weather, carried from residence to moving truck, from moving truck to residence. Thankfully, I have options – and an awareness of options. I make an appointment to sign the lease next Thursday, on a day I will be out of the office on other personal matters. I have another week to keep looking. Hell, I found Number 27 less than a week before I moved, back in May of 2015. 🙂

Today isn’t “perfect” – what ever is, really? It’s enough, though. Today is a good day to appreciate having enough. Being enough. Doing enough. I am content with sufficiency. Today that’s enough. 😀

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, The Art of Being, The Big 5, winter, Words

Any Day Is a Beginning

December 26, 2016 //
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I am up super early. No real reason, it’s just when I woke. It’s the day after Giftmas, I am home alone, the house is quiet, and I am unsurprisingly up early – about the time I’d usually be up on any ordinary Monday.

For now, the lights on the tree still shine.

For now, the lights on the tree still shine.

Giftmas is over. Oh, there’s still fun and holiday to be had – New Year’s Eve is just around the corner, and Hanukkah and Kwanzaa are not yet played out. There’s something to be said for being accepting of other cultures – the holiday season becomes filled with celebrations of all kinds, and opportunities to connect with friends, loved ones, and associates of all kinds more deeply. What’s not to like?

Why the hell am I up so early on a day off work? I grin sheepishly at myself in the pre-dawn darkness. Perhaps I am just excited to get on with living these precious moments? 🙂 I’m already on my second coffee… it’s not yet 5:30 am.

I contentedly scroll through my Facebook feed again, cherishing holiday photos from faraway friends and family. It is a season when everyone puts their best moments and greatest delights ahead of all else. It’s wonderful to see. For a few days, most of the bullshit stops, people put aside most of their pettiness and drama, and just enjoy each other. It’s lovely. Let’s do more of that in 2017, shall we? I mean, really pause the clock to enjoy one another, to be in the moment, present, engaged, and deeply connected; these are the moments that linger in our hearts with the greatest warmth and healing presence. These are the moments that are the best of who we are.

Be someone's lighthouse, always guiding them toward their best self, in life's stormy weather.

Love is a lighthouse, showing the way to safe harbors in life’s stormy weather.

Last night as my Traveling Partner packed up his gear and his goodies to head home, I made sure to ready a container of fresh holiday cookies to take along for another partner. A moment of holiday goodwill, a moment when all the possible baggage and old business got set aside and my best intention – and my best self – stepped forward. Had she been on hand in person, she’d have gotten a hug and a smile, and a genuine well-wishing from me for a very good holiday, and a good year-to-come – are we not both human? Both mortal? Both very fancy fucking monkeys just doing our humble best, mostly, most of the time, as far as we each can tell, generally? I like to think so. Certainly, we’re each having our own experience, and as I am generally content with mine, and not invested in creating misery for others, why would I treat her differently? Holding old pain against her in the here and now does nothing positive for me.

Begin again. Love well. Love authentically.

Begin again. Love well. Love authentically.

Thinking it over this morning, I am more easily able to recognize how much healing has taken place over time. This seems a healthy thing. Oh, the relationship bridges were burned along the way, and there’s no going back on that journey – but why add to the chaos and damage after-the-fact? That seems silly. Has it become a Giftmas tradition in my home to waken afterward with just a little less baggage, a little more true to the spirit of the woman I most want to be in life, a little more easily able to live up to my values, even in those relationships in which my boundaries were tread upon, and my values not shared, or respected? I like the thought that it could be, and consider the verbs involved to secure its place in my ongoing holiday celebration each year.

Peace be with you, and Love, too. <3

Peace be with you, and Love, too. ❤

This morning seems a good one to begin again. Oh, any number of things could be beginning, and there’s no need to wait for the New Year (although, clearly it is a favorite date for new beginnings, generally, most particularly for the grand sorts of life changes we know we won’t actually see to completion).  This morning, I’ll begin again, first, with another cup of coffee and a smile – and a merry “thank you” in my heart for the lovely holiday. For now, that’s enough.

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