Archives for posts with tag: love

I’ll Be In The Garden

May 13, 2013 //

I was pretty happy to see Monday arrive, this week. My weekend was a lot of Sturm und Drang and I was frankly relieved to be done with it. Between my hormones and rampant OPD (Other People’s Drama), the weekend was neither relaxing, nor especially productive, for me. I’m not really complaining; some good dialogues came out of it. (I suppose people also learn something about their driving when they are involved in a traffic accident.)

I have to walk my own path…

The weekend, on the other hand, was lovely and warm and sunny. Every minute spent in the garden was wonderful. More roses open their buds every day.

“Nozomi” (Pink Pearl) soon she’ll be covered with tiny pink buds…

“Nozomi” showing off her delicate blossom, for now just this one.

I enjoyed getting down at eye level with the garden now that the weather is fair and mild, and the ground isn’t muddy. The perspective is different, and I definitely needed a change in perspective more than once this weekend!

At ground level with the vinca, dewy from being watered.

Some of the bold big blooms I am waiting on keep me waiting like an old-fashioned cliff-hanger, tempting me with a hint of color through still-tightly wrapped petals.

Most of the peonies in the neighborhood have opened; mine apparently sense my watchfulness. lol

The roses are lovely, fragrant, and totally showing off.

“Ebb Tide” looking her best.

“Kiss of Desire” is new in my garden this spring.

“Secret Recipe” is an old favorite, and one of my most challenging roses to care for; she’s high maintenance. lol

I can’t take enough pictures of “Baby Love”; cute, easy, and lovely.

The hummingbirds alerted one of my partners recently that I was slow to refill their feeders; one dive bombed him at garden’s edge, as he attempted to relax with his coffee! Hummingbirds are one of my favorite garden visitors, and it delights me that my garden has such wonderful tiny visitors.

I could go on and on about the garden. It is my refuge from every day stress, when I find my mindfulness and meditation practices need a helping hand. In my garden I am ‘here’ and ‘now’ in a very engaged and present and immediate way, and it feels effortless and natural. I don’t mind the challenges in the garden; I understand them. I don’t always understand the challenges between people, and those frustrate me much more than some powdery mildew on a rose, or a slug eating the greens, or a few days without rain. A challenge in the garden is easy, as easy as recognizing the issue, troubleshooting the root cause (lol), developing/determining a solution, and applying the chosen solution. Repeat as needed. Why are people so much more complicated? (I’d shout that at you if I thought it would be helpful… but shouting rarely makes anything easier to hear.) Anyway, we all know the answer if we admit it to ourselves, don’t we? Why are people so complicated? Because they choose to be.

I’m making other choices for myself these days. I don’t always ‘get it right’. It’s not a contest. There is no ‘finish line’. There will be no awards ceremony, no report card, no pat on the back. But I’m taking better care of me, and understanding it more when things aren’t a good fit, or my experience is unsatisfying or unpleasant. I still have more questions than answers…and that doesn’t trouble me, generally. If I’m not stressing the answers, I’m also not worried about ‘being right’, or ‘making it work’. I’m finding it easier, much of the time, to make good choices that are tending to meet my needs over time, and improve my experience.

I suppose there is more…but today is proving to be an odd day. I feel the pressure of ‘things on my mind’ and I am feeling a bit fussy and raw. I have been spending too much time on OPD, a potentially worthy investment in time because one of my needs is ‘harmony in my relationships and a calm environment to live in’, but I ended up doing so almost entirely at the expense of things I wanted to do for me, or with my partners, and I definitely committed too much limited weekend time to it. I am very ready to have some of my other needs met. Today is something a bit new – I’m able to recognize and understand that my subtle shift in mood toward being a bit cross isn’t about what is going on around me right now – it’s about how I handled what was going on around me in days past and that I ‘missed the mark’ on taking care of me in some way. It is also clearly a ‘me thing’ and not about the choices or actions of others in any direct way. (It feels good to have a better understanding of my experience, and maybe to the point of being able to make practical choices to meet my needs as a result.) 🙂

Well, having said all that… it’s on with the day, eager to return to the garden.

Tags baby love, by any other name, ebb tide, gardening, kiss of desire, life, love, mindfulness, roses, secret recipe

Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Roses, Spring, Turning 50, women

A Tear or Two

May 8, 2013 //

Impermanence

Like a soap-bubble frozen in glass
deep blue in the sun
sometimes a shimmer or a shadow
a change in perspective
suddenly silver like a child’s drawing of the moon
on white paper
a simple blue glass gazing ball
old-fashioned novelty
garden accent
a fragile blue glass bead big enough
for a grown up.

Is it the way of things
to leave?
to be broken?
to be cast aside no longer valued?
no longer remembered?
The best things in life seem so fragile.

I will not see this blue ball again in my garden.
A replacement for another broken ball.
Tears falling.
Each one a precious something
or other
remembered for a fleeting moment of sorrow
to be replaced by another.
Or forgotten.

Another tear.
Another glass gazing ball.
Another sorrow.
Another “I’m sorry”.
Another moment.
Another celebration.
Another memorial.
Another love.
Another life.
Another garden.
…If only my memory were not also impermanent.

The gazing ball, a gift of love, that was broken today.

Tags gardening, gazing balls, impermanence, letting go of the little stuff, love, memory, metaphors, mindfulness, tears

Categories Brain Injury, gardening, grief, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Relationships, Roses, Spring, Words

Birdsong and Roses

May 7, 2013 //

I woke to a brand new day, this morning. I slept well and deeply – if you have a sleep disorder, or anxiety, or suffer from ‘existential dread’, or struggle with your person demons in the wee hours before dawn, you already know what a good night’s sleep can mean for the dawn of a new day. If you don’t, please take a moment to appreciate the delight and power of good sleep. 🙂 Yesterday now feels like…well…yesterday. That’s nice. It wasn’t so long ago that a day of fighting hormones and tears would have lingered, mingled with regret and frustration, and become a thing all its own. It was a gentle life lesson, as life lessons go, and a good way to really highlight the power of mindfulness in my life. I’m ok with that.

It has been a mindful morning, so far, and a lovely one. I feel calm and balanced. I enjoyed the leisurely start to the day, and delighted in the brief, sleepy ‘good morning’ of a lover wandering through the kitchen, only to remark further “I’m going back to bed, I’m not ready to be awake yet.” Warmth, and love, and tender consideration shown in his effort to wake early enough to chill together a few minutes were as meaningful as if he had actually been ‘ready to be awake’. I smiled for a long while after I heard his footsteps heading down the hall, and the quiet click of the door as he returned to the land of dreams.

Another rose blooms…and even the bugs are happy; this one must be tasty.

The walk in to work was one more delight this morning, sunny, mild, and the air is filled with the scent of flowers and the sound of birdsong… easy enough to photograph flowers, but try as I might, I can’t capture birdsong in a picture.

New life – potted annual flowers reaching breaking through the soil.

My garden is always the first stop on my commute to work. New seedlings reach for the sun from pots along the walkway. “Baby Love” keeps right on blooming. All the roses are fat with buds now, and beginning to open.

“Baby Love” blooming first, and likely all through the summer and into fall.

So, here it is Tuesday, and the smile I am wearing matches the song in my heart. It’s a very nice feeling – and if I could I would share it with the whole world. There’s entirely too much misery, more than enough to go around, and too many people getting more than their share…but I am learning, too, that we each have to walk our own path, find our own way, and create our own solutions, however much we think we have ‘figured it out’, it is always entirely individual and unique to who we are, and we can only share our lives and successes, our ways and understandings, with people who choose to share them. 🙂

Oh, and…

Wild roses are blooming.

Tags a brand new day, hello love, hormone hell, hormones and madness, I never promised you a rose garden, love, menopause, spring, words of love

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

Time and Time Again

April 24, 2013 //

…some metaphor about time…

There’s no time to waste…and no time like the present… It is, perhaps, time to consider the consequences of my actions, my choices, my words…because time marches on. Time weighs on my heart, sometimes, and at other moments time flies. Time is ‘flowing like a river’ and entirely arbitrary. Time passes, as do we all, as does ‘this too’…but when shall it pass? Do we have time to wait and see? Killing time sounds much worse than it often proves to be, once considered ‘in the fullness of time’…

I’m taking some time to have a bit of fun with you, at the expense of time itself…I don’t think any feelings will be hurt. 🙂

Speaking of hurt feelings…I think I’ll make some observations about hearts and emotions and love and… mean people. If I could, I’d be tempted to take time out of my life to tell each person I could ‘don’t be mean’. It’s something I wish were ‘obvious’ in some meaningful way; I’m stunned by the number of people in the world that take refuge from their fears and insecurities, and who defend themselves from real or imagined personal attacks by being mean, by being derisive, or by using mockery or name calling. It’s bad enough when it is an ‘us versus them’ scenario among relative strangers who feel entitled to make assumptions about one another…but I see it between people who ostensibly care for one another, even between friends, lovers, and family members. It’s ugly. It’s hurtful. It’s quite extraordinarily poor communication being both underhanded, and passive-aggressive. It ensures that the person making the attack will not be truly ‘heard’ – because whoever they are attacking is likely to be put on the defensive rather than being free to listen compassionately to something that matters. It ensures the person being attacked, over time and without regard to how close or deep the relationship is at the start, will develop resentment and hostility toward the person making the attack – because people who find mockery, derision, name calling, and ‘general meanness’ acceptable once, are often prone to using it regularly. It sucks, too. Mean is ugly. lol The hottest, sexiest, funniest, most interesting, and sexually skilled, man or woman out there and as soon as I see or hear mean coming through, I lose interest in having anything more to do with them. Mean always seems like a cheap shot to me – the tool of weakness and fear. Maybe that’s just me? I don’t like mean, and I’m working on simply not doing it, at all. I just don’t have time. 😀

To be clear… I think something like mockery, or derision, have a place in humor – in comedy – but I also think it is a ‘weapon best left in the hands of experts’, because mean is ugly. It is the worst of who we are as people being given voice. I’m not sure I was always in this place as a person… but I worked on giving up most sarcasm a while ago. It is also an extension of mean, and certainly – it isn’t clear, frank communication. I like genuine. Direct. Honest. OPEN. I like real. I like the woman I am, and I prefer to know the people I love in a real way. Mean doesn’t feel good, and avoiding it seems like a nice idea.

It’s a Wednesday, a lovely one. It’s time to change.

Tags changing the world, love, mean girls, relationships, time

Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Menopause, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Turning 50, women, Words

At a Loss for Words

April 18, 2013 //

Wow. Writing is a stunningly easy habit to break – which rather surprises me, having written almost compulsively, certainly nearly endlessly, for so very much of my life. I haven’t painted in a while, either. I find myself wanting to say something specific, comment on something I have on my mind, work things out on paper…and yet…change happens. My brain ‘feels tired’. I’m a little…well, not quite…just on the edge of being overwhelmed by something that once would have seemed pretty routine. Then, there’s the mindfulness practicing; the meditation and yoga, the reading, the mindful writing (that’s this, right here. lol)… it adds up. I feel pretty good most days. I am more emotionally resilient, more content, more satisfied in my life – and I feel, quite subjectively, that my relationships are deeper, more harmonious, more…shared. I hope my loved ones feel the same – or at least something similarly positive in their own experience.

…But…I don’t know what to say today. Or yesterday. Maybe tomorrow I will find words? So…today, some pictures. I hope you find something to enjoy in my simple snapshots of things I have seen for the last few days that were enough to move me to pull out my camera phone. 😀