Archives for posts with tag: mindfulness
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Coming Home

May 24, 2014 //
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After numerous flight delays, I finally reached my destination, and a taxi. I was one 40 minute cab ride away from home.

My driver made the trip in a heart-stopping 24 minutes!

My driver made the trip in a heart-stopping 24 minutes!

My homecoming was delightful, warm, loving, supportive. I know we hung out for a little while, I know souvenirs were brought forth, shared, discussed. There may have been an anecdote shared, or two.  I think we ‘got caught up’. I didn’t stay  up late, but I didn’t rush to bed, either; Las Vegas got me used to just going and going and going…ending the evening and going to sleep was challenging, in spite of obvious signs of exhaustion.

Yesterday happened. Most of it involved sleeping. I woke in the morning, too early, had coffee and started an argument. It hadn’t been my intention, and in-the-moment I wouldn’t have described the circumstances that way, but looking back, the step-by-step process of ‘starting shit’ was evident, and well-followed with considerable precision. I was still so incredibly fatigued that I was highly volatile, and that’s a poor moment to attempt conversation about political matters –  important or otherwise. This was not ‘important’. I was just killing time, waiting for an entirely other sort of moment, actually, and my choices were poor.  (Not surprising, really, my decision-making when I am fatigued is often quite peculiarly poor, and I suspect it is due to the specifics of my TBI.) I went back to bed, once it became clear I just wasn’t rested enough yet to be fit to interact with human beings.

Yesterday I slept 16.5 hours, waking 4 times for various reasons, and durations of time. I managed to drink about 128 ounces of water (thank you Hello Kitty water bottle!). I even managed to fit in some meditation, some yoga, and a couple short walks.  Apparently that is what it takes me to recover from 4 days in Las Vegas. lol (I think we could all have done without including a nasty tearful temper tantrum, next time I’ll try that.)

I am excited to be home. I am rested. Life feels very good.

Today is a good day to garden.

Today is a good day to garden.

Today is a good day to notice small delights.

Today is a good day to notice small delights.

Today is a good day to enjoy simple things.

Today is a good day to enjoy simple things.

Today is a good day to love without reservations.

Today is a good day to love without reservations.

Today is a good day to change the world.

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Categories Brain Injury, gardening, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Roses, Spring, Words

The Power of Being

May 15, 2014 //
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Language is funny stuff. I’m sure I’ve commented on that before. Consider the verb ‘to be’. Is. Isn’t. Am. Are. Were. We toss ‘is’ around like we really know something. I find it pretty limiting, because life isn’t often quite so simple as ‘is/is not’. A shift in perspective, a change in the way we’ve defined some term, and the whole world may look entirely new, with a different variety of possibilities spread wide before me. ‘Is’, generally isn’t as much as I’d like it to be, or however convenient it might make the outcome of a choice, or my understanding of the world around me.

I’m learning to question ‘is’. Is it? Is it also something else? lol  It’s not a matter of doubting my sanity, or any uncertainty beyond the necessary basic requirement to be open to possibilities, I’m simply finding – often – that assumptions are not ‘truth’, that perspective is often the key to critical thinking, and that a firm ‘is’ can carry hidden limits, boundaries, and complications that prevent growth.

Being, however, is. Just that. Being. I am.

I rarely find that being, itself, is ‘the problem’. I often find that some use of a form of the verb ‘to be’ features heavily in conflicts both large and small. [I suddenly imagine a missionary, black pants, white button-front shirt, with a book and an earnest look asking “Have you read about E Prime?”]

Expectations, assumptions, and the word ‘is’ are all it takes to get me completely messed up emotionally over nothing at all.  I’m learning other ways. Last night, for example, was a lovely homecoming – it didn’t resemble my notions of that particular homecoming even a little bit. Not at all similar to my expectations – which were unavoidably based on my assumptions. It was lovely, though, and warm, and totally worthy all on its own.  🙂  It felt satisfying to enjoy it, without troubleshooting it, accepting the moments and the emotions and just enjoying my life.

Today is a good day to be open to possibilities. Today is a good day to smile and share a funny story. Today is a good day for a coffee with a friend. Today is a good day to love. Today is a good day to change the world.

Today is.

Today is.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Roses, Words

Headaches and Homecomings

May 14, 2014 //
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I woke with a pounding headache this morning, and thinking fretfully of subtly out-of-reach goals. My dreams are gone and forgotten, leaving only hints that they were uneasy. I feel well-rested, but there’s this headache.

Do fish get headaches?

Do fish get headaches?

The workday begins.  I feel distracted and disconnected, thinking more of the evening to come, and the homecoming of a partner who has been away for many days and returns with a travelers tales of adventure, misadventure, and love.  Exciting!

There’s little enough to say until after the stories are told, shared, savored, and stored away for another day.  Then next week, I travel, myself.  It is a busy spring.

I have the sense there is more to say, that there was something queued up in my consciousness that needed some time, some consideration, some words… gone now, if it ever really was.  Two oddities of my TBI are the way it affects my sense of ‘novelty’ and ‘completion’.  I sometimes struggle for hours trying to remember “that important thing/idea I was in the middle of before I got interrupted” – it often turns out that it was simply something momentarily engaging like a commercial, or a slogan, or a phrase of poetry in my head that was stuck on a sort of loop, and when I finally do recall whatever it was, it not only isn’t ‘important’ – it isn’t relevant or even slightly interesting.  The novelty thing is different, equally ‘quirky’ and annoying.  I sometimes experience things as novel that I’ve known or been doing for a long while, or used to do a lot and gave up, then returning to it find it feeling completely new.  I get the reverse, too, where I don’t at all recognize something as entirely new, and never-before-experienced. That has some problematic moments, since it can occasionally result in having the perception that I know someone and just don’t remember their name, when actually we’ve never met at all and they are an un-vetted stranger.  Having a brain injury results in some peculiar vulnerabilities.

In the news, I found some amusement – and offense, let’s be honest – in stories about Karl Rove doing old-fashioned bias-based mudslinging, using the potential for having had a brain injury as an insult.  I almost missed the open insensitivity and contempt it indicated for the wide variety of talented people who do live as survivors of brain trauma, I was laughing so hard.  Seriously? How is brain damage – with no other information – even an issue? Will candidates now have to have scans to prove their brain is fully healthy and intact? What will happen to congress then? (You should be able to hear my eyes rolling from where you’re sitting, if you’re quiet. lol) It’s been clear for a very long time that critical thinking, a good education, and the will to serve the people of this country are not common characteristics of politicians, and as with the rest of the population, the intellectual and cognitive gifts of legislators are not evenly distributed. lol

Brain injuries aren’t actually uncommon, according to my reading. Very serious ones are less common, but how many people get through childhood without banging their head badly enough to get a concussion? Turns out that’s a bigger deal than we knew.  Football players – there are a few there – boxers, really any contact sport has the potential – and how many jobs are out there where a blow to the skull is a known potential risk? Soldiers surely come to mind, so many come home with a TBI, that ‘TBI’ is now a pretty commonly known acronym;  it wasn’t before the modern wars in the Middle East.   So, if a TBI isn’t particularly uncommon, in one form or another, how is it okay to use that as an insult?  It isn’t.

“Brain damage” isn’t actually a joke.

A good day for exploring the possibilities.

A good day for exploring the possibilities, and looking at things from a new perspective.

Today is a good day for compassion. Today is a good day to welcome someone home. Today is a good day to accept differences and commonalities. Today is a good day to understand that we are each having our own experience.  Today is a good day to love.

 

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Words

Yes, No, Maybe

May 7, 2014 //
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Questions, answers, and a hot cup of coffee.  The morning is off to a sluggish and disorganized beginning; my routine is upended by a partner going off on a short holiday in the wilderness with family and friends; I got up much earlier than usual to make coffee, help load the car, and drop him at the rendezvous point. There’s a certain quality to arrivals and departures that seems to be unique to those occasions, and I didn’t hesitate to opt in to the early morning ritual of checking the packing, making sure nothing is missed, figured out what was missed, retrieving it, and eventually – kisses good-bye. It was chill and intimate time, connecting and holding on to a precious ‘now’ moment, savoring love and sharing the morning.

4:00 am is early.

4:00 am is early.

I’m very appreciative of my morning coffee. I slept poorly; sleeping only once everyone else had truly settled into slumber themselves, and waking earlier than I planned to by the restless stirrings of my partner, excited about the trip, and wakeful ahead of schedule. I figure I managed enough to survive the day more or less comfortably; about 3 hours. The coffee is a big deal this morning. I made 4 shots of espresso, in a cup, with a bit of molasses. Fancy was not necessary. lol

The Menopause Countdown continues, and I’ve never been more relieved than when I am watching my other partner struggle with Hormone Hell. I’m ready to be done with that. Yesterday was day 305… 60 days to go and I can officially say I’m ‘past menopause’.  Truth is, though, it’s been 305 days without screaming at everyone around me unexpectedly over bullshit approximately every 21-32 days.  Had I know how much more pleasant life would be without all that, I’d have asked to have my damned ovaries removed years ago!! I suppose that’s rather more than necessarily radical, but if you don’t have the experience, how do you know if I’m being too extreme? It is what it is, though, and what it is – for me – is almost over.

My other partner heads ‘back home’ this week, herself, to recharge with family and old friends back home.  It makes sense. She hasn’t been home in a while and the timing is good.

Spring, simple, and sufficient.

Spring, simple, and sufficient.

I don’t quite have that ‘back home’ attachment to a place. I miss old friends, and yearn for a good opportunity to travel and hang out and reconnect across the distance of years by closing the geographical distance, but this is a ‘taking care of me’ area I am not good at. It’s been about 11 years since I took a step on the other coast, where my family lives. I’ve never seen my niece – 13? 14? – in person*. I last saw my Mother at my Father’s memorial, more than a decade ago. Close old friends live far away, too, and it has been as long or longer since I’ve seen them.  It is time, too, for me to journey ‘back home’ to reconnect and recharge…but other needs are a higher priority, and I am learning to make choices that meet my long-term needs over time.  It’s a complicated puzzle. I know making time to connect with friends and family is important… I’m always eager to encourage my partners and dear ones to make time to see their far away friends and family, how is it that I suck so much at making the time to do it, myself?

I find myself looking at a different question in a moment of inspiration – “What is it about not making time for distant friends and family that seems to meet my current needs more than making that time would meet my needs?” Aha. I don’t have an answer – but that’s a new question. 🙂

Another perspective, a different question.

Another perspective, a different question.

So, a quiet Wednesday morning unfolding, a second cup of coffee, and plenty of time to meditate and simply be. It’s enough.

 

*So…my sister reached out during the day and observed with some amusement that not only have I met my niece in person, we hung out and she remembers it clearly; it was at my Dad’s memorial, so perhaps overlooking the embarrassing failure to recollect such a precious moment can be forgiven, but… yeah. Totally embarrassed, because of course I remember it as soon as I am reminded! Still human. 🙂

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

Patterns

May 3, 2014 //
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Patterns occur pretty naturally, it’s the way repeatable, reproducible things work, perhaps.

The pattern of ripples in water.

The pattern of ripples in water.

I don’t know the math and science of patterns with the sort of detail that would be appropriate for a mathematician or scientist. I see patterns.

Patterns on a sandy beach.

Patterns on a sandy beach.

I see where patterns are broken.

Sometimes it's obvious.

Sometimes it’s obvious.

I’m a pattern analyst by trade, if I narrow down ‘data analysis’ to something more specific, although the sort of thing that I did in the 1980s manually with my brain and eyes is generally done by machines and programming today.

Patterns, and our innate human relationship with patterns and pattern recognition sometimes goes awry; we see patterns that aren’t actually patterns, by connecting unrelated events or experiences. Apophenia is a fancy word for seeing patterns in unrelated things. It’s a very human tendency.

Just in case you're sure you only see patterns that are 'real'... Are you seeing a face in this arrangement of circles and lines? Cuz... this image is not a face, just some circles and lines. :-)

Just in case you’re sure you only see patterns that are ‘real’… Are you seeing a face in this arrangement of circles and lines? Cuz… this image is not a face, just some circles and lines. 🙂

Sometimes patterns are obvious, with obvious causes. Sometimes patterns are quite subtle.  Created patterns and naturally occurring patterns both fascinate me.

Sunlight through blinds - natural? Created?

Sunlight through blinds – natural? Created?

It isn’t always easy to be utterly certain that a pattern is a pattern with patterns that are not visual, auditory, tactile, tabular, charted, or graphed – at least for me.  Emotional and behavioral patterns are much more difficult to be certain of, because the involvement of the observer in the observation is likely to be much higher, and the quality of the data, itself, much poorer.  The time I have spent studying patterns in my own emotional life (for example relative to the ebb and flow of hormones) has been worthwhile for my growth as a human being, but it is a slow process of observation, and error correction. Each observation checked and checked again for verifiable accuracy, examined from multiple alternate perspectives, or against other theories, and any easy or obvious seeming answer questioned to limit and hopefully avoid both bias and losing perspective or compassion for myself. It’s a complicated endeavor.  Before I began practicing mindfulness, it was a hopelessly fast route to frustrated rumination that really didn’t go anywhere.  Now, I’m rather pleased that it seems to fast-track improved long-term emotionally relevant decision-making about my life and behavior that has improved my everyday experience a lot.

There’s that ‘decision-making’ piece, though… Choice is a big part of living well. A lot of people actually choose to live less well than they could; choosing frustration over contentment, choosing wanting over enjoying, choosing righteous indignation over understanding, choosing to be stalled in their life and experience over choosing change. It’s very hard to watch.

Today is a good day to choose well. Today is a good day to be the change I wish to see in my world, and in my life. Today is a good day to choose love, and to choose pleasure. Today is a good day to invest enthusiastically in having a good experience. Today is a good day to change the world.

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