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September 12, 2016 //
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I sat for some time at the patio window, meditating. It wasn’t a fancy moment, just very chill and quiet and comfortable. Enough. Noise, excitement, adventure, the going, the doing, all these things have their place; I also love stillness. There are things to be found in the stillness, alone on a meditation cushion. It doesn’t require fancy props, or tapes of soothing voices rambling pleasantly, or very strict adherence to specific posture or breathing techniques, and it’s quite free – as in, no financial cost. It’s odd that it was so late in life to find my way to this specific practice. I’m glad I finally did.

Perspective matters. I often find it here. ;-)

Perspective matters. I often find it here. 😉

Now and then a friend asks about my meditation practice. They’ve tried, and it “didn’t work” for them, or they didn’t understand the peculiarities of some branded practice of meditation. Too complicated. Too hard. No time. Until as recently as 4 years ago, I would have said “meditation doesn’t work for me”, too. It’s true that what I was doing that I was calling meditation was not doing for me the things that meditation could purportedly do. It was a pretty big deal to understand that there is more than one contemplative practice to choose from that can be called meditation, and some of them are pretty interchangeable (outcome-wise), others less so. Some are an easy fit for my lifestyle, others less so. There are experts who write about them all.  Still… the basics are pretty basic… Start with a moment.

This moment.

This moment.

Just breathe. Take a moment for you. Sit comfortably. Be aware of your breathing. Let your thoughts drift past without investing in them, or interacting with them, as though from a distance. Breathe. Deeply. Comfortably. Focus on being aware – of your breath, of how you feel, of your emotions. Observe yourself without judgment. If you find your mind wandering, bring it back to your breath. Again. And again. It’s a practice. It doesn’t have to be fancier than that. My results vary. There are verbs involved. It’s enough. 🙂

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Categories Free Will, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress

The Brain Attacks! Again.

September 9, 2016 //
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It could be that some of my challenges will be part of my experience for as long as I’m experiencing things. It sucks more than a little bit to dwell on that, so I move on with my thinking as quickly as I can, but without cruelty or dismissiveness. I am human, after all. This morning I woke, and quickly found myself reduced to tears…over… nothing. Nothing whatsoever that has any substance in this moment, I mean. Emotions. Dreams? Maybe.

"The Nightmare City" 8" x 10" acrylic on canvas w/glow

“The Nightmare City” 8″ x 10″ acrylic on canvas w/glow

I woke feeling angry with my traveling partner, which is odd; one of my challenges is feeling safe about, and comfortably expressing, anger in my closest relationships. (It’s baggage that isn’t about my traveling partner, but he’s had to endure me lugging it around all this time.) I woke feeling angry that in our first years married, illness held him back from doing a lot of cool things; we stayed home, a lot. Now he’s well, and feeling fully himself, and he lives a busy life of adventure, going, doing, experiencing new things… and we no longer live together, and these are not our shared experiences. The anger I woke with quickly threatened to become a tantrum, a storm of unrelenting strong emotion knocking me off-balance with hurt feelings, and regrets. The anger became grief and sadness as soon as I let myself feel my feelings with compassion, and recognized the simultaneous feelings of resentment, sadness, and insecurity. My heart cried out “what do we have that is ours?” and I couldn’t answer it – not because there is nothing with which to answer, but because I can’t easily find the answer (through tears, through heartache, through the fog of just waking up, before my coffee…) without considerable thought. I let the tears come; it would be a genuinely sad thing to share nothing with one’s lover, and were that the case, there would be no failure in these honest tears.

It's okay to put some of that down, for now.

It’s okay to put some of that down, for now.

Later, I sip my coffee aware of the authentic feelings at the root of my difficult waking moments. I’m deeply in love with this particular human being I call my traveling partner, and at least for now we live very separate lives. Sometimes that is a painful experience. Sometimes it holds some relief that this human being so dear to me doesn’t have to struggle under the weight of my chaos and damage full-time. Right now, in this moment, I just miss him and find myself wondering rather hormonally what value I have… (Fuck you, Menopause, I’m supposed to be past having to deal with hormonal bullshit!) It’s rather foolish. It’s very human.

Love matters most.

Love matters most.

Seasons change. Over the long summer I’ve come to miss him greatly, after enjoying living with him through the winter. I’m eager to enjoy the autumn and winter months together, celebrating holidays, enjoying the company of friends… but… there is something real here that may want my attention, and getting past the tears I’m aware that most his “go” and “do” activities in the past 2 years have developed in other relationships than ours. We spend very little time together; he’s busy elsewhere. (It’s quite possible the time we do spend together fully meets his needs. I’m not sure I’m ready to ask that question…) I woke up hurting over it and wondering what value “we” have for him. It’s not something to stew over – that’s a fast track to misery. I’ll just ask when I see him again, and he will tell me, and then I’ll know. I’ll be back to work soon… there won’t be time for fussing about how little time we spend together, then; there won’t be time left in the days for it. The time we spend together will be limited to the time we have.

My calendar is very full for the next several days. Appointments. Brunch with a friend over the weekend. Friday night with the guys from my previous work team. My last week of leisure will probably be filled with “getting ready to go back to work” activities. It’s not likely that these will be days filled with sadness or passing emotional storms, there’s too much to do, and life to be lived. I feel some regret that my traveling partner wasn’t available to enjoy more of this time away from work with me… but it was time I took for me, as it was, and it has been well-spent on healing, growing, and practicing good self-care. Worthy endeavors, good outcomes. (So, hey, Brain, stop being such a bitch to me, please?)

A gray dawn greeted me so gently I barely noticed it had become day time while I wrote. I’m not crying now, or even sad really. I’m sipping my coffee, listening to music, and feeling a contented smile tug at the corners of my mouth. I think about other friends. Other loves. Other moments of great joy – or great sorrow. Impermanence is a very real thing, and change is, too. I smile thinking about my traveling partner’s good times to come, and his journey here and there. I’m already eager to hear about it – and he hasn’t even departed. lol He’ll take approximately no pictures at all, but my imagination will fill in all the details in the telling. 🙂

Today I don’t opt into loneliness, and once my tears have dried it’s another lovely morning, heading into another day of living a life built mostly on contentment (and bits and pieces of chaos and damage). Today is a good day to begin again. 🙂

 

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Categories Anxiety, art and the artist, autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, grief, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, Words

Seasons Change

September 4, 2016 //
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It’s been a busy few days. Appointments, friends, interviews… there has also been time for stillness, although I’ve taken fewer of those opportunities than I could have, I know. Today is a day to recover, to regain balance, to let new knowledge and changed thinking settle in to be considered in context.

"Baby Love" on a rainy morning.

“Baby Love” on a rainy morning.

A misty rain falls this morning, as it did yesterday, as it likely will tomorrow. “Is summer over?” I wonder to myself. We can expect another handful of summer days before autumn firmly takes hold. Spring and autumn are the longest seasons in this area; by the time it seems reasonable to complain about summer heat to friends living in genuinely hot climates, summer here is over. The rain has come. A gasp of winter weather follows, then the drenching we can expect for spring begins, and seemingly endlessly showers us with all the different kinds of rain I’ve known, in some quantity or another, before the wheel turns again, back to our brief summer.

Life works very similarly, I find, changing like the seasons if only I give it time. More often than I’d like to count, some situation or another causing me stress just… goes away, after a time. Things change. Change is as much a passive seeming thing happening around us continuously as it is a tool with which we can craft our experience through our choices and actions (and reactions). That’s pretty useful sometimes; no matter how stuck in some one moment I may feel, regardless how terminally miserable I think I am, things do change. On the reverse of that coin, however, is the reciprocal truth that our moments of greatest and most intoxicating joy will also, inevitably, pass in favor of some other moment to come.

Yesterday was wonderful. I hung out with my new friend, although for now I’ve no convenient nickname or characterization to use to bring her to mind, here. Soon enough, I’m sure. We had made plans to go to the farmer’s market together (she hadn’t been). We both had things we’d intended to do after that… but chose to spend the day together, because we were simply having too much fun to let go so soon. She hugs easily. I want to learn to be so approachable, while still maintaining such clear boundaries with gracious firmness. Powerful. We share ourselves easily, together, and I find incredible joy in being so relaxed, and so un-self-consciously myself with another human being, at a time in my life when I am quietly plagued by self-consciousness about small quirks, and unexpected deviations from obvious norms. She’s not frustrated by my definite over-use of fancy language; she laughs with delight, and good-natured humor, happily “correcting” my verbiage along the way, with more laughter. (We rode the light rail through an economically under-privileged community, which I noted as unfortunate, and she laughingly corrected me, “ghetto” with a grin and a hug. Like my traveling partner, she favors simple clear language.) We have interesting conversations about the use of language to convey subtleties of meaning, and conversations about brain injuries, child-rearing, and surviving. We spent 8 hours together, talking. Yep. I can talk for 8 hours – ask anyone. LOL (I’m sitting here suddenly hoping very much that I listened for at least half of that time…)

My traveling partner is in my thoughts, too. I wonder how his weekend is going? He’s been away during the days, and we’ve been out of touch. I’m eager to get together and share how our days have been until we feel we’ve been together. I’m eager to “talk for 8 hours” – there’s a quality to such an experience that I thrive on, and I definitely miss our days of long conversations together, when love was new and neither of us had all the answers about the other – or any notion that we might have that kind of complete and thorough understanding, in the first place. I will do well to be mindful how we differ, and how we’ve grown, and make a point to listen for long luxurious hours of story-telling and anecdotes of exotic adventure – without interrupting, if I can manage it. (That would probably be a lovely treat for him. lol)

Perspective matters. I often find it here. ;-)

Perspective matters. I often find it here. 😉

There are things to consider and reconsider from the week’s conversations. New perspectives on life, on love, on being human, on being vulnerable, on work, on family, on the future… it’s been a very busy week, and my mental buffer is filled – over-filled – with things to think over. Today, I’ll stop being so busy, and just be, instead. Today is a good day for it. Today is a good day for meditation, and for mindful service. Today is a good day for consideration – if we’re all considerate at the same time, we could change the world. 🙂

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

I Had Something For This…

August 28, 2016 //
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This morning begins fairly slowly, and generally pleasantly. I woke before sunrise, and sat quietly for some time, without purpose, or pressure to do more. I listened to my traveling partner’s voice, on the voicemail waiting for me this morning from a missed call last night, letting me know he had arrived for the night, and settled in safely. I smile again thinking of the sound of his voice, and sip my coffee.

I didn’t sleep much Friday night, and Saturday passed quietly in that peculiar fragmented way that sometimes results from fatigue. It was a pleasant day, and I have no complaints about it. I spent it relaxing, reading, and writing. Having found myself facing the rare inspiration to write fiction, I began a short story that held my attention long enough to become really excited about it. I may finish it today… or… it may die a slow death from later disinterest. There’s no predicting that, although I have a dreadful track record in the area of finishing fiction writing. lol Saturday seems easily wrapped up in a paragraph, this morning.

The way some days finish feels like a beginning.

The way some days finish feels like a beginning.

Friday was rather more eventful – at least, I’m still thinking it over. I spent most of Friday evening on meditation, of one form or another, and really deep diving some internal conflict, and taking a different look at some persistent bits of damaged this and that. It was constructive and practical time, spent in an accepting and compassionate place with myself, but it was also time spent taking a close look at next steps, “who I am”, and where the trajectory of my life is likely taking me, in a very honest way. It was a good evening for questions, and time well-spent.

Today I begin again.

Today I begin again.

Morning mist the day began with already gives way to golden sunshine. It’s a lovely beginning. I haven’t yet planned the day; I’m just enjoying the moment. What more worthy beginning could I undertake than to enjoy the moment I am in, right now? 🙂

Today is a good day for beginnings and for moments.

IMAG8161

 

 

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, The Art of Being, Words

About Yesterday…

August 25, 2016 //
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Yesterday was difficult. My black mood continued through the day without diminishing in spite of exceptional self-care. There wasn’t anything “wrong”, it was a day, and I was in a shitty mood. I often am after a migraine, and I knew to take care of myself, and treat myself (and the world) with great care. Still. It sort of sucked. (Only sort of, because as I said, there wasn’t anything wrong besides my mood.)

Hanging on, waiting for some other moment? Impermanence is a real thing; this too shall pass.

Hanging on, waiting for some other moment? Impermanence is a real thing; this too shall pass.

It was at the end of the day that things finally “cleared up” with regard to my mood. I woke feeling splendidly this morning.

I'll begin again...

I’ll begin again…

This morning is a lovely one. The apartment is quickly cooling off,  the dawn breeze pushing the cool air across the meadow, and into the open windows. My appointment yesterday, as it turned out, is actually my appointment today… and it’s “date night”! A good cup of coffee gets the morning going, after enjoying unmeasured time meditating. (One of the hardest things about yesterday was the challenge I was having finding stillness; I seemed unable to meditate.)

This morning there is an easy smile on my face, as if lingering from very pleasant dreams. I have music playing, and yesterday’s sound sensitivity is no part of this fine morning, here, now. It’s a pleasant beginning to the day.

Once upon a time, a day like yesterday would likely have been a week of it, and burdened further by feeling obligated to “preserve appearances” or otherwise re-craft my apparent experience by way of behaviors intended to “fake happy”. Not only does that not actually work [for me], it limits my ability to actually take care of myself by turning my attention away from my own needs in order to create the illusion that there is nothing out of the ordinary – making my misery both ordinary, and hidden. Yuck. It was not an effective approach.  You know what else didn’t work for me? Lashing out at the world like an enraged toddler out of frustration and speechless rage. Learning to use my words, and to “speak gently”, while also learning to listen deeply and develop authentic compassion has been the win… I’ve a long way to go on both of those. More practice seems wise. 🙂

Incremental change over time? It seems so. If nothing else, today is a good day to practice the practices that matter so much for me, and work so well: keeping a committed meditation practice, speaking gently, listening deeply, maintaining emotional self-sufficiency, and living authentically. It’s a good start on an extraordinary journey – and today is a good day to begin again. 🙂

 

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Hormone Hell, Menopause, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, women, Words
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