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Not Trying, Just Practicing

September 13, 2015 //
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This is an easy restful weekend so far. I slept in again this morning, and although I woke stiff and in a lot of pain, aside from that – which is annoyingly commonplace at this point in life – it’s a lovely weekend, relaxed, and still somewhat productive. I’m not ‘trying’ to get here. I didn’t head into the weekend with a firm plan to relax, or to rest, or to tackle a big list of stuff to do. The weekend began. I’ve continued to practice the practices that work best for me – I’ve meditated more than I often to (which already tends to be often), and probably done less yoga than I could have (and might be in less pain if I had chosen differently).

Yes, of course, coffee. :-)

Yes, of course, coffee. 🙂

I tend to associate the verb ‘trying’ with focused effort and a very specific outcome in mind. I also associate ‘trying’ with frustration; trying puts me on a more direct path to failing, by setting specific expectations of which actions must lead to what outcome. I’ve got challenges with frustration – it is my worst emotion, inasmuch as I just don’t deal with the experience of feeling frustrated well; it quickly becomes unreasoning anger, with risk of tantrums, tears, and actual quite dreadful headaches. As emotions go, I am least skilled with frustration. I find that when I let go of ‘trying’ to do something, or get somewhere, and simply get started on the task, or headed for the destination, building on good basic practices without becoming attached to a specific outcome, I not only enjoy my experience more, I definitely achieve my goals more easily – and more often – with less frustration.  It’s an experience to explore further.

Fancy

Sometimes the luxury self-care package includes a moment of self-indulgence – my salted caramel cafe au lait, Friday evening.

Friday night’s prolonged periods of reflection and meditation are still ‘seeping into my consciousness’. Yesterday was filled with “Oh!” moments of awakening, generally followed by abruptly stopping what I was doing at the time to pause, sit for a moment with the realization or new thinking, before moving on with the day. I ‘didn’t get anything done’ in the sense of practical matters being checked off a list of tasks, but I spent the day treating myself well, relaxing without guilt, and practicing practices that build emotional resilience for the work week to come, and ones that build the emotional self-sufficiency I will rely on for a lifetime ahead of me. With modern medicine in mind, there is every possibility that I will live beyond 100 years… making me more or less at the literal half way point in life, with a great deal more awareness than a newborn child has. These can be fantastic years ahead of me – handled appropriately. Certainly, there are more paintings to paint, more words to write, and more moments ahead of me.

...and more books to read. It's a good day for that, too.

…and more books to read, more poetry to write. It’s a good day for it.

I find myself asking a strange new question as I move through the hours of my days this weekend. “Is this the life you are choosing for yourself, for the next 50 years?” It’s not actually a yes/no limited question. The question is more intended to provoke reflection on who I am, how I live, and what my choices are – not only how I treat the world, and what I do with my time, generally – but also how I feel in the context of my own experience. Each time I ask myself the question, I take the opportunity to make some small change to improve on how I care for myself, how I treat others, and even how I think about my experience, and the world I live in. I am learning to value and appreciate my emotions without letting them take the driver’s seat; they communicate things about the nature of my experience that reason doesn’t notice right away [or at all, let’s face it; reason has a different mission].

…Now, if I can just figure out how to wring every last drop of delight, education, and value out of experiences that frustrate me, that would be quite spectacularly lovely! 🙂

It’s a good day for being, and for becoming. It’s a good day to try new things. It’s a good day to become more skilled at the things that work well. It’s a good day to honor progress, and appreciate all the small moments and interactions that delight me, educate me, and nourish my heart. Changing the world is a long process, relying on the incremental changes over time of a great many individuals – there are verbs involved. Changing the world within can happen over night; it’s a choice. [There are still verbs involved, and your results may vary. Practice. Begin again.]

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Categories autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Turning 50, women, Words

The Journey Ahead

September 12, 2015 //
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I woke early for a Saturday. I woke early for a Saturday morning following a late Friday night.  I most particularly woke early for a Saturday morning following a late Friday night during which I danced, laughed, painted, studied, meditated, and did yoga – did I mention the dancing? I enjoyed an evening filled with movement, music and delight, and tumbled into bed quite exhausted and ready for sleep, just a bit past midnight. I woke at 4:00 am, awake, alert, and… awake. I took my morning medication, and managed to coax myself to sleep another hour or so, finally getting up on the internal promise that naps are a thing, if I need one later. 🙂

I broke out in a sweat, trembling, while I was making my coffee. A hot flash? Maybe… without warning I quickly went from sweating to nausea to being quite suddenly and very efficiently sick. The kitchen sink is not the ideally appropriate culturally typical receptacle for vomiting, and I was far more uncomfortable with having been in the kitchen at the time, than I was with being sick so suddenly. Any symptoms of illness were gone as soon as the vomiting ended, and that wasn’t an agonizing experience. As I said – efficient. I put making coffee aside, and cleaned the sink… then the kitchen… Yep. Uncomfortable with being sick in the kitchen puts it mildly. Well… the kitchen just sparkles this morning…now.   (I’m pretty sure it would take a forensic team to tell anyone ever got sick in that sink, or this kitchen, at this point. lol)

I had a ‘date night’ planned (with myself) for last night, and enjoyed myself most thoroughly, although it wasn’t entirely about pleasure or self-indulgence. I was a woman on a mission: get to know the woman in the mirror even better, understand her needs more thoroughly – and understand what holds her back from… whatever. Stuff. Or something like that. I have notes – it was all very organized. lol My honest intent was simply to reach a little deeper into the chaos and damage and tease loose a detail or two worth holding onto, and letting some of the baggage go. As evenings in general go, it was lovely, and I suppose successful. Sometimes the positive results of developing emotional self-sufficiency are pretty subtle, and don’t come in the form of grandiose visions of change, or profound epiphanies. Last night was rather like that, too. Deep, moving… but somehow also quite subtle. More affirming than radically changing anything, which is significant all on its own.

My weekend is entirely solo this week, and I need the space to work on me. I am spending the weekend writing, and painting, and meditating. I built a playlist for last night intended to stoke my creativity, and be thought-provoking…I ended up dancing more than thinking. I’m okay with that, too. Life is movement – there are verbs involved – sitting still is a very slow suicide (at least for this fragile meat vessel I reside within).

I started the weekend in the most delightful way, with three packages. I brought them into the house, but left them unopened until later in the evening, when I finally sat down to enjoy the night. One said ‘gift’ on it, and I opened it eagerly. A present from my traveling partner…

A token of affection. Love on a chain. The only heart-shaped locket I have ever owned.

A token of affection. Love on a chain. The only heart-shaped locket I have ever owned or worn.

I eagerly put a photo in the locket; the same photo that sits on the nightstand, where I see him smiling, relaxed, and enjoying my good company (I remember the day I took the picture very clearly). I touch the locket gently, where it rests on my collar-bone. I smile when I think of it, and of love. Because I generally don’t wear necklaces, I was very much aware of the sensation of it resting on my body through the evening, and the sensation was rather as if my traveling partner was with me. I feel loved.

Later I opened the other two packages – both from me, to me, both relevant to the experience of being me, of being a woman… both are books. Both are first editions (no idea why that matters at all, or why it delights me so – I’m still going to read them, and it’s all I would do with them, regardless; they’re books). One is an old book that I love dearly, written by a favorite author about a favorite strong female character: “Friday” by Robert Heinlein. I am eager to read it again.  The other is “Fear of Dying” newly released by Erica Jong, and I am eager to read it for the first time, and finding myself tempted to reread “Fear of Flying” now that I have some life experience of my own to understand it with (I first read it in 1973…I was 10, and didn’t identify with the characters or circumstances even a little bit). I find that reading adds to the intimacy of a quiet evening. I yearn to sit wrapped in comfort with my feet in my traveling partner’s lap, reading aloud for our enjoyment, and talking it over together.

I’ve been working on treating the woman in the mirror with more genuine affection, respect, and consideration – and one of the ways I ease her suffering and silent fury is to give more time to the voices of women, generally. Bringing Erica Jong to my library is one way of doing that. Certainly, she’s one of many strong female voices ‘of my generation’. Subtle signs of implicit gender bias in our culture exist literally everywhere, even in my own experience as a woman; I had no idea how many books Erica Jong has actually written over the years, or how many of those are non-fiction. It was an eye-opening moment reading the list of her work, and to understand how easy it is to dismiss female authors without realizing the error in the moment it occurs.

I didn’t paint much last night – I spent far more of the evening on meditation, writing, and dancing. I didn’t do any reading at all, although I had planned to. It was a night for love. If it had been a night out with another person, my feelings this morning would be as they are; I have a song in my heart, and a smile on my lips, and I feel valued and filled with joy. It’s nice to find that I can deliver that experience to myself now and then. It’s powerful to discover that these feelings are not specific to sexual love.  🙂

Taking care of me comes in many forms. I am pleased to learn how much I do have to offer myself, and what an array of choices there really are. The weekend continues… Today is a good day to enjoy the woman in the mirror.

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

What We Practice

September 24, 2014 //
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Overtime, what we practice regularly – whatever it is – becomes what we tend to do by default. “Neurons that fire together, wire together.”  I first read that observation, myself, in Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom, by Rick Hanson. It was one of those ‘light bulb moments’ for me, reading those words. A lot of things fell into place with reading those words, in that order, presented in the context of that book, at that time in my life, and I’ve held on to it through numerous small ups and downs, transitions, and changes. Very few things are easy or ‘over night’ or ‘like flipping a switch’ with regard to changing habits, programming, or long-standing behavior that once coped well for…something. I keep at it. Sometimes I feel discouraged, or fatigued, or frustrated. I experience doubt. I keep coming back to this idea that the neural plasticity that is such a big part of what makes me the adaptable being I am can be harnessed by will to make changes I want, not just changes along the way.

Reading the books does not create change. It is our actions that change us, even the action of thinking differently.

Reading the books does not create change. It is our actions that change us, even the action of thinking differently.

Some very worthy words.

Some very worthy words.

I continue to practice the things I learn that ‘work’, and by ‘work’ I mean that they are practices that improve my everyday experience of life, result in improved emotional resilience, perspective, and a high level of general contentment, and tend in general to improve what can be improved and don’t do any damage to me as a being or an organism. It does take practice, though. Practice is just what it sounds like, too; a verb. A repeated, continuing application of specific actions, at regular intervals, made with effort, and will, and continued in a deliberate way in spite of obstacles – a verb. Or several. The exercises in Just One Thing are more practical, and there’s less science. I keep practicing. Picking up Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence, over the weekend, and finally taking a look inside was a really first-rate choice. Within the first page or two I had already highlighted some eye-opening paragraphs and turns of phrase that framed up reliably positive next steps in a powerful way.

“The brain is the organ that learns, so it is designed to be changed by your experiences.”

Or how about…

“Connected by the neural equivalent of a four-lane superhighway, your activated amygdala commanded your hippocampus to prioritize this stressful experience for storage, even marking new baby neurons to be, in effect, forever fearful. Vicious Circles Over time, negative experiences make the amygdala even more sensitive to the negative. This snowballing effect occurs because the cortisol that the amygdala signals the hypothalamus to call for enters the bloodstream and flows into your brain, where it stimulates and strengthens the amygdala. Now the alarm bell of your brain rings more easily and more loudly. Making matters worse, even after the danger has passed or turns out to be a false alarm, it takes many minutes to metabolize cortisol out of your body. For example, you may have had a close call while driving and still felt revved up and shaken twenty minutes later.”

Another important observation that got my attention, specifically regarding how PTSD ‘works’

“Implicit memory includes “procedural knowledge,” which is how to do things, from riding that bicycle to navigating a delicate conversation with a friend. It also contains your assumptions and expectations, emotional residues of lived experience, models of relationships, values and inclinations, and the whole inner atmosphere of your mind. It’s like a vast storehouse holding most of your inner strengths as well as most of your feelings of inadequacy, unfulfilled longings, defensiveness, and old pain. What gets put into this storehouse is the foundation of how you feel and function. Its contents usually have much more impact on your life than the contents of your explicit memory.”

I’m not finished with this one, yet. I’ll definitely read it a couple of times, and I’m already practicing many of the simple practices it outlines. Some were so obvious the first time they were described I couldn’t believe it hadn’t just occurred to me…to everyone…like the simple enough idea that lingering mindfully in a pleasant moment, really enjoying that experience with awareness and not rushing through to the next thing, makes the positive experience more important in our own recollection, giving it greater weight in who we are and how we experience our life. Powerful. It seems pretty obvious after thinking it over, that the content of our mind and thoughts will color how we experience everything. (Right? Sure. Of course.) How is it I didn’t take the next step without help and understand that focusing on trauma, on negativity, on the chaos and damage, to the point of making it the focus of my consciousness…makes it the focus of my consciousness. O_0 Well, okay, that actually seems easy enough to do something with… so, I have been. I’ve been taking time to really enjoy the small pleasant moments in life with real awareness and appreciation, for many seconds, even minutes, and letting the delights of my life seep into all the moments I have. It’s been, predictably enough, as obvious a success as the ideas seemed obvious themselves.

How did this turn into a book report? It wasn’t intended to be. These are books that have made a real difference for me, though, bringing light to the darkness, and showing me some better ways of being. That’s a pretty big deal at 51, and looking back on some of what I have endured. Sharing it may be useful for someone else…although, perhaps if I’d been ready sooner, I’d have found my way here one way or another…

Today is a good day to make an effort to be who I most want to be. Today is a good effort to smile and share the journey. Today is a good day to change the world from within. Today is a good day.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Words

The Day After the Day After Another Day

September 23, 2014 //
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It’s a progression, isn’t it? Who we become over time. How we get from ‘here’ to ‘there’. Our progress in work, in life, in being. This amazing journey of discover we are each on is… yeah. Amazing.

...This is also a journey that can get very 'real'...

…This is also a journey that can get very ‘real’…

I spent much of my time out in the trees meditating. (Less on yoga than I’d have liked to…admittedly, because I didn’t really want to get down on the ground with the bugs and leavings of creatures passing through; no time for hantavirus this year, thanks!) Meditating, and study. One of my partners had recommended some TA (Transactional Analysis) reading, that he has been finding value in. I understand the value of shared language (and the axiom that ‘language functions by agreement’ seems supported by my experience), and I regularly read books and article recommended by significant others of a variety of sorts in order to maintain a shared understanding of the meanings of things in my personal dictionary. Earlier exposures to TA didn’t provide me with much direct benefit for healing or growth, and it doesn’t seem to be a system that is really about that, as much as it is useful for troubleshooting pattern behaviors in small group dynamics – and it’s very good for that.  Having caught up on that bit of reading over the course of a day, I moved on to something that is more specifically suited to actual treatment and/or rehabilitation of my TBI – and stuff that suits that need tends toward the practical, the positive, and things built around repeatable exercises that have clear cognitive or behavioral outcomes, and changes over time to brain structure/function. In this case, I picked up “Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence” by Rick Hanson.  I’m adding it to my reading list today – it’s that big a deal already.

Few books move me immediately, and most of the time practical exercises contained in study material can be a tad generic, or feel a bit forced. My experience with Hardwiring Happiness has been quite different so far; every exercise attempted from a place of commitment and sincerely and wholeheartedly undertaken has resulted in real success and a sense of immediate improvement. Nice. Easy. How much stuff in life actually feels easy? How we pursue growth and change matter. What we fill our heads with matters. The actions we take matter. Our intentions matter, too. My time in the trees felt – and still feels – significant and important to me. I feel, too, as if I have gotten ‘unstuck’ from something I was struggling with on an existential level about the nature of emotional hurts, ancient pain and rage, long-carried baggage, and the nature of forgiveness. This is a nice place to be on a Tuesday morning. I am taking a moment to recognize and celebrate my progress along a difficult journey, and to honor my will to carry on, my goals off in the distance, and my strength carry me onward.

Taking a moment to consider the path ahead for perspective.

Taking a moment to consider the ground already covered and the path ahead for perspective.

The desire to achieve some measure of improved emotional self-sufficiency almost requires that I pause now and then to give myself a moment of recognition and celebration; I’ve worked hard to get here, from somewhere quite different, and it hasn’t been an easy journey. It’s been day by day, book by book, moment by moment, epiphany by epiphany, restful pause by restful pause, appointment by appointment, breakthrough by breakthrough, meltdown by meltdown, choice by choice, change by change… always practicing practices, studying, and taking care of me. The journey stretches far beyond what I can imagine, from where I stand now, and will continue until some time as I choose to quit, or the clock stops ticking altogether; it’s definitely a good idea to stop once in a while along the way for a moment of gratitude, appreciation, self-awareness, and praise.

Getting stuck happens. I had reached a point some weeks ago, where I was having more difficulty, more of the time, suffering more, and feeling as if I were just at the edge of ‘really getting it’ in some way that I couldn’t quite reach…and struggling. Losing ground on emotional resiliency, taking more stuff personally, feeling more of the lingering hurt and frustration in the background becoming more significant in the right-now moments of my everyday experience – and somewhat inexplicably so. Life was pushing a particular lesson at me, hard, and it was as if I couldn’t read the blackboard from where I was seated.  The weekend grieving and painting was important to express myself beyond the limitations of words. This past weekend in the trees helped me find new words, and to contemplate new ideas, and recommit to ideas I know work for me. It turns out that even this area of my life, there are processes I can count on. I remain a student of life, more about questions than answers.  My commitment to mindfulness and approaching each moment eyes wide open to the possibilities of now, and facing experiences as a beginner, open and with a humble heart, still gets me some amazing results. I got unstuck. This is good stuff.  I am hoping to apply the large-scale basics to smaller situations, the sort that blow up out of nowhere leaving everyone feeling sad and lost and wounded, that happen quickly, and dissipate, leaving emotional disarray in their wake. It would be good to build that level of emotional resilience and responsiveness, for my own experience, and for the value it holds for my relationships with others.

Like a paved trail on a sunny day, some of this may seem obvious; it doesn't hurt to check the map once in awhile, anyway.

Like a paved trail on a sunny day, some of this may seem obvious; it doesn’t hurt to check the map once in a while, anyway.

Today is a good day to share progress. Today is a good day to celebrate the many things I do well, get right, and find value in each moment. Today is a good day to make what nurtures the best within me a higher priority than my challenges. Today is a good day to make choices in favor of what meets my needs over time. Today is a good day to change the world.

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

Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise

October 26, 2013 //
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Another relaxed lovely morning, quiet and serene, unfolding gently within and around me.  I woke easily, and even ‘slept in’ a bit, which feels very nourishing and luxurious. The house is quiet. My latte is warm and tasty, falling nicely into the ‘just right’ category.  Yoga first thing, and meditation.

As an extension of my meditation this morning I found myself considering each person dear to me for a moment or two, and feeling grateful to know them, and giving some time to contemplate the joy they bring me, to remember shared experiences that have helped me grow, to honor their existence and reflect on the meaning of their life if they are gone.  I didn’t plan this, it began as a simple heartfelt ‘thank you’ that my partners are part of my life, each as they are, with their struggles and imperfections, and the great value they bring to my experience, and it cascaded from there through all the relationships I have now, or have had, and their importance to me.  I feel moved, and supported, thinking about all the amazing people I know.

You are one of them. (Even if we’ve never met in the flesh, here you are now, reading my words and connecting with me through them. That matters to me; I thank you.)

Today feels good. There isn’t much more to say about that, beyond observing the feelings: contentment, balance, serenity, comfort, quiet joy, hopeful, friendly, open, relaxed, and something softer than happy, less boisterous than joy – but very much on that end of the emotional spectrum. It used to be incredibly rare to feel anything even a little like this. Somehow, then, I thought that fighting to get here, screaming in hurt and rage when it felt ‘taken away’, struggling endlessly to force this experience to exist would ‘make it happen’.  I didn’t understand. I still lack ‘certainty’ about ‘how it all works’. I am learning, and in learning is progress.  That’s enough. I am learning to be comfortable with uncertainty, and unafraid of unanswered questions; it is the questions themselves that have the greater value to me, at least for now.

Now. Now is something I am becoming pretty comfortable with. Mutable and timeless Now – it suits me more than I understood it could. Yielding to Now. Surrendering to Now. Embracing Now. Learning the amazing difference between ‘giving up’ (or ‘giving in’) through futility, apathy, or pain, and the wide open vista of experience and emotion in yielding and surrendering through openness, through acceptance, and through perspective in this precious Now.  It’s powerful, and so far… incredibly difficult to share. It’s a puzzle. All I have are words, and it isn’t about words.

I am not a missionary.

I find myself filled with conviction, hope, and experiencing my life very differently these days, and no amount of word-sharing actually has any real potential to communicate that every bit of what I have gained is freely available to anyone who chooses to embrace it for themselves. It is incredibly hard to watch people I love choose to suffer. It is a whole other lesson in life’s curriculum that the choices of others belong to them entirely as much as my own belong to me.  Another facet of ‘we are each having our own experience’, certainly, and it simply isn’t productive to shout ‘Be the change!’  🙂

So here it is, a lovely morning.  Today I am kind. I am content. I am compassionate. I am eager to embrace the new day, mindfully, and savoring each precious moment.

A lighthouse is a good metaphor today.

A lighthouse is a good metaphor today.

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