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Home for the Holidays?

December 23, 2016 //
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Sipping my coffee thinking about this lovely holiday season. Thinking about the people who make it possible. The job. My delightful neighbors. My Traveling Partner. Family. Friends. Oh – and all the people who are stuck working while I am enjoying some time at home, them too. I mean… seriously, quite a lot of people do not have the luxury of taking time off for the holidays. Some of those don’t earn much in the way of holiday pay, most likely don’t see any kind of perks or bonuses, and they’re still out there. They’re commuting to and from work on the transit system. They’re serving coffee, waiting tables, cooking food, stocking shelves, standing at cash registers, fulfilling orders in warehouses, moving packages from point A to point B… all the things. You may be one of them. If you are – thank you. Thank you for doing all of the things.

If you aren’t one of these people, if you do get to “go home for the holidays” – even if that’s just a block or two you are not commuting for a few days – please take a moment of consideration for all of the folks who are working. They probably have to. Be kind. Be generous – or at least good-hearted. Be gracious and well-mannered. Be helpful. Be appreciative. Be your best self. Why? Well, why the hell not? It’s a mockery of our potential as human beings when we sink to our worst, is it not? Happy Holidays? Merry Giftmas? Sure – make it happen, and with a few choices in a handful of tense or tired moments, make it happen not at the expense of the people who are actually the ones making it happen with you, or for you.

I’m just saying, we all have opportunities to treat each other well. It doesn’t have to be seasonal. 🙂

Today is a good day to take a few minutes to be there for someone – even if it inconveniences you. Today is a good day to listen, to really listen, and be someone’s lighthouse in their dark and stormy night. Today is a good day to remember that the holidays don’t really feel good to everyone; we are each having our own experience, and “sharing the magic” of the holidays may be a complicated offering for people who are hurting, or grieving, or sad. Today is a good day for connecting, for conversation, for asking “how can I help?” and taking a moment to share the journey.

City lights, and a horizon full of traveler's tales.

City lights, and a horizon full of traveler’s tales.

What a lovely moment to begin again.

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Categories Free Will, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Relationships, The Art of Being, winter

Gnōthi Seauton

December 12, 2016 //
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No, seriously, do it. Take time to sort yourself out, to figure out who you are – based on your values, your understanding of your experience, your wants, your needs, your chaos and your damage – the highs, the lows, all of the whole of your experience are part of the answer to the question “Who are you?”. The answer itself is that first step on any journey, whether the answer is held in our awareness or not; whether we take the step is part of who we are. Who we are fills that moment, often imperceptibly brief, between when we form the thought or feel the impulse to step forward, and the moment we lift our foot to take the step. It is in the thought itself, and the impulse.

Today is “team building” with my professional peers. I’m okay with that. I find reflection powerful. I find communication useful. I enjoy growth, and relish connection. Should be a fun day.

Along the way, of course, there is structure to which I must succumb, and I find myself doing so with some amusement; I have been here before. Personality tests are often a part of these experiences, intended to foster improved understanding of one another. A younger me would go into it with less comfort and more resentment, understanding that these tests and quizzes have literally zero actual evidence backing them up as having any particular accuracy or validity whatsoever. (I’m not bashing on whatever your favorite eye-opener is, I’m just saying that generally speaking, things like the Myers Briggs test and DiSC assessments have no scientific basis, even after many years of use and data gathered. They are corporate America’s astrology, best done for ‘entertainment purposes only’ and taken with a grain of salt.) I find value in the sharing and communication. I enjoy working with people who feel connected and informed. If a quiz can open those doors, then let there be many such activities! 🙂

I don’t need to be “right”.

I know myself. Well, better than most other people know me, at least. I’m still working on the rest. Am I the “ENFJ-A” of this morning’s Myers Briggs? Hardly. I am a more loosely defined, more variable set of characteristics. I live. Any one quiz, however many questions, makes observations based on a snapshot, a moment, a few answers of ever-so-many more that may be available. An astute observation that results in improved self-awareness, easier authenticity, and a more enjoyable life-experience overall is surely welcome – but I won’t be changing my mind about what I know of myself on the basis of an internet quiz. 😉

I do put effort into this whole “knowing myself” thing, though; there’s more to learn. Like the vastness of space, or the unfathomed depths of the oceans, there is much I do not know about life, love, and the woman in the mirror. On every journey there is an unexplored horizon in the distance.

Today is a good day to walk on, more questions than answers, eyes-wide open, awake, aware, and engaged in this moment.

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Categories Brain Injury, Fiction, Free Will, Logic & Reason, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, Words

Giftmas Wishes

December 10, 2016 //
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Giftmas is approaching quickly. I am feeling merry and cheerily invested in what is as likely to be a solitary holiday as not; there is no certainty in my planning these days, and I am learning to be okay with that. It is in the planning that my own comfort lies, and in clear communication and expectation-setting when plans begin to shift, or go sideways unexpectedly. Each of life’s disappointments, hardships, and changes open my eyes to some new perspective or opportunity, a little like a holiday advent calendar.

Let it snow? Sure, why not? Or don't - that's okay, too.

Let it snow? Sure, why not? Or don’t – that’s okay, too.

Last night was wonderfully merry, and definitely my idea of a festive holiday season. My early Giftmas present arrived on my doorstep, and when I got home one of my neighbors brought it over; he’d taken it in knowing I was not home. I had no time to open the box before a small posse of my former colleagues from another company (and dear friends) stopped by for some holiday cheer and catching up on things.  We enjoyed a (rare treat for me) glass of sherry together, and hung out sharing anecdotes, and generally enjoying a couple precious hours together. I miss those guys; seeing them every day was the best part of that particular job. It’s always been the people that matter most, though I didn’t always understand that. 🙂

Eventually, alone again in my quiet sanctuary on the edge of a marshy meadow, fire reduced to glowing embers, I opened the box. I cried happy tears that couldn’t be held back. I ran my fingers along the glossy black enameled lines of the new mixer. Some feminist, right? Standing in my kitchen in fuzzy spa socks, caressing a kitchen appliance, crying happy tears. I laughed out loud, still weeping with joy. Down to the tiniest detail, that man loves me. Fuck, I hope I am truly worthy of such profound emotion.

This mixer is black… it replaces a beige one, a color that was, at the time, a compromise; I had wanted a white one, then. My traveling partner ordered this new mixer, standing in my kitchen while we talked of other things. He chose one that matches my current appliances, understanding my aesthetic. He may even have understood that there is significance in how very “opposite” the glossy black is in my eyes – a gift given truly from a place of love, utterly the opposite in every way to the off-white mixer, which was given out of obligation and delivered into a relationship characterized by violence, violation, and destruction. (Although I loved the old mixer for its exquisite functionality and utility and purpose, every time I used it old damage and pain would surface to fill my consciousness again…over decades.) This morning, I stood in the kitchen making my coffee, smiling at the beautiful black mixer on the counter, alluring, promising good times in the kitchen, and reminding me only of love.

This morning the apartment is filled with music. There’s housekeeping to be done; my Traveling Partner is planning to be over tonight. The mixer stands ready for adventures in baking, and I have a stack of cookbooks next to me that I began flipping through last night. I look at them, and smile, and somewhere in a dark corner one of my demons lays down and dies, as happy tears slide past my smile. “I’m free!!” something inside me shouts with joy. I’m not sure quite what, or quite why.  I’m okay with feeling this good in this moment.

Today is a good day to be merry. Giftmas is almost here. Today is a good day for giving, and a good day for loving. Baking holiday treats may not change the world, but they’ll sure make the house smell wonderful!  😀

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Categories Brain Injury, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, winter

What Makes You Glow?

December 8, 2016 //
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I’m sitting here just smiling. I’ve been smiling since before I went to bed last night. Life doesn’t feel like this every day, and I’m enjoying the moment. I feel “lit up from within”.

Moments that feel rich and warm and well-crafted of the stuff of daydreams aren’t an everyday thing. That used to be a problem for me; I was chasing the Happily Ever After of childhood fairy tales. No map. Happy not being the thing I think I thought it was. Slow going – and I wasn’t getting there. Sitting here this morning, smiling, sipping my coffee – I am happy. This is nice.

what

What makes you glow?

I got home after work, my Traveling Partner and a friend had arrived ahead of me, and they were next door enjoying the company of our friends there. Some visiting, then it was just the two of us, at my place, relaxing and talking and connecting – intimacy, contentment, that contented longing of lovers who want each other even after years together, and… Giftmas. 😀 I do love the holidays. “Your place is festive”, he had observed. It is. The conversation got around to holiday baking, at some point, and he made a funny face at me, when he notices the store-bought cookie dough in the fridge waiting its turn. He knows I bake. What the hell, right? 😀 No mixer. I am so not up to creaming endless pounds of butter and sugar together by hand! The conversation moves on. At some point I notice he is distracted on his phone, and he notices me noticing; the secret is revealed. He is holiday shopping. It’s Giftmas time!! He teases me with revealing the surprise, then admits he plans to have it to me right away; he is replacing my Kitchenaid mixer. It’s an unexpected delight, and an emotional moment for me; hundreds of times I have not chosen to replace it – and I can’t rationally explain why. The money? They’re not cheap… but it wasn’t that.  I make a puzzled face and let the wondering go for some other day. He saw my happy tears, he understands that as silly as it is, sometimes things also have meaning beyond what they are.

Saturday I’ll have a mixer… I can make my grandmothers’ cookie recipes, or my Traveling Partner’s mother’s, or my Dad’s, or my own. I can make fruitcake. I can make macarons – or at least learn how. It’s a mixer, just a kitchen appliance in most practical regards – a very useful tool. This morning, and last night, it also amounts to a moment of genuine happiness, not about a mixer (or I’d have replaced it myself), but more about a moment of healing, of love, and of being understood and cared for. This morning I feel wrapped in love. I think it is moments like this one that leave us so often feeling like materials things matter… because I could easily confuse these feelings for being to do with the mixer itself, rather than the circumstances of life, and loss, that were tangled up with the old one it replaces. It’s the moment that is the source of great joy, and the moment is less tangible, and less easily discussed, than the mixer itself… which isn’t even here yet. 🙂

…He chose one that matches my other appliances. I smile.

…He thought to make sure it reached me in time for some holiday baking. I smile.

…He recognized the lingering sense of conflict and loss over giving up the old one. I smile.

…I am well-loved, and am fortunate to be able to love in return, and this moment, here, is quite precious. I smile.

Love matters most.

Love matters most.

This too shall pass. Still smiling I allow myself the awareness that such a powerful deep moment of joy not only won’t last, it isn’t meant to; without the ups and downs, and the complicated complexity of all of it, how would I experience this as a moment of joy? Also knowing suffering provides the comparison needed to recognize it. Without the hurting over the loss of the old mixer, and the complicated baggage around its meaning in my experience (a wedding gift from my violent troubled first marriage, that I carted around for decades of baking – a lifetime, really – the value of the tool out-weighing the painful memories that surfaced every time I used it), I would not experience this new one as a moment of joy at all… it would just be a mixer. 🙂

Today is a good day for a moment, awake, aware, and willing to embrace the whole of my experience to be also able to experience this particular moment, here. Now.

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Categories Brain Injury, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Big 5, women, Words

A Few Well-Chosen Words

December 4, 2016 //
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Yep. That’s what I’m after this morning, as I sit here sipping my coffee – just a few well-chosen words. I haven’t got them. It’s an odd sort of morning, lovely, quiet – uninspired. I’m just a human, sipping coffee, watching the dawn unfold, content with the morning, with how I feel. Not inclined to reach for more, or find my way to less. Comfortable. Balanced.

….Two years ago, I would also have felt vaguely breathless and wary, waiting for the fragile moment to come crashing down in some random attack of drama or bullshit, unable to feel really comfortable, for fear of being unprepared.

…6 years ago, I would have been fairly certain that any such subjective experience was entirely the byproduct of psych meds I wasn’t sure I really needed (but taking them seemed to ease some things, somewhat… didn’t they?), and would be struggling with the experience, itself, as potentially “fake”, but too fearful of what “real life” might offer to seek change.

…10 years ago I could not have had this experience, at all. Between my hormones, my lack of in-depth study of my issues, symptoms, and concerns – a real lack of available knowledge to study in the first place – and the lack of emotional support in my primary relationship, things felt pretty hopeless much of the time.

Incremental change over time is definitely a real thing. We become what we practice – also thoroughly real, testable-y, reproduce-ably, demonstrably true. There are verbs involved, and seemingly endless practice. There are moments of failure and moments of “fuck it”. There are moments that seem unreasonably profound, and others that seem disappointingly practical. It sometimes feels like “an  uphill climb” – of the sort that on a summer morning looks delightful at the outset, but by the time the top of the climb seems near, fatigue and heat have set in, and it all seems so fucking tedious…but… there’s the top… just over there… only to find that cresting the hill reveals more of the journey, and another, higher, peak. There have been days when pain slowed me down, and days when the lack of pain resulted in over-confidence – and more pain, later.

…Still, when I pause, this morning, to acknowledge that I just don’t feel properly “inspired” to write, and really just set it all aside to consider the moment itself, this one, here, now, in the context of the entirety of my life… I can see it; I’ve come a long way. 🙂

Today is a good day to celebrate life. Today is a good day to enjoy the day, as it is. I’ll get some things done around the house, and later celebrate my Traveling Partner’s birthday with him. Today is a good day to enjoy the ordinary, the routine, the day-to-day of life, with a smile, and a moment of appreciation.

...as simple as we make it.

…as simple as we make it.

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
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