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That’s Neither Here, Nor Hair

March 7, 2013 //
1

I’d like to have a caution sign for the inside of my bedroom door. One of the safety yellow ones seen at the roadside for any number of upcoming hazards, and I want it to have one of those crazy squiggly road symbols for dangerous curves, and a falling rock symbol, and also a symbol for potholes. At the top, I’d expect it to say ‘Caution’, as most of them do, and perhaps at the bottom ‘Life Ahead’. Frankly, I could probably use a quick reminder every day before I head out into the world and get hung up on some ‘obstacle’ that isn’t actually an obstacle at all, but more of a lesson. 🙂

Short night last night, and a good morning anyway. Stayed up a bit past my ‘bell-curve bedtime’ watching a movie with my partners. Totally worth it. Lost a little more sleep to the happy sounds of life and Love, before my awareness distilled to a few moments of self, then dissipated to dreaming. Also, totally worth it.

This morning I am still turning over the Conundrum of Hair. I put it in capital letters to highlight the experience that this relatively simple question has come to serve as an interesting life lesson about decision-making and taking care of me. I mean, seriously? I’m talking about whether or not to get a hair cut – not exactly life-changing stuff, as changes go. I keep turning it over in my mind, trying to figure out not only what I want (for an outcome) but also learn more about my decision-making challenges in general.

I grew up hearing ‘Do something, even if it isn’t right!’ as an oft-repeated instructional slogan intended, I think, to foster a high level of productivity, initiative, motivation, and, oddly, effective decision-making (defined only as ‘making a quick decision and acting on it).  I learned it, and became an adult quite capable of making very bad decisions very quickly, and firmly, and taking prompt action on them – but I did not also learn to make the best possible decisions, only quick ones. lol. Life needs a bit of both, I’ve learned.  Often the decisions I’ve made quite slowly, over time, with a lot of consideration, and some false starts and mind-changing, plan-changing, or self-changing have been more worthwhile. I was taught a lot of disrespect for ‘dithering’, ‘vacillating’, and ‘being indecisive’. Funny how complicated these things have made deciding whether or not to cut my hair! Watching the process unfold both as an observer and as a participant is interesting, itself, and I’m finding value in taking a step back and asking myself some new questions.

I asked myself why am I considering getting my hair cut short right now? Why is the idea of getting my hair cut short – very short – scary? (I’ve had very long hair all my adult life) What does having all this long hair mean to me? What does the hair itself represent in my experience? Does the experience of having long hair have any intrinsic value? What about the experience of having long hair do I value? Am I willing to give that up to experience having short hair? Do I actually want to do this? Is there any other reason to cut my hair short besides ‘because I want this’? I’ve been turning these questions over in my mind a lot. “Long hair is sexy.” Yep, sure is – but so is short hair, because ‘sexy’ isn’t a hair style.  “I like the feel of my lover’s hands in my hair.” Mmm, yes, yes I do.  Does sensuality end with a hair cut?  That’s clearly not the case, since tons of men have short hair and don’t seem to lack for sensuality. “I won’t look like me.” Um…I am not a hair style. lol. “You can’t tell me what to do!” Somewhere inside I still feel the helpless anger and resentment of being controlled, in the memory of having to get a short hair cut because it was too much work to keep long hair neat when I was a child – it’s way past time to let that baggage go. lol.  I have a memory of crying to my father about a short hair cut I didn’t like…I must have been quite young…I remember mostly the feeling of hot tears spilling down and wailing “Daddy, I’m so ugly! I won’t be sexy – I look like a boy!!” and my father’s amused reply “Baby, there’s nothing about you that looks like a boy.” Well, at 49 and with the curves I’ve got, there’s sure no way to mistake me for a boy! lol “My partners like my long hair.” Ouch, that’s more difficult than I want it to be…sure, some people really like long hair, find it sexy, enjoy seeing it, touching it, and it may be part of how they see someone they love…but it’s just hair; it is not identity.  One of my partners is presently letting his hair grow longer after years of wearing it short. It’s sexy both ways – because he’s sexy; it’s not the hair. He looks different than he did with the shorter style; he is still himself. AND, although when he considered growing out his hair, he did mention it, and discuss it, and ask me what I thought, he did not ask for my permission, or make it about my needs or desires when he made a choice to change-up his look. Oh, ok, so that wasn’t really that difficult, after all. LOL 😀

Every internal objection, each moment of resistance, all the arguments from any angle are so easily knocked down when I am calm, centered, and willing to be compassionate with myself about old hurts, baggage, and internal weirdness.  So, now it comes down to what it really comes down to – is this what I want? Does it meet my needs over time? I still have not decided…and there’s no need to rush.  Now it is just a hair cut.  😀

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Turning 50, women, Words

News, Truth, and Meaning

March 6, 2013 //
1

‘News’ is a funny word.  It could seem to be a plural of ‘new’, but ‘new’ isn’t a noun.  There seems to be a tendency, too, to make assumptions about the noteworthiness of an event based on whether we characterize it as ‘news’, to the point of having an entire separate word to describe those as ‘newsworthy’. There are cultural expectations that adults will have some basic familiarity with ‘current events’, with the implication that failing to follow ‘the news’ results in being somehow less relevant, well-informed, or professionally viable.

It’s a trap.

Think it over with me for a moment…periodicals and televised programming centered around journalism and reporting of selected current events or culturally relevant topics are often looked upon with a higher than average level of credibility. Why is that? I mean…they are producing a product for profit, are they not? The truthfulness of the material they offer is not actually regulated or accredited, and the goal of gaining or maintaining viewership, ratings, or sales numbers is not at all the same as a goal of ‘providing factually accurate information’ – is it? What would ‘news’ look like if all the inflammatory language, the color, and the spin were removed? If unbiased, unemotional language were used to present facts simply, we would probably be less compelled to read or watch it. Words, once again, being used to control us. Words being used to persuade us to spend our time receiving input that may not have lasting value, but will assuredly rob us of our time, and potentially our comfort, peace of mind, and ability to manage stress. No one news ‘source’ (they are not sources, they are brokers at best. lol) has a monopoly on manipulating the public, because they all have the same actual goal – gain viewers/readers, gain ratings, make sales for advertisers.  Is there an untapped segment of the public out there? (Angry women? Single mothers? Those on the right? Those on the left?) The media will identify it, and someone will begin creating content to appeal to that group of people – to acquire them as regular consumers.  It’s not about information, and it is not about truth. It is about ‘the business win’.

Why do I care? Pretty simple – I’m working on learning to take care of me; to manage my stress level, treat myself well, and live a good life that has meaning and in which I can thrive as a being. As the 2012 US presidential election approached last year, I found myself regularly in a state of stress and near-panic over news articles. Unacceptable.  I wasn’t sure how to deal with it – some of the events in the news were even triggering my PTSD, resulting in lost sleep, panic, emotional volatility, nightmares, and a near-continuous state of severe stress that was making me ill, and severely unhappy.  I gotta admit, it gets depressing really quickly to read some heinous news report about a gang rape a world away, and find no comfort at all in local or regional reporting right here at home – because so many of the voices in the news sound suspiciously anti-woman to the point of being ‘pro rape’.  It was an ugly election, and I have a long list of human beings of both genders that I not only won’t ever vote for (no matter what their future achievements or stated values may be), I feel rather as if I can’t actually count on the culture I live in to value and support women, or treat them compassionately and fairly under any circumstances.  It became a very scary world to live in, pretty quickly.  Someone, somewhere, must think it is OK to deliver ‘news’ content that willfully and deliberately selects verbiage that stokes emotional turmoil, triggers anxiety, depression, and anger, and may be not only hurtful and confrontational, but also may not be true…just to get it seen, just to make money. Ick.  The horrors of reported news from December through January was enough for me. I don’t need to complicate things that are already hard on me by allowing content providers to manipulate my emotions.

I turned off the news.  I gave it a break, skimming only what I had to, avoiding the rest. I turned off feeds. I uninstalled applications from my devices. I started logging off and exiting and shutting down things I am not actively using at any given moment.  I feel better. lol. Every day that I don’t read a story where some over privileged idiot with too much power and not enough wisdom says something stupidly offensive and hurtful, I have done myself a favor. I made some choices about content, too. I revisited my settings on the two content providers I choose to continue with regularly – and discontinued all the political and business ‘news’, entertainment ‘news’, and any category that had become a regular source of stress. I am keeping content relating to mindfulness practices, health and fitness, food, and ‘good news’ where that is available. I skim the front page quickly – subject lines only – and move along.  (It may be relevant to something that Hugo Chavez died, that seems historical I suppose, but I am also quite certain that not one detail about that actually matters to me in my here and now.) Going any deeper seems to require, at some point, suspending any skepticism and ‘trusting’ news content providers to be truthful – and to trust that their sources have been similarly truthful.  I’m not actually willing to indulge in that level of trust, when it has become pretty clear that The Daily Show can be relied on more easily to be accurate than mainstream ‘news’ content providers. lol.

Are you taking a moment to feel some sympathy? Are you also taking a moment to feel a little smug that you are not so helplessly enthralled by ‘the media’? Before you go too far down that road, please just take a moment to think back on your past 6 months or so – did you make even one decision to take an action, or engage in a behavior, because of something you read/heard on the news? Did you repeat to someone else even one ‘fact’ that you read/heard on the news, without independently verifying it yourself? I don’t think saying more is necessary, and your choices are your own. 😉

I also don’t want to waste my time reading what someone else wrote about what they think about what someone even further removed experienced, or base all of my thinking and decision making on things I read or heard somewhere.  I want to have my own experiences, and I want to have time to do that.  I gained hours of time back by discontinuing the habit of reading the news, or Reddit, or forums about this or that topic of interest. Now I have time to talk. Time to feel. Time to touch and be touched. Time to explore my life and my choices for the future. Time to consider what matters to me. Time to treat myself well and heal old hurts.

I discovered I do not know how to read the news mindfully.  So…I stopped reading the news.  I haven’t missed it.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Menopause, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Rape, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Turning 50, women, Words

Things, and Other Things

March 5, 2013 //
1

As days go, so far, today is neither here nor there, in the sense that I am calm, and feel balanced, and my emotions are just not stirred right now, one way or the other. The rainy morning pleases me, by wrapping me in a certain sentimental something that I feel on rainy days. I don’t know where it comes from. I feel it on rainy days. It’s not a good feeling or a bad feeling. It’s not an emotion I know how to name, but it is a comfortable fit, inasmuch as it feels very familiar and relaxed and centered.  It is an experience I enjoy, although I have never examined it very closely.  It was raining hard enough to decide to ride the bus to work. The rain spattering the bus windows, and the filtered gray light gave me a strange sense of emotional safety and this morning I had a Dave Matthews song stuck in my head, which sort of encouraged my thinking in the direction of mindfulness, emotions, and change.

I started thinking about ‘anger’. I regularly avoid the word, hoping to avoid the experience. I’ve had very bad experiences with anger, both other people’s anger and my own. I feel overwhelmed by anger, even to the point of frankly finding it hard to write about with candor. Fear of feeling it, fear of failing at it, fear of facing it, fear of being unable to contain it…anger is powerful stuff. I’d like to be more easily able to accept that I can and do feel angry sometimes, and just move on from it or let it go.  I’d also like to be able to observe someone else’s anger without taking it personally, feeling defensive or blamed, or feeling responsible for ‘fixing’ it. (Seeing it in text, I see that some of those are choices I can make, and other bits seem relevant to mindfulness practices I am cultivating.) I focused on ‘going easy on myself’ for past anger, so I could more easily examine anger in general. Big Anger associated with ancient hurts and long-carried baggage is a wound I know I’m not quite ready to tackle, but I got to wondering if every day anger could be ‘practiced’ for skill building so that I could be ready to tackle it some other time? So… I considered something small I was angry about recently that I didn’t act on or attempt to resolve at that time, and allowed myself to acknowledge and feel being angry about it.  Then one by one I put some of the specific mindfulness practices I am learning into action.  I didn’t make assumptions about whether any one thing would or would not work.  I just did steps, followed processes, pursued practices. I practiced. I practiced being angry without escalating. I practiced accepting the feeling of anger without acting out. I practiced allowing myself to ‘consider other sides’ of an issue in spite of an emotion of anger. I practiced letting anger go without compromising my values, or depriving myself of personal understanding or validation of my experience.  I repeated the exercise with a number of small things I was angry about in a small way.  I didn’t panic, have a fit, escalate, or feel hurt or damaged, and the anger itself didn’t do anything at all.  Actually – I still feel good; calm and balanced.  I even found myself understanding one or two small things differently, over which I had been harboring some resentment.  The anger really just evaporated when I gained a somewhat different understanding of the circumstances through calm consideration of what I did and did not know, instead of struggling with the anger itself.

Anger is nasty stuff. I’d like to master it. Looks like I would do well to really understand what I mean by that, too, because apparently ‘mastery’ of anger is not about ‘making it go away’.

Mindfulness and emotion is more intense than I expected and less scary than I feared.  Pleasant emotions, the ‘good stuff’, are actually very rich experiences, and I am learning to really savor them and take my time with life on a different level. Emotions that are often experienced as ‘bad’ or negative emotions are intense too, incredibly intense, and I am hoping to continue to learn not to be wounded by those experiences. I feel hopeful – and supported.  It is easier to write about some of these things than to talk about them in real life with people I love and make my life with – because the conversation itself is so personal, so emotional, and so ‘right now’, for  me; I easily lose sight of boundaries or limits.  I sometimes cry when I’m trying to talk about things that are emotional.  I’m learning to be ok with that, and to understand it more as an expression of intensity rather than an expression of a particular emotion.  Adjusting my understanding of that experience has seemed, so far, to result in fewer tears.  I wish I understood that.

So…Tuesday. It is a good one, so far. 😀

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

Authentic Faux

March 4, 2013 //
1

Some Monday thoughts and observations to get my week started…

It isn’t enough to think about ‘mindfulness’…it is necessary to do mindfulness to create a change to becoming mindful in my life. (I know, I know – some of the things I think, and say, seem incredibly obvious. They still hold some significance for me, and I find it helpful to see words, sometimes.)

One of the ugliest things I think I may have learned as a child was a quote my father often repeated to me…something on the order of “Sincerity – if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”  I find it attributed here and there to a variety of notables, paraphrased a couple ways, but the bottom line is, for me – that this particular quote, taught to a child as rote learning, has the potential to become the foundation of a lifetime – and lifestyle – of artifice, insincerity, lies, deceit and misdirection, spin, masks, frauds, and fakery of all sorts.  How big a step is it, really, from the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and white lies to living a personal fraud, or worse? I see a lot of cultures place value on ‘truth’ and ‘honesty’…so…how do we justify tolerating political lies, advertising lies, social lies, ‘harmless’ lies… any of it? I found myself thinking about it this morning, and thinking about a concept I am finding new value in… ‘being genuine’. (Remember everyone ‘getting real’ in the 90s? That seemed so promising…what happened to that? Did we learn to fake that, too?)

I had a wonderful – very genuine – moment with a partner last night that really moved me, filled my heart with warmth and love, and carried me aloft on wings through a night of gentle restful sleep and into a very sweet Monday morning of feeling calm and centered and…like myself. It wasn’t a grand moment. It wasn’t a moment to describe with superlatives, or put in a picture frame. It was just a sweet and comfortable, emotionally nourishing moment of very genuine affection and love. Genuine. Real. Honest. That it was what it was is precious and powerful in my memory this morning and I feel valued and encouraged to be me, to be mindful, to grow. But…it does have me thinking about the faux we embrace…fancy words we use to make things that aren’t real seem real, or aren’t pleasant seem a little more palatable. I am understanding now that this, too, is dishonest.

It got me thinking about something a little vain…my hair.  I still wear it long.  I color it now and again, and I used to color it often. I wasn’t specifically trying to slow the progress of time, or appear more youthful. It was more about looking like a certain vision of myself…and this morning, in the face of what is genuine, and truly valued, I find myself uncomfortably aware that ‘a certain vision of myself’ contained that kernel of dishonesty…because my hair, my genuine color, is part of who I am in my here and now… I don’t dislike the ‘natural color’ of my hair…grays and all…but in all fairness I don’t really know what that color might really look like, now. I haven’t worn my hair ‘natural’ in many years…except the top couple inches if I fall behind on re-coloring it. Then this morning I saw an article about ‘going gray’…and found myself quite awed by the beauty of women my own age, and older, gray locks and genuine smiles…  I, too, would like to be so radiant, so lovely, so genuine. In that moment that I spent admiring the mature loveliness of these beautiful adult women, I felt a new understanding begin to unfold in my ‘who am I?’ puzzle…’genuine’ is something I like. It is a quality I will embrace in life and love.

So…’who am I’ isn’t necessarily about who I want to be, who I am trying to be, who I would like someone else to see me as…it is more about who I am, right now, without limits, hesitation, misdirection, camouflage, walls, masks, or conditions. Just me. Right now. Gray hair and all. 😀 Seems so obvious, and so simple…

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Categories Anxiety, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Relationships, Turning 50, women, Words

Hormones and Mindfulness

March 3, 2013 //
1

It was bound to happen, right? Hormones. [insert utterly offensive string of favorite swear words here] Yay! [detect sarcasm] I get to practice mindfulness – with hormones! 😦  So far, so… good? Not good, exactly, but not exactly bad, either. I’m less wrapped in misery, but I feel some of this more, or… something.  I ache. I feel irritable – which comes and goes erratically and does not seem at all correlated to events in my experience or the household emotional environment, and that’s pretty typical of my PMS experiences in the past.  Voices distract and annoy me – and then I feel irritated with myself because these are voices of people I love. [more swearing fits nicely here] Did I mention that I ache? I’m also sentimental and emotional about weird things… like…I drove past a huge construction site – a factory being built – and started weeping because I really wanted to check it out in person, on foot, really see it…and was moved to tears to feel pretty sure I wouldn’t be allowed to do that if I walked over there. lol. I just don’t understand how to share that in a way that gives you a real window into my visceral experience, and it feels so alienating to know that I lack that ability. Freakin’ hormones…the worst bit is the lies that hormones trick my brain into reading into my experience; I have generally made very different assumptions about people, their motives, and intentions, when I’m PMS-y, and it sucks to be chronically concerned that I’m ‘not being rational’.

The mindfulness practices, though, put me in a very ‘it is what it is’ sort of place.   It feels easier to understand that ‘it may not be what it seems’ when I take a moment to relax, breathe, and treat myself compassionately.  It’s still pretty suck-y to feel ‘off’; fatigued, vaguely unwell, sort of ‘disturbed’ and generally aggravated – but they are just feelings and like any other feelings, they are transitory. I’ve been making different choices today with the mindfulness doing its thing; choosing to enjoy an activity that takes me away from home for a little while, then wrapping up some tasks on my To Do list that both need doing, and occupy my attention with productive things that result in a sense of satisfaction and achievement. I find myself really relaxed in spite of the hormones and feeling like the day is not only not ‘wasted’ with distress and internal torment, but quite enjoyable so far. It’s nice.

How well can I treat myself today? If pampering myself and meeting some personal needs results in me feeling balanced and nurtured and serene, will my partners also feel they are ‘being treated well’?  That doesn’t sound like it would be a definite outcome, when I see it in text, so I will take some time to consider whether there is a ‘missing link’ that I also need to understand more clearly. It’s a quiet Sunday. It’ll be Shepard’s Pie for dinner tonight, maybe with some biscuits, or perhaps maple-walnut bars for dessert, and most of the tasks I committed to for the weekend are already behind me. It’s a lovely day for a walk, some  yoga, a leisurely bath, some reading…a nice way to wrap up a weekend.

This all feels very much like progress and improvement. 😀

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Categories Anxiety, Epsom salts, Healthy Living, Menopause, Mindfulness, Perspective, Relationships, Turning 50
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