Archives for posts with tag: surviving
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And a Side of Jupiter

October 6, 2026 //
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I could see the moon rising as I left the house this morning. It is presently a thin crescent, seeming to cup Jupiter in an unearthly embrace. It is rising in the eastern night sky. I try to get a picture from the trailhead parking lot.

[No AI is used in writing or editing this blog. This is human content for human readers.]

Honestly, if I were using AI, the picture might have turned out a little sharper. 😆 It wouldn’t really be the picture I took, then, would it?

The crescent moon and Jupiter in the night sky.

Tuesday. I sigh to myself, grateful to face another day, in spite of my background irritation over the state of the world more generally.

…Rape is in the news again. How many times do we have to go over this shit? Damn. The ignorance and malice are astonishing and it’s hard to believe it just keeps coming up. I’m sure a lack of education plays a role in some sexual assaults, but I feel similarly certain that in most of them the perpetrator is very much aware of the terrible nature of their crimes.

I frown to myself in the darkness and sigh quietly. Some wounds don’t heal easily. (Or well, or… maybe ever. Yeah, it’s rough every time this shit comes up all over again.)

…A man or a bear?..

I have the trail to myself. There’s nothing much to fear alone out here. One individual man approaching would be enough to make me wary and put me on high alert, scanning for escape routes, weapons, and potential threats. Rape rarely seems to have any consequences for the rapist, even in the 21st century. It reliably has consequences for the survivor. That lost trust is a big one.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. It’s a mild autumn morning. I’m in a ridiculous amount of pain today. It makes me cross and gloomy. I’d very much prefer to just go back to bed, but it’s a work day, and I’m halfway down this trail…

… Shit. I forgot my radio, my water bottle, the returns that need to be dropped off, and also? I’ve used up my last tissue and I feel like I may be coming down with a cold. Right. “Okay, Tuesday, you’ve had your fun,” I think to myself.

Can we each simply commit to not being fucking vile today? I blow out my breath impatiently. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed (by life, by work), and overextended. Acknowledging the feeling is a necessary step towards resolving it, but doesn’t make doing something about it any easier, and I’m pretty certain it’s largely (if unintentionally) self inflicted.

I had a choice opportunity to relax at home, quietly, alone, last night and I fucked it all up by tackling some needful tasks that became hours of working. By the time my Traveling Partner had returned, I’d gotten a few useful things done, but hadn’t relaxed at all. My dreams during the night were filled with… more work. Passwords that hadn’t saved. Spreadsheets with strange errors I’d never seen before. Presentations that were openly mocked and files that wouldn’t open. I was glad to wake to a new day, even if it is a fucking Tuesday.

… The weekend feels so far away, in both directions…

I watch the moon continue her climb. It’s almost daybreak, almost time to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, anger, Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, grief, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, solo hiking, The Art of Being, The Big 5, women

Pain & Winter Weather

February 19, 2025 //
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I’m sipping my coffee on a rainy winter morning, feeling cross and irritated and in considerable pain. It’s the pain making me so cranky, but it’s “only” my osteoarthritis (and my perpetual headache), and there’s not much to do about it, really. I live with this. A lot of people live with pain, that’s a real thing. I sigh to myself, as I pull my posture more upright. It helps a tiny bit, though barely noticeable in the moment. The moments add up. I’m grateful to have gotten a good night’s sleep. I’m grateful to have what limited Rx pain relief available to me that I do (and am willing to use).

My reflection stares back at me from the window; it’s not yet daybreak, and I see a middle-aged woman with slightly tousled carelessly-kept long hair, glasses, wrapped in a warm (if a bit frumpy) sweater, looking back at me. She looks pleasant and approachable, relaxed, with a soft smile hinting at a life well-lived, and maybe some interesting stories to tell. She looks just a bit… amused. I don’t see the pain, just the smile, which reaches her eyes. At the corners of her eyes and her smile, laugh lines, no frown lines. She looks… capable. She looks ready for the day and unbothered. I find myself liking what I see reflected there in the window. I sigh again and think “you’ll do”, and take another sip of my coffee. I’m not at all sure how I got “here” – it’s been a difficult journey in spots, and I’ve often wandered off my path – but I’m okay with where I am, and that feels like a win.

I sip my coffee thinking about friends. Thinking about love. Thinking about errands I need to run. I think about hearth and home and all the things that add up to this life I live. It’s not perfect; there’s the pain, obviously. That’s its own difficult experience. I try not to take it personally. Things could be so much worse. Instead of living with this pain, I could have rejected having the surgery to repair my shattered spine, and taken a chance on things “just healing up” more or less, and most likely ended up in a wheel-chair, unable to walk at all. It can be hard to trust the opinion of an expert; we live in cynical times. I’m glad I did – I walk every day, and often see the sunrise from some favorite trail. The pain seems like a price worth paying for that privilege, most of the time. My irritation slips away. I chose this with my eyes open. I may not have understood the full measure of the price I’d be paying when I lay there sedated in the ICU so many years ago, but I knew there’d be a price. TANSTAAFL.

One cold winter night 40 years ago, I ran from a knife wielding man to save my own life. I took the only route available to me, that I could see in the moment, which led me to dangling from a balcony rail, dangerously high above a beautiful tiled patio, slick with ice. That man was my then-husband, who rushed to the balcony to plead with me not to let go. I looked back at him in a moment of unexpected clarity and calm, aware of my agency in a new way. The choice was mine. “I have to,” I said, and I did. The explosion of light in my head and the sudden pain that shot through me and my breath knocked out of my body overcame me only for seconds before adrenaline and terror drove me to my feet to seek help. It was a moment of profound change. One choice. One moment.

I sit with my thoughts a while. “I had no other choice” is reliably a lie. We have choices (many) – I know I’ve made a lot of them. Probably the worst choice(s) I’ve ever made? Telling myself I’ve no other choice, and and following the path that took me down. The menu in The Strange Diner is immense. We choose, on our own, to keep it folded, and to narrow our options willfully. Refusing to consider all the options is also a choice.

We’re born “a blank page”, and although we have little to say about our introduction to life, we have so many choices as we grow, and more once we are adult and free to do as we will. What will you do with it? The menu in The Strange Diner is impressively vast. What will you choose? Will you make your world (and your life) a better place in which to thrive? Will you walk a path that leads you somewhere beautiful? Will you take the steps that carry you to becoming the person you most want to be? Who is that? What will your legacy be? You have choices. Choose wisely. Pay the price. Don’t take the pain personally.

It’s time to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, The Art of Being, winter

12 Years Ago, I Found Out

December 17, 2024 //
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I’m sipping my coffee in the quiet of the office, quite early. It was raining too hard to walk in the darkness. Honestly, it was raining too hard to walk. I would not have enjoyed it, and enjoying it is at least part of my intention, each morning, each walk. So I made the drive in to the office, early. I took time to meditate. I made coffee. I had some oatmeal. I walked the halls of the building, a bit, just to stretch my legs and be in motion. I feel stiff. It’s the arthritis, most likely. My head aches. Probably my neck. My tinnitus is loud. It is what it is, eh? A very human, very mortal, experience, and I guess I’m okay with it. There are not presently “other alternatives” from which I’d care to choose something else. I’ve got this, it’s okay, and it’s enough.

I sip my coffee thinking about a note on my calendar I spotted this morning. It reminds me that 12 years ago tomorrow was the day I found out the details of my (most serious) TBI. A head injury in the 1970s that wiped most of my memory, and set back my cognitive and intellectual (and emotional) progress considerably, but which my parents sort of… “kept from me”. I don’t remember the injury itself (hell, I don’t remember most of my life from before that injury, either, mostly just a strange assortment of third person stories told to me by other family members is what I’ve got in the place where my own memory should be, and damned few of those). I do remember having to go to speech therapy. I remember suddenly needing glasses, and being profoundly light sensitive and having a lot of headaches. I remember getting terrible grades in school, when I’d always had good grades “before”.

I found out about my adolescent TBI 12 years ago, because I was in such despair that as I approached 50 taking my own life seemed a rational “solution”, but I’d made myself a promise to give therapy one more try (it was the last item on my to-do list), and I was trying to get into a PTSD clinical trial for a new treatment. In considering my application for that trial, they turned up the microfiche records of an emergency room visit and hospital admission for my (serious) head injury. It was… news to me. The new information simultaneously explained a lot, and also brought a ton of new questions with it. Pieces fell into place – which was useful – but I suddenly also felt like I “didn’t know myself”, and that the entire context of my adolescence and early adult life was completely different than I’d understood it to be. My whole sense of “who I am” felt changed.

…The information did nothing to reduce my feeling of despair, and may have actually deepened it. It also very nearly cost me my relationship with my Traveling Partner; we were neither of us certain that I was even truly competent to be in the relationship we shared at all, with this information available to us. I was so close to giving up…

A short time later, I started this blog. A short time after that, I found a new therapist, and started a new healing journey with a completely different understanding of where I stood as I began it.

The note on my calendar asks me to consider it, and some questions – a note from past me to me here, now.

  1. Is the knowledge still important to me?
  2. What does it mean to me now?
  3. What does the knowledge add to, or take from, my every day experience?
  4. How do I make use of this knowledge in a productive way, today?
  5. Does knowing this about myself improve how I treat myself, or other people?

Deep. Worthy of reflection. I sip my coffee and consider the questions, as I consider that past moment when I found out. The tone of compassionate regret in the voice of the woman on the phone advising me I could not be accepted into their clinical trial for a PTSD treatment because of my history of head trauma. My feeling of surprise, of curiosity, of sorrow, of deepening despair. The call to my mother later to ask about it, and that painful moment when she hung up on me rather than discuss it. The hurt. None of that feels particularly difficult or visceral now, but it was so hard to live those moments 12 years ago. Now it’s just… information. Part of the background. Historical data. A step on a path.

This particular head injury wasn’t the only head trauma I sustained (it’s tempting to say something flippant about domestic violence being a kick in the head, but it’s not actually funny, at all), but it was new information 12 years ago, and it did lead me to consider things differently, and to learn more about what the potential consequences of such things really could be. It pushed me to consider different kinds of therapy, for problems other than PTSD. It let me put other injuries and traumatic events into a bigger picture that was more complete. It let me get therapy and rehabilitative support that I’d never been offered (or able to accept) before – and never known to ask for, or seek out. I wasn’t sure it would help to try to rehabilitate a head injury that was decades old…

(tl;dr – it totally did, a lot)

…It’s a strange path that we each walk, is it not? A journey with no map, no clear destination, sometimes a poor understanding of the starting point as we begin is… a very strange thing, indeed. The journey is the destination. I feel grateful for the many chances I’ve had (and taken) to begin again. I’m grateful for every sunrise I see, and every sunset I’m fortunate to enjoy at the end of a day. There’s no knowing how much time we get in this mortal life. I’m glad I didn’t end mine prematurely; it’s been a worthy journey so far. I hope to go much further. There’s so much left to do, to see, and to feel. So many more beginnings to undertake, and practices to practice, and also… I’ve got this list of shit to do, and the holidays ahead. lol It’s time. Again. Time to begin again. Time to walk my path. Time to practice the practices that have helped me along the way for the past 12 years.

It’s been so very worth it.

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Categories Allegories, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, Despair, forgiveness, Free Will, gratitude, grief, health, Healthy Living, Love, meditation, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, The Art of Being, Turning 50, turning 60, women

Triggered

August 18, 2024 //
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If you have PTSD or cPTSD, what follows may be painfully familiar, and I’m sorry in advance. Maybe skip this one? I don’t want to cause harm. Consider this a trigger warning (I’ll be talking about PTSD and domestic violence).

… I honestly don’t know whether to begin “at the beginning”, or quite when that beginning might actually be. I’m writing while also still triggered, slowly working through my anxiety and stress, and trying to find my way to a calmer place. I have the tools to manage the moment, and I feel pretty confident in the potential that I can, but it’s no easy thing. My heart is still pounding, and I can feel that my breathing is irregular, shallow, somewhere between hyperventilating and struggling to breathe. The first mile of my walk passed quickly, feet hitting the pavement too hard, pace unsustainably aggressive. I finally stop, sit, and work on properly calming myself.

For some context, after a week of providing approximately 24/7 caregiving to my Traveling Partner recovering from surgery, with few breaks, and no opportunity for deep restful sleep (or even more than 2-4 hours at a time, simply due to the timing of medication), I was exhausted, struggling with short-term memory and moments of confusion. I was also dealing with grief, having lost a cherished family member mid-week, and reconfronting the loss of my Dear Friend in the spring on the date of her celebration of life. My self-care was coming up short in places, just due to distractions and fatigue-driven stupidity.

In the evening last night, my Traveling Partner very kindly proposed that he felt up to making sure to take his medication through the night, and suggested I just get some sleep. Beyond grateful (and feeling very loved) I accepted. I even set my wake up time for a little later than usual, to be sure to get the rest I needed. I didn’t manage to sleep through the night, still waking briefly each time my partner woke up and got out of bed, and once because a laxative I had taken decided to do its thing at 04:00 in the morning. (I got a lot more sleep than I’ve been getting for the past 10 days or so, and it seems enough.)

I was soundly deeply asleep when I heard a soft voice ask me to join him in the bathroom. In my sleeping state, the voice sounded “sweetly menacing”, and seemed to me to be the voice of my first husband. A cold chill descended over me, my mouth went dry even as I immediately began getting out of bed. I don’t recall whether I replied or what I said. My consciousness felt paralyzed with dread. (Had I only dreamt my life with my Traveling Partner? Was I still trapped in a living nightmare?) I was already triggered before my Traveling Partner could even speak to me. He was stressed out, himself; one of his meds had just run out completely, which he discovered while preparing his meds for the day ahead. On a Sunday. He was panicking and needed my support – but I was also responsible for him running out of the medication! I’d been tasked with – and accepted responsibility for – ensuring his meds were timely, and available, and that he takes them. His panic expressed itself as anger, or that’s how it reached my still disoriented brain. Triggered and unsure where/when I was, I panicked, too. I fled. I took immediate action in the direction of getting that Rx filled, somehow. I wasn’t thinking efficiently or clearly.

He phoned me feeling angry and left without care. Reasonable, frankly. He gently asked me to come back, make coffee, and make a clear plan, together. I did that, dragging myself through every step, still thoroughly triggered and drenched in stress, dread, terror… None of it “real”. (No one likes being yelled at first thing when they wake, and also, no one wants to begin a Sunday discovering their partner allowed a critical medication to run out!) Nothing about the actual lived experience today actually justifies the headspace I find myself in; this is mental illness. PTSD. I’m a domestic violence survivor. Managing that these days sometimes feels like an afterthought, but this morning it’s way too fucking real.

I made coffee for my Traveling Partner, we settle on an action plan, and I leave the house, again. I’m definitely a threat to his calm and healing time in the condition I’m presently in, and I need time and space to calm myself and get re-anchored to “now”. My stress and anxiety multiply with my shame over failing my partner.

… The pharmacy opens at 10:00…

I hit the trail hard. Aggressive footsteps slamming the ground at an unsustainable (for me, now) pace. I walk myself breathless. I can’t tell if my heart is pounding with the exertion or my anxiety. My first mile passes quickly, unnoticed. I’m stuck in my own head.

I stop, finally, and sit for a minute. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. “Be here now.” I remind myself. For most values of “okay”, I am okay right now. No one is chasing me. There is no imminent threat. Fuck PTSD. I hate this shit. How am I so terrified right now?

… I remind myself how rare it is to have to face this crap, these days…

I write a while. Meditate. Breathe. Work on calming myself. I reflect on the relationship I have with my Traveling Partner, his gentleness, his love, and our life together. “Be here now.” Now is okay. No physical violence. No being awakened in the night to be beaten. No torture. For most values of okay, I am okay right now. I save my draft and walk on, realizing I really need to pee.

I walk on more gently. I’m still seeking calm. I’m still pretty fucked in the head. My heart is heavy with the stress and hurt that I have caused my partner. It’s incredibly difficult to make amends for this sort of thing and it’s hard to overstate the damage it can do.

I breathe, exhale, and relax (well, I try; I’m still working on that).

I notice the sunshine, the blue sky, the birdsong. I notice the swarm of rally cars in the parking lot as I reach the trailhead. I think about how far I’ve come and how much time has actually passed since my living nightmare ended… 30 years? Hasn’t it been long enough to really let it go?

Brain damage and PTSD… That’s a lot to ask a partner to deal with. I find myself wondering why he stays, and can’t help recognizing that he must love me deeply to endure so much. I’ve managed to fail him too often over these months of injury (and now recovery), and it doesn’t seem fair to him. Good intentions aren’t enough, and sometimes doing my best won’t get the job done. That’s fucking awful and way too g’damned real. I curse my ex under my breath as I walk… but the responsibility for doing more/better now is mine, 100%.

I walk and think and prepare to begin again.

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Categories anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Frustration, gratitude, health, Love, meditation, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Uncategorized

The World and The Moment

February 7, 2023 //
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I’m sipping my coffee and reminding myself – again – to stop picking at my cuticles. It’s more like a “tic” than a “habit”, and it comes and goes with my background anxiety or general level of stress. I’m less than ideally skilled at managing it. I sigh out loud and begin typing. I know that I can’t pick at my cuticles while also typing…so… there’s that. Helpful.

A glance at the news doesn’t need to go any deeper than headlines. Click-bait-y or not, the news in the world is pretty grim. Earthquakes. Murder. War. Femicide. Sexism. Racism. Xenophobia. Greed. Human primates are a fucking dumpster fire of mistreatment and poor decision-making. It’s ugly out there. I feel “the weight of the world” as a big disappointing bummer. A metaphorical weight holding me down. Bleh.

I feel, momentarily, that I have little power to change the world. I guess that’s mostly pretty true… another sip of my coffee. I think about the coffee itself. Where it likely comes from, far away, in a hotter climate, and likely the product of a great deal of back-breaking manual labor that was not well-compensated. I frown at my coffee. At the world. We could do better. Every fucking one of us, most likely. Me too. You too. All of us.

Another sigh. Another sip of coffee. A glance at my work calendar for today. I’m feeling low and unmotivated. My dreams were troubled and my sleep was restless. If it weren’t a work day, I’d maybe just go back to bed and hope to wake in a different place, emotionally. So much less work involved than trying to sort myself out in this moment.

…”Do better.” I remind myself…

I take a breath. Take a break. Walk around the block feeling the cold morning air on my face. Funny – I don’t recall ever needing to take a break while I was writing in the morning, before. Strange. It’s not about the writing. It’s about the human being doing the writing (clearly). I take a minute to think about things that make me feel good. I think about love. I think about my Traveling Partner sleeping at home. I think about sunshine, Spring, and meadows covered in flowers. I think about forested trails and the sound of a creek flowing beneath a bridge. I think about rain showers and days at the beach. I think about quiet afternoons with a good book. I think about the many beautiful miles I have walked in a lifetime, and how many more miles there are to walk that I’ve never yet set foot upon. I think about the beautiful things my Traveling Partner has made for me (or us) since we moved here to this little house. I think about his smile and his laughter. I think about the warmth of his embrace and the way he misses me when I’m not with him. I think about the first time I ever heard The Sultans of Swing on the radio. I think about my first set of oil paints, my first really good brushes, my first easel. I think about the roses in my garden, and my plans for Spring this year.

…There’s more good than bad, more delightful moments than unpleasant ones, in this one life of mine. I’m fortunate. Trauma has left some scars, and imprinted me in some unfortunate ways. We are changed by trauma, it’s true. I still have choices. I still have opportunities to grow, heal, and improve. I still have so much to say about how I experience moments – even if I can’t do much to change the world. (Individual people do change the world… it’s just fairly unlikely, statistically. lol) Still… our choices matter. How we treat each other matters, and the small things we do to be our best version of ourselves, and enjoy our lives and lift each other up all make an huge difference… if only in small ways. 🙂 It’s still worthwhile to do our best.

…and then do better than that, too…

One moment at a time. One choice at a time. Today I’ll just do my best, and hope to get it more right than wrong, and do better tomorrow. 🙂

I’m ready to begin again. Again.

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Categories Allegories, anhedonia, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, Despair, forgiveness, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Sleepless Nights, The Art of Being, War and News of War, winter
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