Archives for posts with tag: TBI
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It’s Only Sleep

November 3, 2013 //
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It’s been awhile since I had a night like last night. I didn’t sleep much. I wasn’t anxious, and there were no nightmares, I just didn’t really sleep deeply, for very long, or very restfully. I went to bed later than I prefer to, because although I’d started to feel sleepy, it just wasn’t moving me to choose sleep, and there were still a couple of things I wanted to get done before the work week began.

Everything seemed on track for a good night’s sleep. I just didn’t happen to have one. lol. Last night was the change to ‘daylight savings time’, too. I was already going to lose an hour of precious sleep, I knew.  Feeling a bit like a leftover Halloween zombie this morning, I’d have been delighted to wake just one hour short on sleep this morning! I did drift off a couple of times, long enough to be surprised when a partner, out for the evening, returned home – and again sometime later when he kissed me hello-goodnight in the darkness.

It is a change that even feeling so groggy and tired this morning there is no anxiety about my lack of sleep – and there wasn’t any during the night, either. I was merely awake, instead of sleeping. Any experience that changes from being an anxiety-based experience to being a calm chill contented experience is progress – so I’m not bitching. I’m just tired. lol.  Tired – but still eager to see the dawn.

A recent dawn. This morning will be darker; sunrise comes later.

A recent dawn. This morning will be darker; sunrise comes later.

The sky is just barely shifting from black to deep dark blue-gray, just now.  I really don’t understand daylight savings time – who does it really serve? Foolishness to fight the changing light of the seasons.  Strangely apropos this week, though, with so many other elements of my every day routine also on the precipice of change. The winter holiday season begins soon. One of my partners starts a new job tomorrow – one that results in a substantial shift in routine, perhaps even lifestyle at some point, certainly we’ll all be making adjustments here and there, at least.

I’m tired this morning, making this a wonderful morning to commit to giving people my whole attention when they interact with me – listening with my attention on them as people, hearing their words, using mindfulness practices to stay in-the-moment and resisting the ease of being ‘on autopilot’. Today, I will listen attentively. I will speak with compassion. I will choose kindness, and provide gentle service to family and love. I will do my best.

Today I will change the world.

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Categories Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Sleepless Nights

The Pen Is Mighty

November 1, 2013 //
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I’m still contemplating an epiphany of sorts, a developing understanding, a hint of something broader than I know just on the horizon of my awareness of self. I’d like to write. I feel eager. I feel motivated. I feel. That’s really it; I feel this from my core to my consciousness. I am also feeling just a bit unworthy, or unready or ill-equipped to handle the topic just yet.

The topic dominates my thoughts. Something about the nature of identity, the nature of language and words, the effect of definition, the precious and necessary confound of ambiguity and uncertainty, or the outcome of unanswered questions being a larger part of my experience than the answers to questions ever have been… or… something like that.  The substance and the weight of it, still a bit incomplete and unformed in my thinking, is so massive that I feel ‘crowded’ cognitively, and continuously compelled to write, only to find myself still not yet ready to ‘lay it out’ and take a look at it as words on a page. It’s a strange sensation.  It is that ‘can’t quite put my finger on it’ sensation of being unable to recall the name of a favorite movie in the midst of an exciting dialogue with a dear friend, or being unable to ‘name that tune’ even though it is a favorite song.  A creative gadfly.

The pen: a might artifact, a weapon, a tool, a magic wand, a toy, a treasure.

The pen: a might artifact, a weapon, a tool, a magic wand, a toy, a treasure.

So, although words elude me for now, I celebrate them, and language. So much of who I am, of what we are as beings, of our potential to experience the world and our ability to share it, is in our hands in the form of a pen.

Yesterday’s loveliness lingers in my memory as a secure stronghold against insecurity and fearfulness. I love, and I am loved in return. Today I will embrace serenity and calm, and that still place of observation without judgement that is within me.

Today I will change the world.

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Categories Art, Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, women, Words

What It Is

October 30, 2013 //
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Or, for that matter, what it isn’t.  These are subjects for another day – soon.

Today I am focusing on openness and intimacy, fearlessly approaching and being approachable. Eye contact. Observation. Being in the moment, because the moment is what I have. Making room to feel, to be involved in my own experience. Breathing, and finding that still calm place.  Taking practices of mindful self-acceptance, compassion, and gratitude, and applying them to my relationships with others.

Today I find balance, because I choose balance, and compassion because I choose compassion. Today I will change the world.

Every moment holds all the potential that exists to choose well.

Every moment holds all the potential that exists to choose well.

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Categories autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships

Sometimes More Than Others

October 29, 2013 //
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I really wanted to come home and write. I have something bubbling up in  my consciousness, a new level of understanding of something that seems… worth the time and the words….

…but I feel angry. I feel annoyed. I feel… too close to the darkness that lurks within, poetically speaking. I’d rather not taint my tender epiphany with any of that. It’s worth more. So, I am taking some time to chill and contemplate how human we each are, how easily I can identify with many facets of a conflict, how difficult perspective and balance can be – so tenuous, so fragile – in the face of strong emotion.

Sometimes a change in perspective doesn't really answer any questions.

Sometimes a change in perspective doesn’t really answer any questions. It isn’t always about answers.

I continue to chill. To breath. To study. It could be that the most important changes for me of late have been moving away from a need to know, to a comfort with ambiguity and uncertainty, letting go of the desire to ‘be right’ in favor of being calm, and letting go of mastery and answering questions to be a student, every day, asking more questions than I answer, and being open to what is… sometimes more than others; I am, after all, still human. 🙂

Today did bring a nice moment of surprise – I’d forgotten I had ordered a couple of books in pursuit of my studies, and they came today.  Siddhartha; a favorite novel that didn’t open my eyes when I read it in the 70s. I was young, and broken, and more than any of that, I was not ready, now I am, and I really want to read it with new understanding.  I also ordered a book I never read, but could have… but didn’t.  I want to read it now.  As if only I could read all the words, I would be able to… something.  Something more than I can, so far.  Buddha in Blue Jeans. Quite tiny and slim and unassuming (some of my most enduring favorites and influential tomes are tiny).  I opened it tenderly, randomly, in that vaguely reverent  way people who love books do. It’s a keeper. Pretty words. 🙂

Lest you think me more serious than I am, there was a third book. 101 Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies. Mmm, even the title sounds tasty. 😀

Nightfall has over taken twilight. Time to consider things, and take care of me.

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Categories Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, 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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