Archives for posts with tag: turning 50
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Cherishing the Dawn

March 11, 2013 //
3

I don’t actually have any appreciation for the weirdness that is ‘Daylight Savings Time’. It makes no sense at all to arbitrarily change the clock back and forth bi-annually…unless of course it makes sense to force people and systems to change-up routines thus, for no valuable purpose aside from change itself. lol. I feel for all the people who take prescription medications that are timing sensitive, or whose experience relies heavily on routine.  Those things matter, and those people have an experience to deal with making this adjustment. Having said that, it was interesting to watch the dawn unfold slowly as I walked to work, having gotten used to some daylight before I even head to work in the morning. The walk was a pleasant one and I listened to birds sing and wondered why it had seemed there were whole years of life I do not remember hearing birdsong…and I felt a soft excuse for rain begin to tease my skin with tiny droplets of mist as my journey reached its end.

It’s an interesting experience, life.  Practicing a more mindful approach to the experience of life is pretty interesting, itself.  Yesterday went sideways for a little while, but I managed to enjoy my own experience pretty well in spite of that, aside from a very human moment or two or real irritation and taking something more personally than had benefit. I got past the tough bit with considerably more ease than has been my experience in the past.  The mindfulness practices seem to take those apparent mountains of issues and stress that appear on the horizon some days and render them harmless potholes on the residential road of life, instead of sinkholes on my autobahn. lol. Taking things a little slower, and being compassionate with myself is feeling pretty good.  The day and weekend ended wonderfully well, in spite of the brief bit of… less-than-awesomeness. Time, compassion, and love, Love, and fun are great connection builders!

Just in case I was on the verge of being too complacent with my progress, Mother Nature showed her humorous side this morning and reset the menopause counter to zero. Cruel prank or life lesson? I guess that’s up to me. LOL

Happy Monday! Today, I’m not taking out my issues on other people; they’ve got their own to deal with…for now I have a surplus of smiles to share. 😀

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Categories Anxiety, Healthy Living, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Relationships, Turning 50, women

Le Sacre Du Printemps

March 10, 2013 //
1
Spring blossoms

Spring blossoms

This morning I woke with a headache and a snarl. Unpleasant. Very real. Very human. A quad latte and a couple hours later I’m over being snarly, at least. I still have a nasty headache. Not much to do about it besides treat myself well and with compassion and patience.

It was a sweet gesture that one of my partners put on Larry Coryell playing Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’. I love his version of that piece of music (so much that I’d have linked it, but couldn’t find a good YouTube video of it).  Chilling with coffee, talking about projects shared and individual…’making love’ on a level that isn’t about sex, and is about family and connection. In spite of the headache, I feel pretty good.

It’s been a very good weekend. I have been enjoying my experience so much that I didn’t realize I hadn’t written a post on either Friday or Saturday…there are so many people sharing so many moments and so many words, though, it seems unlikely that the world ran short on reading material. lol. It has been an interesting couple of days, existing in my now, and sharing time with my partners; love, Love, and practicing mindfulness. I figure I’ll be practicing indefinitely, too.  It doesn’t seem to be the sort of thing one can ‘achieve full proficiency’ at with the end result of stopping…it’s an ongoing thing…unless I am seriously misunderstanding the how/why of it.  It is interesting to see the small things I’ve misunderstood in life to the point of causing myself pain or confusion, or throwing weird roadblocks in my own path. Like…learning something; I’ve spent a long time thinking that the point is to ‘know it’ or become ‘good at it’ to the point of some level of expertise or ‘completion’ then stop, show my work, and get my grade, certificate, compliment, affirmation, acknowledgment, pat on the head, promotion, award, trophy…something that makes it an ‘achievement’ more than an experience or point of ongoing progress and growth. ‘Ongoing’. Life is ongoing. Even the noun is more a verb than a noun, because nothing about ‘life’ stands still.  Through the headache I can feel a glimmer of something I didn’t understand trying to peep through the fog of my filters and weirdness.

I cooked dinner the other night…mindfully. That was…interesting. To be really committed to the processes and really focused and aware of the elements of the experience made a very simple meal a different experience in both preparation and enjoyment. I had the subjective experience that the food tasted better, although it was a very simple meal of fettuccine pesto with chicken and red peppers. My partners sure seemed to enjoy the flavors of it more than just about any other meal I’ve prepared for them.  I’ve been exploring a lot of every day experiences with more…I don’t know, call it ‘mindfulness’ or call it ‘self awareness’ or call it ‘commitment to the moment’, I’m not sure it matters what name I give it; it is the doing of it that seems to change things. I can’t help but wonder why I didn’t ‘get it’ sooner? I know it isn’t that no one mentioned it, or that there were no books about it, or that mindfulness practices didn’t exist…was it a lack of readiness on my part?  Did it fall into the set of ‘things the TBI put out of reach for a while’, like algebra in my teens and twenties? Was I unwilling to understand or unable? Does that matter? I’m getting more comfortable with questions, and less hung up on answering them; I find myself speculating whether there may be a correlation between the lack of impulse to answer all the questions, and my generally reduced anxiety level the last little while, then I let that go, too, and chill in this lovely quiet time and space.

Tonight I hope to be in the kitchen making a simple meal for my family, and enjoying love and family and making ready for another week of work and life.  I’ll be seeing an old friend on Wednesday, and I’m excited about it.  We’ll also have a house guest this week, and I feel relaxed and comfortable with that, which isn’t always the case with me. I have dreams and plans and goals, and a life to live with a smile. That feels awesome. 🙂

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

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

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
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