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How to Thrive

May 27, 2025 //
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I’m at the trailhead. I didn’t get much of a walk in, this morning. Feels like a bit of tendinopathy in my left knee. Ouch. I still managed a slow careful walk on the well-maintained trail nearest to home before I realized I am dealing with an injury. Maybe a bit too much enthusiasm with the elliptical machine. It’s a work day, and a fairly routine beginning, aside from this new pain. I breathe, exhale, and relax. Could be worse; at least everything isn’t hurting!

Taking a moment for a sunrise is a good use of time.

So, I’ll be on my cane full-time for awhile, I guess, and patiently giving my leg a break and time to heal. Doing so can’t alleviate the necessity of other sorts of self-care and I remind myself how important strength training is, not only to improve my fitness as I age, but also because glp-1’s have the potential to rob me of muscle. So. Yeah. There’s that. I shrug it off as a concern; there’s worse crap going on in the world and I’m fortunate that I’m only dealing with this, right here, right now.

… Sure, there’s horrible stuff going on in the world, but much of it is entirely outside my control or influence; I can make my voice heard to the few listening, but sometimes the best thing I can do for the world is make my own small corner better and do no damage elsewhere…

In spite of the deer, I may harvest some tomatoes.

Sometimes it seems the most significant difference between surviving and thriving is more to do with my focus and the practices I choose to practice than anything to do with specific circumstances. This is, of course, quite relative and simplistic. It’s damned difficult to thrive in the midst of ongoing trauma – been there, tried to do that, with varying degrees of success (and mostly failing – sometimes the best choices we can make are to change our situation). Generally, though, short of truly dire circumstances, the most notable difference between surviving and thriving, often seems to be largely a matter of perspective. Shit is crazy and often quite horrible “out in the world” these days, but when I pull my focus back to self, hearth, and home, it’s not bad. Life feels less manageable when I allow the world to drag my attention into chaos and Other People’s Drama. There’s something useful to understand there. I sit with that thought awhile.

It’s often what we plant and how we tend our garden that determines what we find there, more than the weather.

Making healthy choices isn’t always a tedious buzzkill, and it isn’t always about this fragile vessel. Many opportunities to live well and to thrive are about what I put my attention on, what I read, what the contents of my mental, emotional, and intellectual “landscape” are filled with. I have choices there, too. Doom scroll through the news feed, or walk a trail on a lovely Spring morning with only my thoughts to occupy me is as important as choosing to drink my coffee black, instead of loading it with sugar. We’re complicated creatures. Our best choices are not reliably the easiest, nor what we seem to prefer.

What are you planting in the garden of your heart?

I sigh and smile. Incremental change over time is reliable and steady; we become what we practice. Don’t like where your life seems headed? Choose another path, change your practices, and begin again. Thriving is within reach, and quite often it’s as much a matter of perspective as it is to do with the practical details. I stand and stretch and consider the day ahead of me.

… It’s a good time to begin again.

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Categories 2024 Election, Allegories, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being, War and News of War

Remembrance of Lives Lost

May 26, 2025 //
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So, hey, Memorial Day, yeah? Maybe you’ll barbecue with family, or perhaps you’ve been spending the weekend camping or traveling? Maybe, like me, just a long weekend spent more or less the usual way, at home? It is Memorial Day, though. Don’t forget to make time to reflect on the many lives lost to war – civilian lives, too. Lives lost to conflict, to genocide, to the ridiculous unwillingness of some in power to refrain from slaughtering innocents needlessly. The consequences of such things linger for generations. We could do better.

A Spring morning well-suited to reflection.

I started down the trail this morning, alone. The parking lot at the trailhead was empty, though it was much later than my usual time. Now, though, it’s almost crowded (meaning to say I’ve seen more than one other person walk past). I walked with my thoughts, mostly to do with fallen comrades of wars (cold and otherwise) that are in the distant seeming past. Memories. It’s been a decent year, in a sense; no new outreach alerting me that yet another old friend has taken their own life, unable to live with their memories, or the world as it is. It’s been awhile since I received such news.

I sit at my halfway point, reflecting on war – the pointless wastefulness and loss of life, the violence, the hate, and the lasting damage done. There are no “winners” in warfare. There are only the wealthy and the powerful (getting wealthier and more powerful), and the dead.

… Memorial Day sales are not the point of Memorial Day…

I sit watching clouds drift across the sky. I’m grateful that I have survived the wars I was sent to fight. I find room in my heart to honor the dead on both sides of those conflicts. There were no “good guys”, only fighting and chaos and killing and destruction. Ugly shit. Don’t go to war – the price is too high.

I sigh to myself, remembering. I’m okay though. Some years it’s been hard to face my memories and the losses left me feeling wounded and struggling with tears. Today not so much. What are one woman’s recollections of warfare in the face of ongoing actual genocides around the world? How do we even allow that to continue? Tough talk by idiot leaders is just performative puffery intended to convey strength by weak fools with too much power and fueled by greed (and, generally, also racism). Why do we permit it? It’s pretty ugly, and very wasteful. I have a pretty clear understanding of why leaders and governments participate in warfare – there’s quite a lot of money to be made, and wow, so much useful material for manipulating a population develops out of conflict. Do I sound cynical? I’ve been to war. I’ve stared into the eyes of the god of war. I’ve been “part of the machine”.

… I still consider myself a patriot, and in spite of trauma and the personal price I paid, I don’t regret serving my country, only that we continue to fight wars…

… never forget…

I think about “honor” and “valor” and “heroism” and ethical service to a cause, and wonder, again, why so many of us have to stare death in the face personally to understand that there is no honor in war… Only killing and death and destruction. The price paid in lives lost is too high.

My Traveling Partner pings me a good morning greeting. There is hope in the world because love exists. I smile to myself, and get ready to begin again.

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Categories 2024 Election, Allegories, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, gratitude, grief, meditation, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being, Uncategorized, War and News of War

Real and Imagined

May 23, 2025 //
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This morning I got to the trailhead in full daylight. I slept in a bit, though my dreams were almost entirely about being awake, bringing a certain sense of “having done all this” to a brand new day. Doesn’t really matter; it actually is a new day, full of potential and opportunities to grow and change.

Not quite summer.

I could have spent time in the garden yesterday; it needs weeding. I chose instead to enjoy my Traveling Partner’s company after the work day ended and played a few hands of cribbage. He made our beautiful cribbage board himself, it was one of the first projects to come out of his shop (from a time when nearly all the tools and focus were on woodworking). As is reliably the case with me, I have to relearn the game, even though I used to play cribbage with my Grandfather, and later nearly every evening while I was deployed to the Middle East to fight a war that seemed just at the time.

Brain damage is a peculiar thing; everyone’s experience is just a little different, depending on the specific details of their injury. I definitely have some odd “thinking holes” into which some kinds of information get lost, and I struggle with even long-standing habits suddenly extinguishing themselves for no obvious reason. So… I cut myself some slack about my limitations, and I keep practicing the practices that are most likely to result in emotional resilience, good quality of life, strong healthy relationships, and the likelihood of maintaining order in an experience full of chaos. There’s no end to it, no report card, no final win, just more practice.

…But I do like playing cribbage…

This morning I’m writing from a sunny spot at the edge of the marsh. It’s pleasant and quiet, robins singing nearby and small brown birds hopping here and there. The geese are gone (at least I don’t see any this morning), but there are still ducks on the ponds, and signs of nutria.

When I looked at my device to begin taking some notes, I noticed the app suggesting that many thousands more people had read my blog in the past 24 hours than is common. I’m not imagining the numbers, but I don’t accept them as true either. It seems quite unlikely that a >1000% quantity of views resulted from anything I’ve written lately, and I don’t recall any particularly trend-worthy tags, either. lol Platform decay and unmanaged bot activity seems far more likely (with app reporting errors following closely) as a potential root cause, but if you’re an actual human being who recently began reading my blog, welcome. I hope you find something worthwhile in my humble musings.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. I’m not overly excited about things like readership metrics, any more than I am stressed by my persistent inability to remember the rules of card games. There is a middle ground between excitement and despair, and it’s in this middle ground where contentment, peace, and lasting joy are to be found. (It’s at least where I have found them, myself). This middle ground is easy enough to find by practicing mindfulness, building emotional resilience over time, gaining and nurturing perspective, and learning to embrace sufficiency. (I didn’t mean to say anything suggesting it is actually easy; it takes quite a bit of practice, and I fail now and then and have to begin again. There are verbs involved.)

This path has taken me so far. I’m grateful that I gave myself another chance and learned some fundamentals of self-care, and stuck with the practices I learned in therapy. I’m glad I chose to seek help. I’m glad I ended unhealthy relationships and left toxic jobs that were destroying my quality of life. This here and now moment is quite delightful. I’ve done some work to get here and I’m fortunate to have this beautiful moment to enjoy. I look out over marsh and meadow, feeling contentment and quiet joy.

I’ve got a long weekend. The Spring meadow is lush and green. The wild roses are blooming (so are the roses in my garden). There are things to do, choices to make, and practices to practice. I smile and think about my Traveling Partner fondly; he’s so patient about my “issues” generally. Maybe another game of cribbage later today?

I smile at the little birds near my feet as I write. Soon enough it’ll be time to begin again. I look back up the trail and at the stormy clouds gathering overhead, thinking about paths and storms as metaphors, the day ahead, and my partner’s love feeling fortunate and grateful.

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, Healthy Living, joy, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being

62 Eh?

May 22, 2025 //
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My birthday is coming up, just weeks away. 21 days actually. Huh. Not a major milestone sort of birthday, other than being one I couldn’t see reaching from the vantage point of my 20’s. I struggled to put items on a wishlist to make things easy on my Traveling Partner. There’s not much that I want in life that I don’t have, and my needs are fairly simple. (There are plenty of ludicrous extravagences that I don’t have, but few of those hold even passing appeal.)

…62 doesn’t “feel old”, and doesn’t necessarily feel like a moment worth a notable celebration…

I walked the local trail this morning, grateful to be walking. It’s a gray rainy Pacific Northwest Spring morning. My ears are ringing, my tinnitus is bad enough to be a distraction this morning. My back aches with arthritis pain, but my legs aren’t so sore and I definitely feel an improvement in freedom of movement since starting on the elliptical machine every day at home. (Hell of a good find at an affordable price, and I’m grateful for the timing that brought my Traveling Partner’s eyes to that ad for a used elliptical machine!) Incremental change, one step at a time. Due to pain, my walking pace rarely gets my heart rate up, and the elliptical machine has already proven its worth for cardio benefits.

The meadow grasses and weeds are lush and green along the edge of the vineyard. The hills on the horizon are shades of blue gray, with white patches near the tops that are either snow or clouds clinging to the hillsides. It’s barely raining at all, not even a drizzle just occasional fine misty droplets I see on my glasses but don’t feel on my face. I breathe, exhale, and relax. Long Memorial Day weekend ahead. I sigh contentedly. This is a nice moment right here. I make a point of enjoying it.

I think about my birthday again, doing a mental inventory of things I like and enjoy generally that I might want more of… I chuckle to myself. I have what I need and it’s enough. Fucking hell that’s got to make gift giving a bit complicated for the giver! Fortunately, I’m also pretty easy to please, delighted by the thought of being held in sufficiently high regard to be the recipient of a gift in the first place.

A small brown bird is scuffling through the bits of leaf matter and the weeds near my feet, unconcerned with my presence. The raindrops on my face are more obvious now. I sigh again, aware that the clock is ticking (metaphorically) and get to my feet to head back to the car; it’s time to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, joy, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Practices, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being

A Break in the Rain

May 17, 2025 //
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It was still drizzling when I got to the trailhead, but it didn’t last. I decided to take the “back trail” from the trailhead tucked away on the far side of the nature park. It misses the marsh and crosses a creek and a meadow before winding through the trees along the bank of the Tualatin river. It’s a lovely walk for a gray Spring morning in May.

Another point of view on familiar circumstances.

I dodged a passing shower under the cover of the trees, listening to the rain hitting the leaves and the relatively calm surface of the river. It didn’t last. My halfway point was rain-soaked and muddy, not suitable for sitting, and I walked on, pausing when my Traveling Partner pinged me a greeting and checked on me; he could see from my location on the map that I wasn’t in my usual place. He wishes me well and hopes I enjoy my walk. Yes, we share our location with each other.

In this relationship having my location shared with my partner never feels like a violation of privacy or at like I’m “being watched”; it’s a safety thing. I like hiking and camping alone, and it’s nice to know he knows where I am if something were to “go wrong”. It also serves to put his mind at ease to know I am safe. The reciprocity is connected and loving. I don’t have to worry when he’s out on the road somewhere, I can just check Maps and see that he’s okay without pinging him while he’s driving. It’s not for everyone, I get it (and this is the only relationship I’ve been in where it has felt safe to be so connected in this way).

I finished my walk as the sky grew grayer and darker. My back continuing to ache fiercely with arthritis. I make it to the car just as the rain begins falling hard. A drenching down pour barely catches the arm of my sweater as I pull the car door closed, grateful for my good timing. I sit listening to the rain fall, content to sit with my thoughts and write a few words while it rains.

Whatever. Let it rain.

It’s a pleasant Saturday, full of moments for joy and opportunities to choose. I look over my “to-do list” and consider the day ahead. I think about beginning again, and where my path may lead. I think about my garden and wonder if I’ll have a break in the rain to get some work done there? It may rain all day. If it does, there’s nothing to do about that but let it rain. lol That’s okay; the garden likes the rain. I like it, too.

I sit awhile with my thoughts, letting the rain fall, and breathing the scent of Spring. Breathe. Exhale. Relax. Begin again.

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Categories Allegories, breathe, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, Healthy Living, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being
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