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The Power in Saying It

August 2, 2015 //
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Yesterday was awesome. Sure, I woke feeling cross – I shared those feelings, and made a point of really just saying what I had to say about it. I find that trying to just squash down my feelings and ‘get over it’ is a somewhat callous way to treat myself, and not especially effective. Once shared, the feelings passed. Once expressed, the anger diminished. Once revealed, the resentment subsided. Regardless how it may be received, openness about my experience and how it feels to me, keeps me on a path that is genuine, authentic, vulnerable – and more likely to connect me with people who understand me as I am, and enjoy me.

Headed for adventure, letting the day take me where it might is an opportunity to learn to distinguish more clearly between anxiety and excitement.

Letting the day take me where it might is an opportunity to learn to distinguish more clearly between anxiety and excitement.

I went on with my day with great enthusiasm, minimally planned. I embraced unexpected opportunities to do more, live well, and thrive by being present in my experience without struggling with baggage and leftover work bullshit. It was quite lovely. I went out, in spite of expected high temperatures, and enjoyed the morning downtown. I took 5 hours just to buy coffee beans, have a bite of brunch, and visit an antique gallery that specializes in some of the rarities of life that I adore – generally entirely out of reach of any reasonable hope I’ll own any of it, but I enjoy seeing the exotic rugs from far away, the pre-war European porcelains that I love so, and discussing those things with the devoted connoisseur who owns the gallery.

I value things crafted to last a lifetime and grew up around antiques of all sorts; my various break ups over the years have cost me most of the things I acquired during my life. But… my taste has changed in some cases, and I have discovered that the shopping is the better part of experiencing many goods. There’s something of much greater value than having things; talking about something with a person who has both knowledge and passion for the subject. It’s the learning process, and the connection, that I value. These days, I tend to defer to the ‘wealth of selection’ rather than ‘the wealth of quantity’. I choose with care, buy only what I can afford – and only what I have room to use, and to display beautifully. More than that is waste and greed – both in very poor taste, and not sustainable. (The hoarders I have met, whether of things or of money, don’t value what they have – they value the having of it, and in so many cases with no care at all for whether it lasts, is cared for, or used.)

I returned home happy, before the day got too hot, with coffee beans, photographs, memories, anecdotes, experiences – and a lovely rug in colors I favor, that sparks some vague recollection of childhood, as well as reminding me how wonderful it is to treat myself well, and to live my own values and aesthetic day-to-day. I made a point of giving myself a pedicure, so that my toenails would complement the new rug. (Yeah, I totally did. 🙂 )

Beautiful things, selected with care, cherished, and used with great joy are an element of living beautifully, and thriving.

For me, beautiful things, selected with care, cherished, and used with great joy are an element of living beautifully, and thriving.

This morning I relax over my coffee, made with the freshest ground beans, recently roasted, enjoying the chill morning air filling the apartment through the open patio door. A feline neighbor stops by to press her nose to the screen and ask ‘mrow?’, but doesn’t linger for my reply, or stay long enough to be photographed. Song birds share the details of their morning, and I eavesdrop smiling. This particular moment is well beyond ‘contentment’ and I am savoring it without anxiety about whether it might slip away unexpectedly  – of course it will, at some point, because even “this too shall pass”, but it is no cause for concern, right now.

Today is a good day to be. Today is a good day for ‘now’. Today is a good day for smiles, and self-acceptance, and contentment – and if some moment fails me, well, today is also a good day to begin again. 😀

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

The Woman in the Mirror

June 25, 2015 //
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My name doesn’t say much about me – you can call me Lisa if you’d like. Or not. Shakespeare had it right with ‘what’s in a name?’. You could ask me questions, a lot of them, and find out many details of my experience in life, my thoughts on those experiences, the values that drove the choices on which those experiences were built…but what do you know about the being within the fragile vessel by doing so? Some details. Cobbled together with some assumptions based on your own experience, your own values, and the choices you make about your understanding of the world, you will build a picture of ‘who I am’ that you are content to accept as ‘me’. Maybe you like that person, maybe you don’t – is it ‘who I am’ for anyone but you?

Do I define the journey, or does the journey define me?

Do I define the journey, or does the journey define me?

Am I any less constrained by those same limitations – even when I consider the question ‘who am I’, myself? Who is this woman in the mirror? Do I define myself by my experiences? Which ones? Are the traumas inflicted on me more important than the events I chose for myself? Is it my response or reaction to events that matters more? Is it my thoughts, or my creativity that define who I am? Does my injury define me? Is it my choices, my values, or how I treat others? How I wear my hair is not who I am, nor is what I choose to wear. The books I read are not who I am, neither is how I vote. My anger is not who I am, and my careless frankness isn’t either. Somehow all of it is – but even all of it seems some very small piece of who I am – like ‘dark matter’, it seems the ‘who I am’ puzzle is by far the vast, most important bit ‘about me’, making up most of ‘everything’…and also not easily described or defined. So…yeah. Who I am? Who are you? These are very good questions.

I woke this morning feeling content, comfortable in my skin, and subtly in conflict with myself, as if I had wandered off from an important discussion in progress by waking. I lingered in front of the mirror naked, looking over this fragile vessel and considering the being within. Mirrors made me uncomfortable for a long time; I could not bear to see the hurt, sadness, and astonished betrayal in my eyes, and I was uncomfortable with my aging flesh. This morning I stood calmly, enjoying the curves and lines of a body that has served me well over the years. I smiled at a scar I’d forgotten about, and recalled the event that put it there. I paused to appreciate that so much of the damage done by the violence of my youth seems to be sorting itself out; I can stand in front of a mirror and enjoy who I am.

There is a small shaving mirror mounted in my shower. I don’t use it for shaving, and it is not placed there for the convenience of lovers or guests. I put that small mirror there because I noticed that living alone cut me off from eye contact with my traveling partner and I really missed it, and felt the lack. My reading on the subject of emotional intimacy and connection suggested the lack could be more fundamental, and perhaps be addressed as a need that I could fill for myself and somehow ‘get by’ on that. I put the mirror in the shower so every day, every time I am in the shower, I have an opportunity to make eye contact with someone whose affection for me is singularly reliable, someone I want to know much better, be much closer to, and shower (lol) with Love. I felt a little silly even trying it out – it seemed like a ‘trick’ I was playing on myself. Turns out not to be a trick at all. I have lovely eyes. I enjoy my smile – even the small quiet smile that often gets missed or misunderstood. Eye contact with myself seems to have the good emotional benefits of eye contact in general. As practices go, pretty simple, and I feel more in touch with myself. It helps that I am unafraid of the woman in the mirror, and on good terms with the woman within.

The morning is pleasant, my coffee is tasty, and the music playing the background has me grooving in my chair while I write. This is an excellent moment. I pause the writing to enjoy it, and dance to a favorite track. The practicing of practices, and incremental progress over time have taught me that it is not necessary to be so fit that I can dance for 30 continuous minutes or more to benefit from movement. At my heaviest, I had stopped dancing. Heartache stalled my joy machine, my weight and arthritis were significant limitations, and I couldn’t move easily. Over time I just stopped dancing. When I started trying to turn things around in earnest, I rather awkwardly and uncomfortably also tried to begin dancing again. First it was just seconds. I was stiff. Self-conscious. Fearful. Reluctant. Awkward. Uncomfortable. Uncertain. But seconds eventually became a song. Song, singular, became songs plural. Songs became a playlist, and a playlist became my morning and I awakened to the powerful joy in movement – not just yoga. Not just walking. I love to dance. I probably ‘suck at it’ by all external standards – and that doesn’t matter a bit. It’s about the feeling of it, the sensuality, the freedom, the sensation of the beat and the pure primitive delight of movement to music. That’s all mine, and I am not living this life for anyone else. I’m not 20 any more, true. I’m not Ciara, never was. Damn, though, it feels good to hear the music I love and be moved by it in a literal way, and be able to dance. Meeting that need doesn’t require impressing anyone. 🙂

This morning I am contemplating ‘self’ and ‘other’ and considering what it means to be individual, and to connect with others. Asking myself what I expect of me, what I tolerate, what I enjoy – and asking myself if I am applying my values fairly to both myself, and my expectations of myself, and others dear to me, too. Am I too hard on myself? I know that I can be. Am I too hard on others? Do I attempt to hold them to a standard I can’t achieve, myself? Am I too willing to excuse behavior that isn’t okay with me, because I am hesitant to apply a standard I hold for myself? I know that I have that potential, for sure. What matters most? We are each mortal, each prone to mistakes and poor choices, each entirely predictably likely to behave consistent with our own values – not the ones we share willingly in words, or the values the society we live within recommends; we live our true values in our continued behavior over time. I suspect it is one thing we are powerless to do differently; we live the values we actually hold, changing our behavior may require us to change our values – or result in our values changing because we have changed our behavior. Being attentive to someone’s behavior is the only way to know their values with any certainty. Then what?

Like a mushroom, there is often more to a question than the obvious words.

Like a mushroom, there is often more to a question than the obvious words.

Questions on a Thursday morning. More questions than answers. Plenty of time to love the woman in the mirror, and dance. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, women, Words

The Meme is not the Experience

April 25, 2015 //
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Life in the Information Age is pretty amazing. There are so many sources of information, so many formats, so may ways to share, to process, to filter, to understand…and so much to know. Realistically, ‘being a student of life’ is a journey that concludes only at the point at which life itself ends. There is so much knowledge available that repetition isn’t really necessary, and following hyperlinks wherever they may lead is the drug of choice for many an intellectual dilettante. The wellspring of knowledge never seems to run dry.  There are still choices to be made, verbs to apply…your results, and mine, may vary. Keeping up with it all is pretty challenging…We’re not only drowning in information, and in facts, we are provided misinformation, lies, and advertising slogans in similar quantity, forcing us to sort out bullshit from information pretty much continuously if we expect to hold on to some understanding of the world that is at least somewhat consistent with reality as a shared experience… But… We’re each having our own experience. Hell, even ‘placebo effect’ is a real thing that has real effects on actual people, in spite of ‘it doesn’t work that way’.

So…yeah… ‘reality’ and ‘truth’ and ‘facts’… how’s that working out for you?

Some of the rules are outside our power to change them.

Some of the rules are outside our power to change them.

 

What about when someone disagrees with your position, your emotions, or your experience? What then? Is ‘being right’ more important than being content? Is ‘winning’ more valuable than enjoying your experience?

What matters most?

What matters most?

What about when your experience of events, and your sense of self, find you feeling invisible, misunderstood, or a stranger to your loved ones, because you are not recognized as the being you experience yourself to be? Is correcting the erroneous assumptions and misunderstandings worthwhile in the moment? We are each having our own experience – which means that even our assumptions, expectations, and understanding of others, in the moment, is also truly our own; like so many things, our understanding of others is mostly made up, and not based entirely on our direct experience. Is contentment found in a quiet smile, and self-acceptance – or in ‘righting the wrong’?

Just be.

Just be.

 

Is it enough to be, and to understand being, from the vantage point of this self, that I am – or is there some need to assert some moment of self more explicitly to feel the powerful connection that comes with recognition, acceptance, and understanding by others? Is the connection worth enough to compromise authenticity – knowing that such a choice results in a poor quality connection, indeed?

Self-acceptance, self-esteem, self-compassion... there is value in knowing who I am.

Self-acceptance, self-esteem, self-compassion… there is value in knowing who I am.

Are there ‘right answers’…or simply my answers, or your answers?  These are only questions; I have no answers for you, only answers for me. I do think the questions have value… I keep considering them.

What else matters this much?

What else matters this much?

One last question… It’s a tough one, but the test is an open book sort; the world-wide web is vast, I’m sure you can Google it. What do you actually know about people who are most dear to you…and how much are you simply assuming?

Change is. Choose wisely.

Change is. Choose wisely.

Today is a good day to test assumptions, to ask clarifying questions, and to recognize one another in the moment. Today is a good day to embrace love, because it has more value than ‘being right’. Today is a good day to check facts, cite sources, and know myself. Today is a good day to trust that no one else knows me like I do. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being

72 Minutes

February 25, 2015 //
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I had an amazing evening with my traveling partner, last night. It didn’t end as well as it started, and I went to bed feeling off-balance and a little sad. I wrapped myself in my blankets and wept for a few minutes, even tolerantly allowing myself a few ‘it’s not fair!’ and ‘it isn’t me!’ moments. I didn’t notice, but at some point I realized I had moved on; my tears had dried, my breathing was deep, relaxed, and even, and my heart felt calm. 72 minutes. Tears became meditation pretty quickly, and very naturally, and I don’t know quite when, but it was 72 minutes from when they began to fall, to when I began to fall asleep, and realized that I was actually entirely okay in that moment – and that moments being what they are, the earlier one that caused the heartache was long over.

Moments are not a big deal; they are moments.

Any one moment, utterly unique, and filled with potential.

Any one moment, utterly unique, and filled with potential.

Moments do not define me. I define me.

We really, truly, are each having our own experience, moment to moment, day-to-day, and it any one such moment we may each – or all – be at odds with one another, because those individual subjective experiences are our world, and we view the rest through those filters, on the backs of our assumptions, and doing our best to find our way through our very own chaos and damage. “Being right” doesn’t really enter into it, for me at least, because “being right” is just as subjective as our experiences, themselves. The challenge for me, last night, was in figuring out how to stay aware and engaged with my hurting partner, and make room – compassionate, tender, understanding, supportive emotional space – for him to have his own experience right along side me having my own.

I have room for improvement. This is a very general statement I believe to be universally true of my experience.

So often things seem more complicated than 'this versus that'. Perspective matters. Relevance matters. Compassion matters.

So often things seem more complicated than ‘this versus that’. Perspective matters. Relevance matters. Compassion matters.

I found my way last night with the awareness that the moment didn’t define me. The challenge we were having communicating and loving wasn’t a characteristic of ‘who I am’ – it was a moment. A challenge. Sure, it’s pretty easy to take that challenge and turn it on myself as a weapon, but where is the value in that? Growing as a person is more easily fostered in gentle conversation, shared insights, connecting and discussing needs, limits, boundaries with compassion for each other, and present with each other even when/if we are hurting. (It sounds easier than it seems in the moment, at my current skill/awareness level.) Remembering that I define me, and that my experience of myself is 100% reliably true to the self that I am when I allow it to be was powerful.  However hurt a lovers feelings may be, those are their feelings, about a moment (their moment); their feelings do not define me, (and considering how little tie to objective reality emotions may truly have, it seems a very poor practice to internalize someone else’s feelings, or taking them on as characteristics that define me, for myself).

xxx

We each make our way using the perspective we have, and the tools we develop. 

I woke feeling pretty awesome this morning, and very centered. It’s a lovely way to start a day. Today is a good day to be reminded we are each having our own experience, and that they co-exist with equal validity. It’s a good day to reread The Four Agreements. It’s a good day for love.

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Categories Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Big 5, Words

What Time is Love?

October 6, 2014 //
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I think the answer to the titular question is ‘now’. Excellent. We can move on…

Night.

Night.

I woke ahead of the alarm. That’s no surprise. I felt awake. I got up. That’s how it generally works. Before I’d even finished dressing and brushing my hair, after assorted other morning activities relevant to starting the day, I felt tired and sleepy and totally able to go back to bed. Unfortunately, it’s also Monday, and that means the weekend is over and today is a work day. I couldn’t be more disappointed if I were a kid and summer just ended unexpectedly when I thought I had another week. lol I’m mostly sitting here yawning and wondering why I am so groggy. I slept through the night. I slept deeply and woke feeling rested. This hardly seems at all reasonable.

So here I am feeling tired and especially uninspired, sipping my espresso, and considering the lovely weekend. End to end this one was pretty excellent, and I smile over the details, and over my  coffee. Pain Management was complicated this weekend, and I’m in more than usual pain these past handful of weeks; autumn is here, and the changing weather generally has this result. Maybe I am just groggy as a byproduct of having relied on Rx pain relief more than usual? That’d be all it would take, and I’m satisfied to accept as being so, and move on.

I took time to meditate this morning, feeling content and serene, and instead of having to steady my mind with meditation through a series of distracting internal attacks on myself by my own brain, tempting me into sorrows with invented nonsense and insecurity, I found myself more gently distracted by ideas for paintings. lol I’m okay with that one. After meditation was concluded, I happily took notes. Artistically, I’ve been very productive lately, which is complicated joy; I paint enough that wall space, storage, and practical details like selling things quickly become concerns. In the past, I’ve often been too disordered to do much about it, besides crowd more on my walls, sell what I could, and tenderly put away what there is no room for. Good choices about taking care of me find me in a better place. Over the weekend I worked on a more commercially user-friendly web page, my Etsy store, and making my image archive more useful for me. (Selling my paintings is rather hard for me; I want to keep most of them, myself. LOL)

Just about the most important artistic moment this weekend occurred on Saturday, later in the day. I had an inspiration, a moment of eye-opening wonder and delight, for a self-portrait of incredible importance to me that I could not have painted even 5 years ago; transcendence. I want to paint a powerful self-portrait that frees me from the anguish sometimes hidden in the details of living with my injury, by blowing that myth to pieces with the beautiful truths of the strengths I also gain from the sort of injury it is, and the growth I am experiencing on this journey. I want to paint the singularity that is now, on my timeline. Yeah. From here on, anything I say about the idea itself pretty quickly becomes garbled; it isn’t about words.

There are quite a lot of experiences, feelings, and moments that just aren’t about the words we attempt to use to describe them. I get caught on that a lot; I want to share, I have some words, surely somewhere in all those words are the right words to share… something. Too late I sometimes find that the experience is beyond sharing – in words. Doing so, and being forceful about trying to make a course correction when it begins to go awry, is a handy shortcut to an argument in the middle of a pleasant experience. Hardly fair to anyone involved. I’m learning to remind myself that some of what we experience is truly made of up “you had to be there” moments that can’t be shared in words at all, but can be shared in the subtle companionship of wordless emotion. Just chill with it. Just be that experience, softly. Just hold that moment, enjoy it, let it simmer there in my consciousness long enough to become the look I wear on my face, and the way I carry myself through space, available to be enjoyed and shared in my very presence. It’s nice – it’s more difficult than it sounds, sometimes. Occasionally, I or a loved one will make a specific call for a moment of stillness…living with me, living with this injury, does require that effort now and again. 🙂

It’s a still and quiet morning. The household is so quiet that the loudest thing I hear in the background is my tinnitus, which is mildly annoying. I’m more awake now. Awake enough to be very aware of back pain, but before I start feeling cross about that, I notice I’m already immersed in gratitude that it isn’t worse, that I don’t also have a headache, that my ankle doesn’t feel like it’s on fire, and that my heart feels light and I am content. No bitching required. That’s another nice change to take note of; I am less inclined to bitch about stuff, generally, that I used to be. I’m pleased with that. I think about ‘change’ and I think about how often I have felt wounded by a call to change ‘who I am’ in prior relationships, lifetimes, or circumstances. It hurts to feel that I’m not good enough or that I am somehow broken, defective, or lacking in real value as is. There’s a whole library of books to help people get past that and understand their worthiness as beings… often at the expense of understanding how awesome change can also be.  Demands for change from others can feel so critical and accusatory… but truly, there are things about me I’d see changed ‘if I could’, and of course I can. That’s a choice. If I choose change because by changing I become more the woman I most want to be there is no reason to discourage change. Hell, I enjoy change when it brings me the joy involved in being more who I am. That’s good stuff. I even get to decide who that is – no one else can. So what’s to be mad about? I change what I want to change, what I choose to change, in order to become more who I am interested in being – based on who I already am. Magic. Being told to change, ordered or directed to change, pretty nearly always sucks. Being asked to change can sometimes carry with it some baggage about the forces of change, and it isn’t always easy to determine whether the requested change is one I actually want to make, in that moment, for the requested purpose. I’ll still make those choices; it’s best to do so eyes open, and willing to admit the change has value, or the strength to say it isn’t one I wish to make. The real demonstration of skill, for me, will be to easily hear a demand for change, recognize the feelings associated with the implied criticism, not take that personally and be able to evaluate the change itself on its own merits and determine without pressure whether it suits my own needs, meets my own goals, and results in taking care of me and meeting my needs over time – to be able to put down the baggage, the hurt, the resentment, and honestly evaluate the suggested change, and make a reasoned choice for myself, outside any context relevant to criticism, or hurt feelings. That would be powerful.

An unexpected hot flash, and sudden wave of nausea end that moment of contemplation. Practical matters of being a human primate intervene, and I notice the time. I’m awake now. I’m feeling ill, and in pain, but I am awake; good enough to hold down a job. lol

Today is a good day to be human, and be okay with that. Today is a good day to recognize the humanity of each individual I meet, and consider how difficult life can be for any one of us, on any day. Today is a good day for consideration, for kindness, and for a smile shared with a stranger. Today is a good day to lead by example and treat each person truly well, including myself. Today is a good day to be imperfect, and a good day to be uncertain. Today is a good day to be okay with who I am, and delighted to have opportunities to improve on that my own way. Today is a good day to change, and to change the world.

Morning. (Not this morning, but a morning, nonetheless.)

Morning. (Not this morning, but a morning, nonetheless.)

 

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Categories autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Big 5, Words
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