Finding a Place to Sleep

Sometimes I go on these little journeys into the past, remembering the way things used to be done. I am literally so accustomed to the Google search process and so trusting that all will be well when the correct facts are presented to me in the search results, that I have to sit and think a bit about “before the internet.”

 

Back in the day – as they say – when you were on a road trip and you were thinking, hmm, where am I going to sleep tonight? You really couldn’t just open up your cell phone there on the seat next to you and while driving, which you shouldn’t do, tell Siri to find you a hotel room “near me.”  You couldn’t stop for a bit at the side of the road and do a Google search for “Cheyenne Wyoming lodging.”

 

There was a dial phone (ONE PHONE) at home, and it had a cord, so when you spoke with someone on the phone, you stood/sat by the phone.  You probably did not do anything else but TALK ON THE PHONE, unless the phone was near the kitchen and you could watch a pot on the stove or adventurously take a pan of brownies out of the oven.  You made very few LONG DISTANCE CALLS, and if you did, it was on Sunday night or after 11 pm, and you tried to KEEP IT SHORT.

 

DETOUR: I remember talking on the phone with my father in the summer of 1961, while he served some Peace Corps time over in Nigeria. I was in Milwaukee.  It was a once-in-a-blue-moon thing, to talk on the phone with someone who was on another continent.  I can still remember how far away he sounded. I was ten. 

Back to the hotel search. 

Planning a road trip was simple. You got out your PAPER MAPS and plotted out your drive (Milwaukee to North Miami Beach via US Hwy 41, for example). 

It got more exciting a few years later when you could call up AAA (wasn’t everyone a member? I thought so) and they would create a TRIPTIK for you, which was a fascinating accumulation of facts, mileage, locations of rest stops, and hotel/motel ratings.  (Somehow, there was a big difference between hotels and motels.  MOTELS were less fancy.)  The Triptik would COME IN THE MAIL before the trip began, so you could start to get to know the ROUTE. 

Anyway back to the Miami trip.  I suppose there were people who made a plan – OK, we’re going to travel 250 miles the first day, so that puts us about Illinois/Indiana? How about Terre Haute, Indiana (you would not write IN for Indiana, because that did not exist yet).  We could make PHONE RESERVATIONS before we leave Milwaukee, which would be great because we’d know exactly where we were going to be at the end of that first long day.

 

We could plan the whole trip that way before leaving, let’s see at the end of Day Two…..Nashville, Tennessee! And Day Three….Marietta, Georgia! And on and on.  Because with three kids, ages 8, 6, and 4, 250 miles a day is about right.

 

OR….we could just start looking for a hotel at about 4 pm or so in Nashville, Marietta, and so on.  So you watch for hotel names on the billboards – HOWARD JOHNSON, 26 miles! Or the COME-ON-INN just outside of Marietta.  And dad drives on up to the hotel and goes in to check and see if they have a room for the night for the five of us.  They might.  Or it might be tournament time in town and there’s no rooms!  Now what?  Sometimes, the desk clerk at the Howard Johnson would be nice enough to tell you about a couple other hotels/motels in the area, and maybe even call one of them and see if they have a room.  But sometimes dad would just drive around, find a PHONE BOOTH, check out the motel listings in the YELLOW PAGES, and call a couple. 

We’re in the car, whining and fidgeting. Mom is smoking a CIGARETTE.  IN THE CAR.

We always found a place to sleep.  It just involved a little more LEGWORK!

 

(I just remember how fabulous it felt when we finally got to OUR ROOM.

 

No TV.  No dial phone (if you wanted to place a call, you CALLED THE OPERATOR).  Sometimes an AM RADIO.  The overall effect was muted colors, maybe beige and gray? Odd pictures on the wall.  Heavy curtains.  

Our little tree fort.  Our cave for the night.  Special!)

DEATH! GRIEF! WHY???!!!

Before the internet, way long time ago, when someone famous or celebrated died, you read about it in the paper, sometimes it was on the evening news, or perhaps as a breaking news segment on the radio. You were maybe by yourself, or perhaps sitting with a member or two of your family.  Maybe – as when Elvis died – you might be, like I was then, driving in your car, with the car radio on.  You were all by yourself.  You did not have a phone to use to call somebody.

  

I remember when John Lennon was killed.  I have absolutely no memory of talking to anybody other than the man I was living with at the time, and he was younger, and not as affected of course as I was.  Quite some time later, a friend of mine who lived in New York City, told me he was so surprised I didn’t call him when John died.  But I just don’t recall that I even felt I needed to do that.

I do remember that it was kind of the beginning of MTV and CNN, the very beginning of “24 hour news.”  So I think there was a little more constant input, but nothing like these days.

 

There was never any crawl or three or four stories going on at the same time, not until much later, maybe even after 9/11.  The constant reminder that something big is happening – that I think started during the Iran hostage crisis, when we had to hear the latest every single night the entire 444 days of it.  Even for Vietnam, it was the half hour of nightly news…..and then it was the newspaper, or, more socially:  a teach-in or a rally.

 

My dad remembered after FDR’s death, when the train brought his body back from Georgia, and everyone lined the railroad tracks (I think this happened with Bobby Kennedy too).  So there was a social aspect of course to the grief, but it seems like it was connected to an activity, to a viewing, to a respectful witnessing.

 

Everybody remembers where they were when they heard JFK was killed, and I absolutely remember where I was when I heard Martin Luther King Jr was killed – because I was driving in Washington DC, going to pick my dad up from work at the Peace Corps building near the White House.  It felt like a social, a shared, experience.  However – it was not forced on us from outside – it was our shared experience.  We shared it.  With each other.

The instantaneous volcanic eruption of feelings and feedback, when I think about it, is really very obscene.  It’s overwhelming, ongoing, an onslaught, a violent social event, a terrible sharing – unasked for, unrequested, unwanted even – it’s awful.

 

First you hear the news.  Oh how awful, how could this happen, I’m so shocked.  Then, bit by bit, the narrative changes.  Critical comments about the deceased, critical comments about the grief and the mourners.  False news about how it happened, why it happened, could it happen to you??? 

 Then…..who’s next?  Who is the next person who is going to die and MAKE US SAD?  How can we memorialize them?   

And if, like myself, you haven’t exactly been obsessing about the recently-deceased person while they were still alive – for example, if the last time you thought about George Michael was when you accidentally listened to his version of Last Christmas instead of the one you usually listen to on Pandora…or the last time you thought about Carrie Fisher was probably when a passing movie review mentioned  Princess Leia, or I (again, inadvertently) caught a part of an interview she did about that movie…yes, I remember – she had her dog with her.  Whew.  Glad I can say I had her on my mind at least once in the last year…..

And the analysis, the continual analyzing of the event.  Why did it happen the way it did? What can we learn about our own possible demise? How can we avoid dying the same way?  Who can be blamed? The doctor? The spouse? The celebrity? The paparazzi?  You kind of can’t even just die anymore, it has to be a big choreographed event. 

And the comments following the postings.  The permission to be obnoxious and divisive.  The absolute expectation that a smart remark must be followed by yet more smart remarks, culminating in a nasty summary remark, again followed by the posting of the latest meme with yet more snark.  Somehow the general nastiness of civil discourse these days is just so much more degrading to all of us when it is in response to loss. 

I can’t say I’ve not participated in any of the above. 

But: Silence.  That’s what I yearn for when I’m grieving.  Remembering.  Looking through pictures.  A little bit of (possibly classy, possibly silly) humor.  Actually feeling emotion.  Touching base with one or two friends, and sharing our thoughts.  Sending a card or a donation in memory of the person.  In a year, acknowledging anniversary feelings. 

Just a thought.

As Promised

Making the most of the morning

Eager to find a comfortable position

Do I stay on the bed or get down on the cushion?

It takes no time at all

To settle in and breathe deeply

And before I know it, before I can plan it, before I can schedule it

Time slows

In

Out

Namaste

THINGS I DO WHILE MEDITATING

Following the crystal bowls

Planning

Remembering

Trying to hear my mother’s (my father’s) voice

Strategizing

Thinking about thinking

Meta-thinking

Thinking about what meta-thinking is

Breathing

Thinking about creating a word poem: 

M

E

D

I

T

A

T

I

O

N

Thinking about my children

Locating feeling in my body

Noticing

Noticing anxiety

Noticing fear

Noticing memory

Following my breath

Wondering how long it’s been

Congratulating myself for doing this for so long

Writing this blog post

Getting excited thinking about writing this blog post

Relaxing

Counting each breath

Putting my hand over my located-anxiety reiki-style

Remembering my mother having a reiki session before she died

Thinking about my upcoming trip

Thinking about my carry on

Thinking about what to wear on the plane.

And now......

Please note: no anger, hostility, rage, self-blame, self-loathing, sarcasm, mocking went into the meditating or the writing of this blog post.  

Curioser and Curioser

I love the meditation suggestion to be curious and interested, even friendly, toward our emotional states, this in contrast to being reactive and judgmental when we experience difficult emotion.

Perhaps this is because at this relatively late stage of my life I am getting clearer about what it actually means to be a friend and to be befriended.

I think in the past despite my almost constant dramatic narrative, I really did not communicate much.  Pontificate.  Dismiss things out of hand.  Try to figure out how I can win.  Yeah it’s amazing I had any friends at all. 

Possibly I was just so darned genuine and authentic as I pontificated, that a friend would naturally see that that was the real me.  And I guess it was.

However, there is nothing like cancer, marital discord, loss of a parent – in other words, there is nothing like life to pummel you to the floor and just make you sit there for awhile, making yourself and other people miserable….until you just give up and do the darn meditation and yoga, and turn inward and experience your self.  

And to learn to be friendly while you do it. 

Curiosity implies that you are aware that there is more to know and learn, and interest means you are open to what it is.  Friendliness is non-threatening and encouraging, a witness rather than a director.  The whole process requires humility and vulnerability, qualities that terrified me as I pontificated, see above.  

You progress down the path toward an open heart, a heart that is present for you and for your world. You can’t have an open heart and true compassion if you are terrified and defensive all the time. 

Memo to self: an open heart is what it’s all about.  See this lovely poem from Rumi......

MOOC

Taking a MOOC (massive open on-line course) about William Wordsworth, ending up being fascinated by his sister Dorothy and her journals. 

Dorothy:

Thursday 15th. It was a threatening misty morning—but mild. We set off after dinner from Eusemere. Mrs Clarkson went a short way with us but turned back. The wind was furious and we thought we must have returned. We first rested in the large Boat-house, then under a furze Bush opposite Mr Clarkson's. Saw the plough going in the field. The wind seized our breath the Lake was rough. There was a Boat by itself floating in the middle of the Bay below Water Millock. We rested again in the Water Millock Lane. The hawthorns are black and green, the birches here and there greenish but there is yet more of purple to be seen on the Twigs. We got over into a field to avoid some cows—people working, a few primroses by the roadside, woodsorrel flower, the anemone, scentless violets, strawberries, and that starry yellow flower which Mrs C. calls pile wort. When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow park we saw a few daffodils close to the water side. We fancied that the lake had floated the seeds ashore and that the little colony had so sprung up. But as we went along there were more and yet more and at last under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike road. I never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones about and about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness and the rest tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake, they looked so gay ever glancing ever changing. This wind blew directly over the lake to them. There was here and there a little knot and a few stragglers a few yards higher up but they were so few as not to disturb the simplicity and unity and life of that one busy highway. We rested again and again. The Bays were stormy, and we heard the waves at different distances and in the middle of the water like the sea. Rain came on—we were wet when we reached Luffs but we called in. Luckily all was chearless and gloomy so we faced the storm—we must have been wet if we had waited—put on dry clothes at Dobson's. I was very kindly treated by a young woman, the Landlady looked sour but it is her way. She gave us a goodish supper. Excellent ham and potatoes. We paid 7/ when we came away. William was sitting by a bright fire when I came downstairs. He soon made his way to the Library piled up in a corner of the window. He brought out a volume of Enfield's Speaker, another miscellany, and an odd volume of Congreve's plays. We had a glass of warm rum and water. We enjoyed ourselves and wished for Mary. It rained and blew when we went to bed. N.B. Deer in Gowbarrow park like skeletons.

Me:

Journal entry October 6
Woke late (5:30) but able to be driving out of the city by 6:30. Stopped for gas (more expensive in Wisconsin), got coffee and croissant. Tried but failed to get much Pandora via aux cable. Frustrating. Spent the six and a half hours on the road scanning radio and stopping for good songs. "Come On Eileen" being a particularly good road song for some reason. Stopped only once more for a rest stop and a stretch. One episode of road rage when a large truck rode my bumper at 70 mph. Fortunately he exited before it could escalate. Weather was perfect and a little morning mist was nice. Came upon Madison and thought about Iowa City and got confused. What town/state am I in? Nodded toward Milwaukee and Morrie and my childhood. Once in Illinois realized I would need a lot more cash for tolls. Found hotel with no trouble and in my small, plain, but quite adequate room by 1:30 pm. 

---

RCHS HYPERTEXT READER

Things I Cannot Leave Behind...Just Yet

I've got a 56-quart tub filled with my date books going back to the mid-90's.

Yes I did just say that I have almost 20 years of appointment books.

I have done enormous amounts of downsizing for my upcoming move from Washington to Minnesota.  Really.  But every time I look at the date book tub, I quail and shake.

Well, not really....but....I have not, up until today, been able to toss any of it.

So today I said, OK, you are going to actually look at these things and if it feels right -- throw something away.  And I did get rid of a few items (more than I thought I would at the outset).

Looking through the family/personal/church/work schedule from 2002, or 1995, or 2008 is an overwhelming memory movie, trips, and school plays, and band appearances, and graduations, and church meetings, and book groups, and every once in awhile a date with the husband...on and on...

Now I was tired and depressed throughout several (many?) of those years.  And I did spend alot of time vegging out, as I recall, and not doing what I was supposed to do, ie cook dinner.  I was exhausted and overwhelmed, and didn't ask for help.  I was angry and then felt ashamed alot of the time.  And yet -- there were some creative and fun things that happened.  And the kids experienced the worlds of art, drama, church, foreign and domestic travel, politics.

The appointment books chronicle all of that.  The counseling appointments as well as the women's group meetings and retreats.  Chemo appointments.  The weekend away every year with my best friend, and the camping weekend together that our families took each year.  The day my youngest got baptized. Trips to the vet.  Funerals, weddings, birthdays.

I experienced it once, and wrote it down.  Now I look at it all, and re-experience it from afar, and try to shake my nasty feelings of inadequacy and give myself credit for the effort and (sometimes) the successes.

I cannot quite figure out why I can't just toss it all and be done with it, but at this point, that's the way it is.


Until the next time I sit with it all and can part with a few more memories.

Tomorrow Is Another Day

I have often pondered my answer to the question, "What was the best advice your parents (your mom, your dad) ever gave you?"  Other people always seem to have such lengthy lists, about how to be successful, how to treat other people, how to balance life, etc., etc..  As in: "my dad always told me, be careful how you treat people on the way up, because you may need them when you're on the way down."  Or some such blah blah blah.

Jeez, I think to myself, I don't remember getting actual advice from my parents! Well, except for my dad teaching me how to write checks and balance my checkbook.  And both of them implying that probably voting Republican was not an option, unless it was for Abraham Lincoln.

The "advice" question seems always to be posed in the context of -- FOND memories of guidance and example. So my folks' lousy relationship, the alcohol and anger problems, the coldness (mom) combined with the sentimental efforts at connection (dad),  no, those are probably NOT the answers the questioner seeks.  I have been unable to remember the FOND type of parental advice.

Until.....today! There is something that I say to myself all the time, and remember that my mom used to say it to me, and I remember her saying it to me from when I was quite young, probably to comfort me if I was having a bad day.  I can hear her sighing it at the end of some busy goofy day later in my life when I was visiting her and as usual we crammed too much into one day.

And it is....TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY.  It was like a mantra, said to me many, many times. And today I realized -- hey this is the way I can answer that question!!  That was GREAT ADVICE!!

And I actually have used it my entire life.  I have ALWAYS felt comforted by the notion that "this too shall pass," which I feel is an equivalency to "tomorrow is another day."  You get to start over again!!! It's not the end of the world!!  Let's work on that tomorrow, after you've had a good night's sleep!!  Think of all the positive ways "tomorrow" can be interpreted.  It works for me!

Of course there IS other advice my parents gave me over the years, of course there is. The advice I got does not have to look or sound like the advice other people's parents gave!  So just as I've identified "tomorrow" as "advice," I now think of lots of other life recommendations my parents passed on.

Here are some of them!
* reading is important
* libraries are FUN
*voting is mandatory
*racism and anti-semitism are bad
*there are many religions and that's good.

WAIT, AND NOTICE

There is a difference between learning something and knowing it.  You can intentionally learn something, but you cannot intentionally know it.  Knowing comes unexpectedly.  You don't schedule it and you don't anticipate it.  Just as a for instance:

Washing my face yesterday afternoon (I got a late start)....becoming aware of a peaceful yet buoyant kind of attitude within myself -- not my usual state of mind.  Peaceful, yet buoyant.  And then the joyful thought -- just notice.  Just observe.  No need to hang on.  No need to analyze.

Here's where the knowing comes in.  At that moment, I knew what I've been learning about in meditation and yoga classes,sitting in silence, reading, journaling, listening to guided meditations.

Which is....everything is changing all the time, pain becomes fear becomes sadness becomes wonder becomes joy....etc., etc.  It is our stories and our judging that add pain to our lives, the stories we tell ourselves, the add-ons to what is.  So that we pay attention to our stories, and in fact we think our stories are "true," and we don't really know what is. And when and if we feel joy, we want it to last longer, and we want to know how to replicate it tomorrow.  And when we feel pain, we turn away and attempt to analyze how we can get rid of it.  Or we give it to other people.

But washing my face yesterday afternoon, I noticed.  I just noticed.

The thing is, I have been feeling sluggish, and a little stuck, and disengaged.  For awhile.  In the wilderness.  And then this morning, I was awake, and I went to yoga, and the day just flowed.  I was out of the house for 11 hours -- on a Sunday -- and it just flowed.

Do you think the knowing from the afternoon before had anything to do with the clarity I felt today?

Over and over today the word I thought was.....WAIT.  Things change.  Things get unstuck.  Emotions get re-engaged.  Energy gets replenished.  Being awake happens.  And the other way around too.

Knowing comes unexpectedly.  You wash your face and you notice.

Always Good To Check Back In Now and Then....

It is a new year, and 4-1/2 months since the last post in the blog.  Just checking back in on Blogger has yielded a fabulous find....the Peace Corps Blog my son in Senegal has started (no I did not know, yes he did not tell me).  So already it is a productive move to re-open Blogger!  That's him in the green being sworn in as a Volunteer. Mother's privilege.  

Decluttering continues -- not at a furious pace, but still.  Currently I am returning to the plastic tubs of stuff that had already been divided into chronological sections of my life.  I have basically been reviewing pre-1951 and then 1951-1985 and another brief section of time 1990-1996.

The closer I get to the Internet Era, the fewer letters I have to read.  We used to write letters.  I come from a family of seven.  I have many letters saved from my parents, together and individually, and from my three brothers (fewer from my sister, as she has never been a letter writer).  I also have many of my own letters to them, as I have my mom's stash that she saved over the years, and also my deceased middle brother's saved letters.

Let me just say that I am astounded at the constant communication between and among us all.  The topics generally are divided into: what's going on now and what I wish I was doing instead.  Mixed in are commentaries about the costs of things and the contents of our bank accounts.  Problems with cars.  Whether the dogs are doing okay.  The weather.

Click once to see larger image

Every once in awhile, there will be some very insightful statements about the family.  We had the typical family drama and then some of our very own special variety of soap opera.

Clearly I did alot of writing in an operatic manner about "where was I going in my life."  Also:  "I am so miserable."  I know this because of the letters I got from my parents which are shot through with compassion and wisdom.  Not sure I recognized that support at the time, or how special it was.  I think I probably felt entitled to it, or alternatively, accustomed to it and thus a little deaf.  I also remember feeling defensive about 96% of the time so I may even have been angry at "being talked to like I was a little kid." (Which, of course, I was, emotionally at least.)

Again I feel I must look through all these years of family life, remembered and long-forgotten. I'm in transition, so looking back and then moving forward with less baggage makes so much sense to me.
Onward!!!

Mother and Child Reunion

I slipped and called my youngest “girlie” the other day.   Amy briefly noted, “I am not a girl.” 

A simple interaction demonstrating the state of affairs between a mother and a child.  Having a child who identifies as “agender,” or “non-binary,” or “bi-sexual” – this mother is struggling but hanging in there.

Imagine if you will the birth of a child.  It’s a c-section.  It’s the second child, and (grinning with delight)  mom knows the sex of the child, but dad does not.  He hopes, though, for a girl.  And when the child emerges, he proclaims, “I got my girl!”

Twenty some years later, as this child informs  the parents of the gender identity journey they are on, this mother focuses at first in somewhat a silly fashion on the language.  We are not to use the female pronouns, we are to use the words they, them, their.  Grammar is important to this mom.  Now what?  Many conversations are filtered through the lens of “but are you talking about more than one person or what?”  “They” means multiple (well not all the time, but still). 

Mom forgets (see first paragraph).  A lot.

Mom hears this child talking about “them” and wonders what group of people she is referring to.  Then mom remembers…..the child is referring to their partner, who also uses they, them, their  for self-referencing. 

Mom is opening back up to the fact that her generation does not have a corner on liberation, on revolution, on change.  What? Sexual politics did not end with Germaine Greer and Alice Walker?

Recently, however, this mom has been asking herself this question: “How much of my relationship with this child hinges, absolutely depends, on the fact that they are female?”  How intrinsic, how essential to this mom’s understanding of her mom-ness to this child is the FACT in mom’s mind/memory that the child is female?

The answer of course is….very.  Absolutely.  “I got my girl!”  This mom, too, wanted “one of each,” and was so glad “we are complete now.”  This mom named the child after Amy March in Little Women, a most favorite book.  Mom and dad named the child after a favorite song, that, despite the difference in our ages, we both loved so much.  Two reasons for the name, two female reasons.

This mom struggled with a depression she witnessed in her own mother, and hoped against hope it would not be bequeathed to the second child (it was) – female lineage.  But this mom also saw the same handed-down intelligence and curiosity so familiar from her own childhood, and so affirmed by her own mom.

This mom saw her own face in her youngest child’s face. 

This mom was proud of her non-comformist second child….”she has never been a girly girl,” a statement made sooo many times over the years.  (This mom was not a girly girl either, so it felt like something that connected mom and child, an affirmation that was NOT A STRETCH for mom.)

The mom-child connection now IS a stretch for mom (but is it not for all parents who watch their child go in a somewhat different direction than the one the parent fantasized they would take?). 

Nope, the child certainly was not a girly girl.  The child tells us now they were not a girl at all, and now feels comfortable enough to invite their loved ones along for the experience, for the examination of how things are for them.  

Mom senses the space in her heart where there used to be a “girl,” knows there is still a wonderful person there in that space, can’t help wanting a WORD for that person,  and wishing (whining) for the process of re-learning not to be so danged hard….

.....yet the child inhabits the heart space, and mom won’t let go. 

Still connected.

Books Are Our Friends

Five years ago we began packing up our possessions to eventually move them from Minnesota to Washington State. Many boxes of books made the journey, some mine, some my husband's, some my daughter's and son's, some boxes strictly business, others blended with classics and Calvin and Hobbes anthologies.

Unpacking occurred and some things just never got situated outside their boxes. These were tucked away in garage nooks and cupboards but have now been brought back out because another chapter is unfolding, a divorce and a resettling of all the possessions.

Since March 2 my new apartment has been the scene of deliberate unpacking and reshuffling, some additional decluttering (yay!), yes even of books.  The other day my soon to be former husband presented me with a box of books he found as he completely rearranged the garage.

It took a couple of days but I did get to it, reacquainting myself with some oldies but goodies (Jo's Boys!), and doing the usual removal of some to the Half Price Books box. A book emerged I dimly remembered buying for the title. It's  a book written by a St Paul teacher/writer. It has the word "impermanent" in the title, which probably was the attraction for me then and certainly is what draws me back to it now.

The thing is, it's been there all this time.  Now I am so ready to read it, well, really, to gobble it up. What a gift from my not so distant past.

Smart girl, buying that book then. Grateful girl, reading that book now!

And the winner is....

What is it about this very seasoned social worker that wants to be better than anybody else at managing emotional stress?  Is there some competition out there that I must win?

The days that do not bring anger and fear are to be appreciated, for sure, because the days that are wrapped in anger and fear are so difficult to accept as part of the process.  Suddenly the awareness sinks in YET AGAIN: this is a tough road and the bad parts are not to be avoided.  Suddenly the nastiness rises to the surface and.....this is the hard part......must be acknowledged and addressed.

Oh yes you do TOO want someone to feel bad.  You are not ALWAYS the forbearing, patient, accepting person who is managing THE BEST DIVORCE EVER.

And yes you must remind yourself over and over about the things you can do to help yourself along.  Make that list of things you enjoy! Try one thing this week you have not been accustomed to doing before...maybe it will turn out great! And then do these things and start making them part of your routine, so that you are always there for yourself on these lousy lousy BAD DAYS.  Because those days arrive and smack you down and only you can feel your way forward and off the floor.

See below

Details, details

Well, there is nothing like moving and divorcing to remind you over and over again that the devil is in the details. And one detail leads to a question about another detail which had been forgotten and maybe on purpose. 

In the best of circumstances, like when you are moving to your dream job in your dream city with your whole life ahead of you and you're pretty sure it's going to be awesome....well even then there are details that can trip you up.

So in THIS circumstance.....when I am moving because my entire life and the way it is structured is transforming and not completely by my own desires and when the intellect tells me it is for the best but the emotions and the heart cannot handle ONE MORE REMINDER of the life that was....well that circumstance can be good or bad depending on the detail management. 

So.....some days better than others. 
And on the not so good days it is enough to just take a nap and hope to wake up with a clearer mind because forcing myself to tend to details....well that is just a set up for emotional meltdown.

Which I can do just fine on my own even on a good day, thank you very much.

Meditation nuggets that have been meaningful for me in this my freshman year of being a meditator.

1.  Impermanence of all things including feelings/reactions.

2.  Focus/notice is different from a) grasping/holding or b) ignoring/denial, in much the same way neutral is different from positive or negative.

3.  Skillful or non-skillful -- helpful way of seeing behavior/responses (rather than good/bad).

4.  Paying attention to something changes my relationship with it.  As in, paying attention to my anxiety lessens its power and provides me the opportunity to consider/reflect on my options, rather than typical knee jerk responses like fear/anger/blame/shame.

5.  Importance of breathing.  Sometimes breathing being the only thing important!

Do I still need that?

I've been thinking lately about the "big concepts" that rule my thinking, you know, the important things I learned as a young adult that defined my behaviors and choices for a long time.

I think that assertiveness is one of those.  My God, I still remember just devouring the whole slew of assertiveness training books in the early 70's.  It made so much sense to me, and gave me so much permission to say NO.

Then there is the whole co-dependent and boundaries topic area.  Working with battered women, then getting involved with ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) and just being completely in love with the whole "set your boundaries" idea, that I needed to get my self-worth only from myself and not from others.

Now at this stage of my life, I am considering whether these ideas have combined to not only strengthen me and my self-concept, but also to separate me from others in a way that has actually damaged my relationships, or at the very least affected them in ways that I truly need to examine.  I think maybe I have grown to depend on myself and my internal thoughts, my own interpretations, my need for autonomy, to the extent that I have not nurtured the part of life that promotes true connection with others.

And yes I know it's not either or, but still...I need to look.

We often forget to re-evaluate, to take a look at our patterns and routines, because they come from somewhere, and that was the past.  How do they fit with our present?

Tipping Over

Out of balance tonight at yoga, where of course the meditation was about.....finding balance.  Being off kilter...well that happens....but tonight it was FULL THROTTLE off kilter, and there I was in yoga, being encouraged to consider balance......within the body.....within the mind....within the spirit.  I was thinking, what is the purpose of all this being out of balance?  What can it point me to if I allow myself to really feel it? How freaking uncomfortable it is!  I could barely hold a pose.  I could not find my breath.  I needed water (stepped out and got it).  I felt clumsy.  I could not find acceptance.  I was self-conscious.

I'm very fond of telling myself  "just do the next right thing, take the next right move," when I feel this kind of overpowering negativity. Came home and drank a bottle of water.  It's just going to have to be enough tonight!  

Not perfect yet!

I considered this in yoga class today:  every minute I am doing yoga is a minute I am NOT complaining, irritable, nasty, depressed, gossiping, worried.......and every minute I am doing yoga is a minute I AM focused, listening, strong, experimenting......this is the kind of thought that runs through my mind during yoga class.  You notice I did NOT say that I am COMPLETELY focused....I recall that I even thought to myself....that's a good blog subject....hmmm....perhaps the mind wanders a bit.