I wrote a post a couple of years ago, entitled “Eat the Christmas Cookies,” which was all about doing what you love and nourishing your body and your soul, cuz life is short. It’s become a guiding principle in my life since then – a battle cry of sorts. It has served me well, always keeping in mind that moderation is an important element in true nourishment to balance indulgence. Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing, right?
The last 2 weeks have been kind of difficult. A lot has happened in a short time, ranging from annoyances like a power outage at work that fried my computer hard drive, to the more serious discovery of a spot of skin cancer at a routine dermatology check-up that turned out to be melanoma, requiring removal and stitches and care of a rather sizeable wound for the last 10 days or so, and everything in between.
The stitches come out Monday, and I’ll have a gnarly scar, but that will be the extent of it, for which I’m truly grateful. The potential gravity of this situation is not lost on me, and I feel very lucky to only have to deal with this for a couple of weeks. I have lost friends, family members, and co-workers to cancer, and have watched other friends endure longer and more invasive treatments for cancer and other catastrophic illnesses and injuries. I don’t take my good health for granted, believe me.
Still, I was reeling a little bit last Friday when I went grocery shopping, feeling a little beat up. In the bakery department I discovered some M&M cookies that had been turned into little frosting sandwiches – two cookies with frosting in the middle. 6 of them in the box! Freshly made! There was no mirror nearby, but I’m sure my eyes got MUCH bigger when I saw them. Yum!
I said to myself, “EAT THE COOKIES!” as I placed the box in my shopping basket.
I have no illusions about that scenario. I felt bad, knew that sugar would make me feel better. Period. For some it’s alcohol. or drugs, or smoking. For me it’s sugar. Always has been. My mother said one of my first words was “nummy,” said in response to the offering of chocolate pudding. I LOVE cookies, and I consider cake to be merely a delivery system for frosting, which is just about my favorite thing in the world of food. Honestly. Buying those cookies was a VERY easy decision to make.
And man, were they good! And treating myself – that little “nummy” girl – in that way, giving in to that desire, felt great. I didn’t eat them all at once, though I considered it (LOL!). I had one per day for the next 6 days. I relished every bite, every day. It was the exact thing I needed to right the world, to soothe my soul, give me something to look forward to, and remind myself of all the beautiful and fun things in this lovely world. Yes, there are bad things, sometimes lots of them and it seems overwhelming, but those bad things are NOT the whole story.
There are cookies, and sunshine, and trees and flowers blooming, and friends, books, music, art and so many, many other wonderful things.
Life is rich, but it’s short. Eat the cookies, enjoy the music, spend time with people who matter. Buy the thing you want if you can afford it. Do the things that make your soul sing, whatever they are. Not all the time, maybe, if it’s something that’s not exactly the best thing for your health. I am back to my normal minimal sugar intake, but the memory of those cookies sustains me. I benefitted from the enjoyment of the cookies themselves, the pure physical joy of the taste, and also from “feeding” my soul in that way. Saying yes to soothing my bruised body and soul with something I love.
Say YES to your soul, to your beautiful challenging life. Do the thing! Be here for all of it, the bad and the good.
Eat the cookies, and don’t look back! Just enjoy every sweet minute. You deserve it.
Yesterday was not the best possible day I could have imagined. I’m happy to say it was not the worst possible day, but something happened with work in the morning that got my mind going pretty good with all the things — the things I wanted to say in response, the things I wanted to do in response, the things I wanted to shout at the universe for treating me so unfairly. It was all swirling around in there fast and furious. I was red hot and steaming, and it took a while for me to calm down.
Not as long as it once would have, I’m pleased to say. The source of the discomfort was over fairly quickly, but my mind hung on for a little while after it was over, trying to make what happened everyone’s fault but my own. The truth is it wasn’t my fault, and, despite my desire to make it otherwise, it wasn’t anyone else’s, either. It was just something that happened, was fairly easily remedied, and really was not deserving of all the space it was taking up in my head. So…I reached into my bag of tricks, and rooted around a bit, until I found the solution to my busy brain.
I decided to start the day over.
I did all my morning things again, even though I had just done them a few hours before. I meditated. I wrote a gratitude list. I read a page from a book by the Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hahn. It all took about 15 minutes, and by the end, I was calm and focused and could resume work. Fortunately, I was working from home, or I would have been a little more hard-pressed to calm down as quickly, but it still would have been possible in a different way. Because really, all I needed was to find myself. I’m the only necessary part of this recovery process. I quite literally “lost my head” and I just needed to find it; to find me.
I had to begin again.
This is a concept I’m fairly familiar with in my life. I used to deal with depression quite regularly and I would lose myself for days or even weeks at a time. Self-compassion was something I didn’t cultivate until I was quite a bit older and had been through a lot of therapy, but even when I was younger, I understood that beating myself up about something over which I had no control was not a way to move forward again. Often, I couldn’t pick up where I left off exactly, because I had changed or something in my life had changed, so I started over.
Often, I would have to dip the bucket pretty deep into the well of myself, as Bukowski calls it, to find the resources there to go on, but I did. Every. Time. No matter what, often with a deeper appreciation of my own inner strength, resilience, and sense of purpose.
And now here I am, older than I ever thought I would be, and happier and more confident, too. Time is a beautiful thing, a healer and a teacher. However, I’m sure I’ll always be knocked off course momentarily by life – the universe is not a respecter of our desire to remain safe and happy in our belief that we’ve got it all figured out.
Ha!
Not even close! Turns out that’s a good thing, but it doesn’t usually feel like it. All we can do is try again when we get knocked over. Get back up and begin anew. It’ll probably never get easier or less painful, but it is always possible to return to ourselves and who we know we are, no matter how long it takes.
We just need to drink from the cool clean waters of our deepest selves.
PS: the background graphic above was generated by AI, based on the prompt “begin again.” Pretty cool!
2023 has been good to me. I feel lighter and everything seems a little easier. The last 3 years wrung a lot out of me, and I think that’s partly where the lightness comes from – I finally gave up a lot of expectations about work and life and relationships. I think the pandemic especially taught us all that absolutely anything can happen at any time, and the idea that we are in control of what happens is largely delusion. A useful delusion, I suppose, as it helps us keep getting up in the morning and doing what needs to be done day to day, but ultimately, when it comes to the bigger picture, it’s in our own best interest to just sit back and watch the show. Let it be.
It has taken me a long time in my life to finally really understand that, but the events of the last 3 years have convinced me. I continue to plan, but I’m much better now at letting those plans go, if necessary. (I think. 😜) So…lighter and clearer I have stepped into this new year, and so far so good. I’m excited about the future (haven’t felt that way in a loooooong time), and I’m thinking about this year and what I have yet to accomplish before retirement, and then after retirement–what is it I really want to do?
So many things!
I’ve also been spending a fair amount of time thinking about WHO I AM, and why I think I’m here on this spinning blue beauty. As part of an online thing I did last fall, I participated in a guided meditation in which I journeyed to a garden, and in the garden was a wise woman waiting for me. I asked her what I needed to know, and she said, “Trust your heart.”
TRUST. YOUR. HEART.
You mean I get to listen to my own feelings/ideas about what I want and how I should live? Really? What I love matters? Can that possibly be true? Yes, well, I already knew that, I think, and in some ways I have lived it, but a reminder is helpful, especially when you are really ready to HEAR what someone/the universe/your life is trying to tell you. So, since then, I’m getting this message EVERYWHERE, of course, and it’s making its way through the mush in my brain and working hard on chipping away the debris that still exists in my heart from childhood and earlier life (despite years of therapy that got rid a lot of that crap).
No joke – I was diagnosed with mild arterial sclerosis a few years ago. My heart was hardening, quite literally. A very powerful metaphor. Another powerful metaphor: the doc discovered something was amiss because she heard a heart murmur. My heart was speaking to me, letting me know that it was in big trouble and I wasn’t listening! Yikes! So I’ve been diligent about limiting cholesterol and sugar, etc., and continuing with all of the other “good health” stuff I’ve been doing for several years now. I intend to live a very long time. I have to confess, though, that I didn’t recognize the metaphor or the spiritual/emotional “threat” until recently. I can be incredibly dense at times, I tell you.
So. Trust your heart. How do you do that? Intuition, my child, intuition. Listen for it, act on it. Trust it. I’m highly intuitive – always have been – but at some point, I decided someone else’s voice was more important than my own inner voice. My mother’s, mainly, for most of my life, but other people’s and society’s voice occasionally, also. I realize now that I never really believed that what I wanted was okay. I never thought that I could know what was best for me. I have always felt a little like an outlaw when I didn’t follow THE RULES, and certainly, when I was a child and didn’t do or couldn’t be what my mother wanted, I was judged harshly, and received the silent treatment or actual punishment until I changed my mind and/or behavior. I had a lot of practice using my intuition to figure out what other people wanted from me; none at all at listening to what it was trying to tell me about who I am or what I wanted.
Even then, I marched to my own drummer on some things and on others I listened to what society (and my mother) had to say. I went to college because I wanted to, but the major I chose was not what I wanted. I didn’t want children, and I was pretty clear about that, but I also didn’t really want to be married. I figured for a long time, though, that I had best try to find a “suitable” mate, cuz that was what I was supposed to want, and I put myself and quite a few men through hell until I finally came to terms with my reluctance to compromise/commit. Really what I wanted was to be FREE. From everything, really. I have achieved that in many ways, that is, I have achieved freedom from most of society’s constraints because I did listen to my intuition when it mattered, and said “NO!” when I absolutely could not compromise or pull off whatever it was that was being asked of me without wanting to curl up and die.
Mostly.
I didn’t achieve total freedom, and that brings me to the answer to the rest of my question: Who am I and what is my purpose in this life? When I look back, I realize that I’ve been serving, certainly all of my adult life, but also as a child, and that has been my role.
I have worked in service jobs, including serving in restaurants, as a Customer Service Representative for a large manufacturing company, and in my own business providing services to small businesses. The position I’ve held at Acme Health Services the last 22 years serves the greater community.
Most importantly, though, for all of my life and continuing now, I have served my family. When I think about all the trouble the universe went to in ensuring that I grew up in this particular family, with its particular dynamics and issues, I know that it was no accident. I’ve thought that for a long time, but I have struggled with resentment in that role for most of my life.
In the last couple of years I’ve been thinking of it differently, and that’s a relief. Resentment is insidious and just eats you up from the inside out. I like serving, as it turns out. I value being of use, and feeling like I’ve made a difference. In many ways, it is a fundamental part of who I am and who I always was and I feel good about that.
I was still getting hung up on the issue of time, however. The lack of time for some of the things that matter to me was a result of the role I’m playing in my mother’s life, in addition to working full-time. I’ve been working on that with mom, ascertaining her expectations versus her actual needs, and my supervisor has helped me adjust my work schedule so that I have some time to myself a few days a week. Both of those things have helped so much, and I feel so much lighter and freer!
Instead of being a super-caregiver and super-employee, I’ve been honest about expressing my limitations and needs recently and it has changed everything. Imagine that. Who knew? I’ve been listening to my intuition and trusting my feelings and making changes that support me and the life I want going forward. I’ve been asking myself “What do you really want?” before making decisions, and listening to the answers. Most importantly, I’ve been giving myself permission to show up in each moment exactly as I am; not pretending to want what I don’t or pretending that I don’t know what I want.
Game-changer!
I don’t want to work anymore, so I’m retiring. I miss my house and I want to live there again someday, so I’m sprucing it up and preparing for that, and in the meantime I’m spending more time there. There are other things, but those are the two “biggies,” that have made a huge difference in my outlook the last couple of months. I’m reaching (stretching) for increased freedom in all areas of my life, and I’ve no doubt that what I’m envisioning will come to pass sooner rather than later. I aim to find out where the limits are and go beyond them if I’m able and if I choose to. One thing at a time, one day at a time. From now on, as long as it’s legal and doesn’t harm another, the only opinion on how I live my life that matters is mine!
I was thinking of the photo above the other day. My mom and I were out for a drive, and we went past this spot. It isn’t as pretty this year, as the trees haven’t all turned yet and the reflection in the water wasn’t as clear. I was lucky to get this shot years ago. It was a beautiful colorful autumn that year, a rare sunny, almost windless fall day, and the water was still. The most important element of that photo, though, is that I went for a walk with my camera that day. I showed up and was rewarded with a lovely sight and a pretty photo. The water and the sun and the trees would have been beautiful with or without me and my camera, but I was lucky that I chose that day to be there.
I’ve been thinking about showing up, and persistence, and commitment. It’s funny how the universe has a way of showing up for me when I need help understanding something, or when I lose heart. Most recently, everywhere I turn there is a common theme, including a few podcasts (I listen to A LOT of podcasts) on keeping on, persistence and trusting yourself and the process, a couple of blog posts on acceptance, and a couple of quotes I came upon randomly. Must be everyone is thinking about the same things, including how long is this stupid pandemic going to last?
I’m kind of tired of showing up, honestly. I’ve been showing up in my job, and for my mom, for a long time now, and I’ve been on alert with the pandemic in my job and in my life, along with everyone else, for the last 18 months. I have also been trying to show up for myself by exercising regularly, eating healthfully, and trying to get enough sleep. Time is in short supply when you work full time, and are a full time caregiver, so I can’t do all that I’d like to, but I do the best I can to maintain my physical and mental health. Fun is in even shorter supply, but I’m trying to fit that in too, by meeting up with friends and getting out in the evenings occasionally, now that we’re not all huddling in our houses trying to keep COVID at bay.
Quite often lately, however, I question why life has seemed to be so hard for so long. Then, of course, I realize that compared to many, my life is easy-peasy and I get over myself. 😂 I’m very fortunate in many ways, and it’s very important for me to remember that. My situation is not even close to the range of really horrible human life circumstances on this planet, and I completely get that..
Still, I’m tired, and I would love to know how much longer I have to keep on showing up so much. It involves a lot of big tiring words: discipline, tolerance, acceptance, persistence. It requires simply letting everything be. Expending any amount of energy on wishing or hoping for something different than what is, simply is not helpful (but very hard to avoid doing sometimes). As someone just said on the podcast I’m listening to while I’m writing this, you have to accept that it is what it is, and just crack on.
Yes, exactly. Easier said than done, of course, but there it is: Just. Crack. On.
None of us knows what the future holds, so I won’t know how much longer I will be in these current circumstances until change shows up, probably without warning, as usual.Until then, I think the key is rest. Good sleep, healthy food, exercise and more vacation time from work around the holidays, I hope will keep me healthy, sane, and showing up as I need to for the foreseeable future.
Really just sick and tired of people whose mothers apparently never taught them, “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything.” Maybe mama taught them, and they’ve simply forgotten. We’re suffering a nationwide, maybe worldwide, case of amnesia. We’ve forgotten how to just be nice.
If I’m supposed to be learning from people spewing vitriol at other people – strangers – because they object to something about that person, it’s just not happening. It causes me to shut down, not learn. I reach a point at which I’m no longer even engaging with the person. I’m heartbroken, disgusted, infuriated, and I’m gone.
I stand firmly with Kahlil Gibran on this. If I’m supposed to be learning from these people how not to behave in the world, then I’ll pass. I want to learn by example from people I respect. I want to feel good about people again. I want to feel like the universe is a friendly place again. I want to feel like we’re going to be okay.
I fear we’re so far from okay right now, especially in this country, that we will never find our way back, or forward, for that matter. Now that we know just how awful some (I hesitate to say most, but that’s what it feels like lately from where I’m sitting) people can become at the least provocation, how do we feel safe talking to strangers again? How do we engage with friends and family members who have shown us who they really are? How do we become less divided if we can’t even talk to each other for fear we will be abused?
Is there a middle anymore? Doesn’t feel like it. I can’t imaging bridging the divide between myself and someone who feels it’s not only okay, but their right, to snipe at someone they don’t know online, using the most offensive anger-fueled language they can think of. I’m supposed to be tolerant of that? I’m to learn kindness from that? Someone spewing abuse at someone for doing their job? Really?
No.
Just NO.
It’s not okay, and it can’t be tolerated. It doesn’t teach me anything. It breaks my heart, makes me angry, makes me afraid. These folks are not my teachers. They are destroyers, not creators. They are not people I want to emulate. There is a way to get your point across without being mean. It seems though, among many lately – especially online – that meanness is celebrated. The meaner the better. If you can demean someone online, using the cruelest possible language, especially someone in power – someone you don’t know – the better you feel about yourself.
That’s the very definition of bullying, isn’t it? It’s like the whole country is back in school, and the bullies are running the show. How did that happen? When did it start?
How do we stop it?
I’m in the not unusual position lately of knowing who I would like to be – tolerant, compassionate, kind, disciplined, responsible – but I can’t see my way to that person in relation to others. What would Buddha, or Ghandi, or Martin Luther King, Jr. do? What would Jesus do?
It just kills me that many of these folks claim to be “patriots,” and that many also profess to be Christians. Pretty sure Jesus would be shaking his head, too. The Founding Fathers and Mothers, too. Really – is this what countless men and women have fought for? The right to be mean?
No, sorry. Nowhere in the bible does it say it’s okay to be mean. The Golden Rule doesn’t say, “do unto others before they do unto you.” Jesus didn’t say “be nasty to your neighbors as to yourself.” The great leaders – those who inspire us – are all about love.
Those are my teachers. The folks who are kind, compassionate. Those with empathy.
The rest have nothing I want to learn, and I am most decidedly not grateful to them.
19 years ago, at 7 am in a near blizzard, I got in my 9 year old Subaru Loyale, and drove 50 miles to bankruptcy court. My lawyer, whom I had met with once, several months prior, was supposed to meet me there.
He was an hour late, citing the weather. He got no sympathy from me. Even the trustee was unimpressed. He pointed out to him that I had come farther, and that I had been on time. I missed my scheduled time because of him, so I had to wait until the end of the regular schedule for my hearing.
I think the trustee felt sorry for me that my guy was such a loser, but that didn’t stop him from levying a $37,000 judgment against me. I had to borrow the money to pay the judgment from my parents, who had to take out a second mortgage on their house to get it. It was 3/4 of the total amount I owed. So much for starting over.
I paid my parents $500 per month for the next 7 years to repay that debt. They wouldn’t let me pay interest. I had a good job, and after a few years I was able to get a secured credit card, so was able to start rebuilding my credit. In 2009, I was able to get a loan to buy a house, and I felt like I was in the clear.
Then my dad died and I moved in with mom. Dad had been ill for a long time, and by the time he died, the house was in severe disrepair. Those repairs, along with the steep property tax owed for the next few years, forced me into credit card debt once again. Given my history, I didn’t make that choice lightly, but neither mom nor I had any savings, so I had no other recourse.
I had built good credit over the years, though, so 3 years ago my credit union offered me a high limit, low interest credit card that I used to transfer all my debt from the other high interest cards.
This past Saturday I made the last payment on that card. As I write this, I have no credit card debt. In fact, the only debt I have now is the mortgage on my little house, cuz last fall I paid off the car I bought 5 years ago. I don’t really consider my mortgage a debt, per se, cuz if I wasn’t making a house payment, I’d be paying rent, so to me it seems like the same thing.
No debt. I can hardly believe that’s true. I feel free in a way I haven’t since I left high school. Student debt that took 12 years to pay off, credit card debt, car payments on 6 or 7 cars over the years, the bankruptcy judgment, more credit card debt; owing someone something has been a constant in my adult life.
Owing, or being in debt is a powerful metaphor. Not only do I believe in karmic debt manifesting in this life, but I think psychologically I always felt I had to pay my way here because I didn’t really belong. As a child and then young adult, I felt that there was nothing here for me; that my presence on the planet was a mistake, and that I had to make up for what it took to sustain me.
I don’t feel that way now, thank goodness, so I’m hoping that my new found freedom from debt is permanent. The tide has turned. The money that was going to debt payment is now going into savings. After 20 years at Acme Health Services, I have a nice pension fund building. I’m hoping to refinance my house soon, and in a couple of years, transfer it to a reverse mortgage or sell it.
So I’ve kind of backed in to a good financial situation. I’m not rich, and I’m probably not ever going to be unless Publisher’s Clearinghouse is involved, but I feel good about my financial future in a way I never have before, and that’s a very good thing. On that day 19 years ago, I never would have imagined this day would come.
I found my way through the blizzard, and I can see my way forward clearly. It took 58 years, but I made it. Hallelujah!
Winston Churchill has been a hero of mine for quite a while. To me, he embodies the word “resilience,” and that’s something that has meant a lot to me over the years. My goal throughout all of my life, through some pretty rough stuff, has simply been to keep going. No matter what.
I didn’t want to. There have been plenty of times, deep in the cold morass of the blackest depression, especially, that I’ve thought of giving up. In the middle of bitter disappointment, abject failure, burning rejection, aching loss, I asked myself, “Why?”
Why keep going? What is this all for? What will change?
I didn’t give up, though, and it turns out the answer to all those questions is: ME.
Life hasn’t changed – it’s still hard, and will always be so, but I’ve changed. Turns out I’ve always been resilient, though I didn’t think of myself that way. When I look back at my life, though, I see it. I kept getting up. I took some pretty hard blows, but I got up every time and went on. Bruised and bleeding, for sure, but I got back on my feet and I went on. Every. Time. Sometimes I had help, sometimes I didn’t. Either way, I was the one who had to find the strength to go forward and I did.
As I’ve gotten older I find that I get up faster and that I see those difficult times differently. That’s what’s changed. I see the benefit, the opportunity for growth, quicker than I used to, and while I probably still don’t welcome hardship, I am able to embrace it more fully and faster than I used to. For that I’m deeply grateful.
Last weekend brought me to my knees, literally and figuratively. It pressed all the buttons, hard. In thinking about it now, though, I realize a couple of important shifts.
First, I didn’t get angry. Amazing, cuz that’s my first reaction to most everything unpleasant, typically. I didn’t this time, though cuz I didn’t take it personally. I joked about being punished for taking time off, but it really was a joke, not something I truly believed.It was all just stuff that happened, and I got that right away.
Second, I didn’t make more of it than it was. I did what needed to be done, for myself and then later, for my mom, which is normal. I’ve always been good in a crisis. Afterward, though, I didn’t obsess about it for days and days, and that’s new. It was nasty, and not something I hope to go through again anytime soon, but it’s over. Life goes on.
Resilience.
Never give up. Never, never, never, never. We all have the capacity – that resilience. All creatures are resilient, but for humans it’s different, in that we have a choice. You have to make it over and over.
Everyone I know goes through really rough stuff, again andagain; really gnarly rotten stuff. We all have our own curriculum here in Earth school, so the obstacles are different for all of us, but there are always obstacles, no matter who you are, or how in control you think you are. There is no way to do it “right” so that everything goes well for you. There just isn’t. There’s no point to that. We don’t learn from easy.
We don’t get stronger. We don’t get better, unless we’re challenged. That’s another thing unique to humans. That’s just the way it is. Getting angry, or bitter, or blaming someone else, or numbing out in some way is not helpful. Those are not ways of going on; they are ways of getting stuck.
Stand up. Dig deep and find your own resilience. It’s in there. Shake off the past. It’s over. Look ahead. Check in with yourself right now. Figure out what you need to do to keep going and do that thing, whatever it is. Take care of yourself and soothe your wounds. Reach out if you need help.
Then go on. Take a step, and then another, and before you know you’re on to the next thing. The other thing – the past – that’s a part of you now, part of your life resume. It’s not all of you, though. You got through that. Pat yourself on the back. You did it!
There will be more, and you’ll do that, too. Cuz you just keep going. That’s all there is. There is no other way. No matter what. Through all of it – the highest highs and the lowest lows – all that this amazing human life has to offer.
Never give in – never, never, never, never. Thank you Mr. Churchill, for showing me the way.
I walk down the street
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in
I am lost … I am hopeless
It isn’t my fault
It takes forever to find a way out
TWO
I walk down the same street
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I pretend I don’t see it
I fall in again
I can’t believe I’m in the same place
But it isn’t my fault
It still takes a long time to get out
THREE
I walk down the same street
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I see it is there
I still fall in … it’s a habit
My eyes are open
I know where I am
It is my fault
I get out immediately
FOUR
I walk down the same street
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I walk around it
I love it when the universe sends me a love note. They don’t always get through – my “mailbox” isn’t always open, I’m sad to say – but when they do, they are appreciated. This time the love showed up in the form of this poem, which, at the time I heard it for the first time this week, snatched all the air from body in a most insistent way for a moment or two, and hasn’t given it all back yet. It made me laugh, and then it made me want to cry, cuz, man, ain’t it the truth?!
This is the autobiography of all of us. For each of us the streets and the holes are different, but we’re all out there everyday falling prey to the again-ness of life over and over and over and over, aren’t we? You drag yourself out of whatever hole – hell – you stumbled into, and then, right around the corner, there it is again. Different hole, maybe, but the same stinking pile of muck at the bottom of it.
Again.
Yep. That’s life. The poem ends, but the holes don’t, even on another street. The autobiography continues to be written for as long as you’re walking around, right? Many more than five chapters, I hope. Some of my holes have been patched. Some of the really big ones, I’m happy to say. But I’m always discovering new ones, or old ones on new streets.
Most recently I encountered one of the larger craters on my particular street – my birthday. It comes around every year, and that’s a good thing, right? I’m so happy to be alive for another year. Truly. I never thought I’d live this long, so every year is another milestone reached. I couldn’t be more grateful for the life I have and for the life I’ve lived.
The hole’s still there, though, of course. In the bottom of that particular gaping pit labeled “Birthday” is a great big pile of steaming, stinking dung that I’ve plunged into every year for a long time. Even when I finally could get out, I still had the stench of it all over me for a while.
Adoption. Loss. Rejection. Abandonment. Muck. The anniversary of the pain of my entry into the world, for me, and for everyone involved. A month later joy for my adoptive parents – yes! But that day, there was only the sadness of a young woman giving birth to her first child in a strange place – a baby she would never see or hold or care for – and the sadness and fear of a baby without a mother.
Ugly Black Sticky Stinky Muck.
Though I have no conscious memory of the day, that baby resides somewhere in me still, and she is hurt, and angry and so, so sad. When I was a kid and a young adult, I was sad only for myself, and I was down there in that hole alone, unable to share my pain with anyone else. As I got older and could better understand my birthmother’s experience of that day and the days after, I was sad for both of us.
Now it’s a part of my autobiography, but not the all-consuming story it was for so many years. I don’t fall in that hole very often anymore. In recent years I’ve stumbled over it a couple of times on the actual day, which is mostly the only time I think of those events anymore, but I haven’t fallen in. It’s not the months’ long slog through the depths trying to claw my way out that I experienced as a younger person. Thank goodness for that.
This year, I didn’t even stumble over the hole. I saw it was there. I stopped, said a little prayer of gratitude for both my birthmother and I, and then walked around. I realized that it really doesn’t matter anymore. It probably didn’t really matter for as long as I agonized over it, but that’s just the way it happened, and I forgive myself for that. This is my autobiography, and I’m writing it with my one-of-a-kind pen. If I could have done it differently I would have.
I wish her and myself well. Happy Birthday to both of us. We’ve survived. Our lives went on, chapters have been added, and our autobiographies are still being written. She’ll be 77 in August and now I’m 58. We made it to another street.
Wow.
I would like to meet her, but that’s probably not going to happen. We corresponded 10 years ago, or so, and she answered all my questions. That contact helped me make peace with the whole thing, and I’ll always be grateful to her for that kindness. I’m sure it cost her something. She doesn’t want to meet me, and though I wish she felt differently, I have to respect her choice. She doesn’t owe me anything. She gave me the greatest gift of all – life – and that’s enough.
So on to the next chapter. There will be more of all of it: streets, holes, chapters. A lot more, I hope. For all of us. Each of us writing our own autobiographies, describing for each other our own again-ness, sharing our stories of what it’s like here in these bodies on this planet at this time, in this moment. Right now. Tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine.
One of my favorite parts of my job is doing the social media posts for Acme Health Services and our affiliate organizations, one of which is a hospice volunteer group. In that capacity, I spend a lot of time wandering around the web looking for content that might be meaningful to our followers. For the hospice page I search for articles about grief, of course, but also about all aspects of caregiving, cuz presumably the folks who follow us are probably now, or have been in the past, caregivers to a loved one.
As a caregiver myself these last 7 years, I find these articles useful as well. There are a lot of us out there: middle-aged people caring for elderly parents or other family members in some capacity, and there is a lot of good information about staying sane and healthy available on the internet, thankfully. I live in a small town in a relatively sparsely populated area, so it’s a real boon to be able to connect with folks in other places who are going through the same thing I am.
This week I stumbled across the blog of a woman about the same age as me who is living with and caring for her 80-something mother, who has dementia. We are different in that my mother is still pretty sharp. For that I’m grateful. My dad had dementia, and that was a difficult road to travel.
In many other ways, however, we are scarily alike. This blogger has never married, and never had children. She works full-time outside her home. Other than cats, this is essentially her first experience as a live-in, day-to-day, hour-to-hour caregiver for another human being. Same for me – all of it – so the similarities in our current circumstances, and our lives in general, really struck me.
I encounter people all the time who are surprised that I’ve stuck with mom this long, or that I agreed to do this to begin with. Sometimes I’m amazed myself, but here I am, by choice, doing the best I can for mom and trying to take good care of myself along the way, every hour of every day. This has been my life for 7 years, and it will continue to be my life until one of us takes her last breath.
It’s been up and down, for sure, and I’ve struggled mightily at times. It hasn’t always been an uplifting story and it remains to be seen whether it’ll turn out to have a happy ending. Many times I’ve felt that I couldn’t go on, and yet I did, and I will, to the end, whatever and whenever that may be, for no other reason than it is the right thing to do.
This blogger put it this way: What else am I going to do?Yes! Exactly.
What else is there to do in a life that is more meaningful than offering another human being – especially a family member – the love and care every human being deserves when it’s needed? The first 50 years of my life I thought a lot about how I could live a meaningful life. What do I have to offer the world? Do I matter? Why am I here?
Now I know. I don’t think about any of that any more. This is what I have to offer. This is why I am here. As it turns out, a life-long failure at most everything by which society measures people, finally I know I belong here and I’m a success. I matter to my mother, and perhaps my story matters to someone else, as that blogger has validated my experience.
Really, what could I be doing right now that would matter more? What else could I have been doing in the last 7 years that would have transformed me in the way this experience has? I have been forced to become so much more than I was, even so much more than I thought I could be. I still have a long way to go, but I am a much better person than I was when I moved in here. Not only have I become responsible for the care of another human being – which is not something I ever wanted – but I have become responsible for myself in a way I never was before.
This has been a win for both of us. I have benefitted from this experience as least as much as my mother, and our relationship, which was turbulent for most of my life, has been repaired. That’s no small thing. The irony that she and I would be the two left standing in our family and would be required to rely on each other this much at the end is almost too much to be believed given our history, except that it’s exactly the way the universe works, and it’s clear to me now that it was always going to be this way. This was where we’ve been headed all along.
That’s about as close as I’ll come to believing in destiny. Really, it could have gone either way. I could have said “no” at any point, or I could have given into the resentment that rears its ugly head every now and again, especially when I compare my life to that of my friends. I still could – it ain’t over yet. The end could be tomorrow or it could be another 7 years. The future is uncertain.
For now, though, I’m resting in the knowledge that I’ve made it this far. That’s all. I’m grateful for that, and my wish for all of us on this caregiving journey is simply that we can rest easy knowing that we’re right where we need to be, and that we’re doing the best thing we could be doing at this time.
I came across this quote from Joseph Campbell a while ago and it struck me immediately. Yes! Of course. Life is hard. It’s not a bug; it’s a feature.
If you’re having a hard time, you’re not doing it wrong. It’s hard for everyone, even if it doesn’t seem like it. Most importantly, you’re ready for it, even if you don’t know it yet.
Humans are equipped for difficulty. We are outfitted for adversity by design with our big creative brains. We are hard-wired for problem-solving. We have the ability to think about the past, the present and the future; to remember and to anticipate. We can visualize our place in time and space.
We can control our thoughts. We can learn from mistakes. We are able to empathize with other creatures – to think beyond ourselves and our own needs. We can anticipate and avoid danger, and this has helped us survive as a species.
Somehow, however, we have become so averse to experiencing hardship and it’s accompanying emotional pain that we’ve convinced ourselves that it’s not supposed to happen. Worse, we believe that there’s something we can do or something we shouldn’t do, that will ensure a carefree life.
Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy!
But here’s the reality: That’s not the way life is, and it’s not how it is meant to be. It just is what it is. Up and down, good and bad. There’s nothing you can do, or anything you can stop doing to ensure a smooth journey through a joyous life. You can’t avoid experiencing the bad stuff. Full stop.
Every being on this planet experiences hardship.
Sadly, though, you can avoid dealing with the pain of those experiences and that’s what’s getting us in trouble now. Our big brains have solved the “life hurts” problem in the short term with all sorts of distractions – food, drugs, sex, social media – it doesn’t really matter what the distraction is as long as it pings the pleasure centers in our big brains, and gets those magic endorphins swimming around in there.
I say in the short term, because typically you can only employ these methods for a relatively brief time before they start contributing to the “life hurts” problem more than solving it, and that’s only if your distraction doesn’t kill you and/or something in your life that matters to you.
Honestly, our happy shiny/everything’s fine/I’m okay you’re okay/skating on the surface/ first world existence is killing us and the planet. Everything is not okay, and our belief that if we’re not “happy” all the time, and doing everything “perfectly” according to society’s whims we’re doing something wrong, is sad, dangerous, and just plain incorrect.
Give yourself a break. Life is hard, and if you get that and you’re facing it head on, then you are doing it right. Bad stuff happens, good stuff happens, and your reaction to both is what has the potential to make your life meaningful, to yourself, other people, and to the planet.
Instead of trying so hard to avoid stumbling, and avoiding the dark places, the problem we should set our big brains on solving is how we can better help each other go in after the treasure, holding hands, and reassuring one another. No more distractions. No more shadows on the wall. Let’s get real. In this year of perfect vision, let’s take the blinders off, and gently, kindly, help each other find our way through in the dark.
If your life is going smoothly right now and you’re having a blast, good for you! Enjoy this time. Regroup and recharge.
If you’re stumbling, do the best you can to keep going. You’re not alone. It doesn’t seem that way if you spend a lot of time on Facebook or Instagram or watching TV, but that’s all fiction. Rarely is real life depicted there. Hang out in the dark for a while until you come out with the treasure. It’s there, and you’ll find it if you look for it, rather than trying to distract yourself from the pain. Be brave.
Feel the pain, but don’t dwell on it. Listen for what it’s trying to tell you and then let it go. Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
You may need a guide to lead you through, or maybe just a helmet and some rope. Get what you need. Take care of yourself. Take sandwiches; you may be in there a while. Wear warm clothes. It’ll be scary, but don’t give into the fear. Find your way through, grab the treasure – the wisdom, the healing, the fundamental truth about yourself, and/or your life, the understanding, the ability to go on – and come back into the light.
The Electric Idealist 