600 Steps

This is post number 600.
Not sure there's any significance to that.
It has reminded me that putting one foot in front of another
for 600 posts has me further along on the journey.
Or at least in a different place.
It's sometimes embarrassing to be so honest with you all.
And sometimes embarrassing how much navel gazing I do in public.
Such as write about post 600.

Oh well. It's certainly been a journey.
So if I'm going to take navel gazing to a new height
is there a post of mine that you especially remember
or that made a difference?
Or is it just watching the twists and turns over time
that keep you coming back?

It's late.
I'm tired.
Dearest one is out of town on work related business.
Once upon a time we used to celebrate when
the other person would get the bed all to themselves
for a night when one of us was away.
Not sure when that changed.
But sleeping alone is not my idea of a good time anymore.
I'm tempted to wake the energizer bunny and see if she wants to sleep in my bed.
She has a habit of sleeping right up against me in a very comforting manner.


Anyhow sleep must come so I leave you with this poem by Mary Oliver. I think it sums up my journey through treatment and beyond especially.

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.

~ by Mary Oliver ~

Weird and Weirder

I got this meme, listing ten weird things about oneself, from truevyne and tagged myself. Feel free to tag along.

1. Once I get a song stuck in my head - oh the poor saps who have to put up with it until my infatuation has run it's course. I guess the only saving grace is that I don't actually sing the song, just put it on endless repeat for months days at a time. Ok, weeks.

2. You gotta fold a towel a certain way to look right to me. Dearest one overheard me talking to my mom about this one day and afterwards wanted to know what "right" looked like. The man is the king of folding towels now. They look like they've been pressed when he's done folding them. I haven't folded more than a few towels since. Worked myself right out of a job. Towels folded in half and then again in half, then folded in thirds, finished end facing out, look fantastic.

3. However much I love all those nicely folded towels on the shelf there's usually a mass of dirty ones on the floor. Those look fine to me, too. Go figure.

4. I should be asking dearest one and kidlets what's the weirdest thing about me. I'm sure they could list ten things faster than I can type. (Leave 'em in the comments family.)I love to type. If I didn't have problems already with my shoulders I would be happy to get paid to type the day away.

5. I love a bawdy joke, a crude joke, dark humour, I do. Or a funny bumper sticker or what have you. On the weekend a lesbian friend of my sister's, bought a pin which said, "I can't even think straight." I'm still chuckling over that one. Repeating these jokes to the wrong people is met with stunned silence. The only problem is I can't usually tell who fits the criteria of wrong people until after the fact.

6. I can sit with piles of books, papers, stuff around me. But not with any residue of any kind on my fingers. Must wash hands immediately and go sit myself back down amongst the junk. Dearest one recently watched a show about slobs on tv and turned to me with a 'omg, she'll never change' look on his face.

7. Tie your long hair back if you want to come into my kitchen. Pugs excepted. LOL can you imagine a pug with long hair?

8. Family Feud is my favourite game show. Growing up on the prairies without cable tv,meant I wasn't introduced to this game show until I went east for college. Today, being a pj/couch day, I thoroughly enjoyed watching it.

9. To our friends dearest one and I are known as the heckler and the diplomat. Guess which one I am?

10. I wake up with a mowhawk hairstyle every day of my life. On the weekend I slept at oldest son's place after finishing the Relay For Life. His first comment when he came home again and saw me? "It's been a while since I saw the mowhawk." Thankfully a shower and a hair dryer fix the situation.

Minutae

The energizer bunny is sleeping at my feet. She spent the 5 minutes before that barking at an imaginary enemy down the hallway. I had to open a bedroom door so she could tentatively peek and reassure herself that no enemy lived within. Youngest son's room does look like a warzone at times though. Well, then again, so does mine.

Yesterday my in-laws came over to work in our garden. They have just a little raised garden bed now and were happy when we offered to plant potatoes here for them. Yesterday they came to hill them and do a bit of weeding, something my mother-in-law especially enjoys. She with leukemia and he with congestive heart failure and there they were each with a hoe, enjoying a sunny afternoon in the garden. I picked weeds by hand, putting them in a 5 gallon bucket to throw over the fence. 15 gallons later the garden was weeded. I even found the Lavatera which had germinated despite the competition from the rag weed.

All that weeding means I have less spoons today than normal. Bending over to weed still takes a lot out of me. More than I realized. I have nearly 20% of my blood volume bypassing picking up oxygen as it does the loop and when I bend over my lungs protest and beg for air. Well, they don't beg for it until after I go horizontal so overnight they went into overdrive and are protesting as I type. Breathing deep hurts and makes me cough. I had hope to resume walking and yoga today but I think a day on the couch is going to be the wisest choice I can make.

Dearest one has a final exam tonight. He could use some prayer. Going to school plus teaching full time has left him feeling exhausted. The worst/best of it is that this will continue to be his reality as he was awarded a tenure track position this spring. That means he has 3 years to complete his Master's degree and then he'll receive tenure. On top of all that he is working hard on inner issues which he says is more exhausting than school and work combined. He is one courageous man. He's in a place where it's too late to stop the momentum of inner work/growth yet has days when the new awareness is so painful he'd like to erase the forward movement he's made if only to take a momentary breather. He's goes on a work related trip later this week and gets to see only daughter as a bonus.

Energizer bunny is now snoring gently at my feet. It's time to join her. Not in sleeping on the floor, mind you, but in sleeping. It's only 8:30 am. My body is screaming at me to pay attention and get some rest. I am grateful that spoonless posts are not the norm anymore, although they have been in the picture more often of late. This too shall pass.

Bone weary, heart happy

Thank you for the feedback on the radio documentary.
It does my heart good when people 'get it.'
It makes a difference to the producers as well.
I'm surprised by the number of people who cried during the listening.
Concentric circles where our stories intersect
create strong emotional responses.
If that's the wrong geometric figure excuse my mistake.
I've had little sleep in the past 24 hours.
A hot shower, some pain killers to ease the hip/knee/back pain
and I am off to la la land until tomorrow sometime.

I am bone weary yet heart happy after participating in
the Relay For Life last night.
The human body was never made to go 12 hours through the night
with 30 minutes of sleep.
Then again, it was never meant to grow cancer cells either.
I walked 4 to 5 hours of the 12.
You all know what a miracle and a privilege that is.

Here are two posts I wanted to share with you:
joyful subversion and subversive redux.

Skippety Do Da

It's been a long but terrific day.
Shopping with my soon to be daughter in law
reminded me how much fun it is to shop with another woman.
Especially her.
I figured out I can suck my belly in
in order to get the dress to fit.
But there's no such thing as
sucking in one's boobs.
What a dilemna.

Went to an AA meeting that was fantabulous.
The meeting opened with just two of us.
15 minutes later five more had joined in.
Sat there realizing I was feeling incredible peace.

On my way to see a friend at the hospital
I passed the homeless shelter in town.
On the grass sat a woman singing her heart out
in the key of pain and suffering.
She was singing Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah."


My counseling appointment came next.
A hope filled session
complete with challenges and new insight.

Met dearest one and a friend for coffee.
Lots of joking and laughter and an opportunity
to be generous that was received with surprise and quiet acceptance.

Bought myself a toy to celebrate my birthday tomorrow.
I always wanted one of them as a kid and so I get to be
a kid again at 46.
That's how I'll be spending my birthday.
Skipping around and around and around.

Stood in line at the grocery store.
Privileged to be able to buy the basics
plus a treat.

Came home and soon the house was filled with friends
who came to listen to the radio documentary with us.
First they all took a turn with my new toy and we all got to be
kids together again.
Cheering each other on as we attempted and succeeded
in being more coordinated than we ever thought possible.
Then they sang me happy birthday
and I felt loved.

Listened and heard the radio piece as a story
instead of the cut and paste, cut and paste version
that's been reverberating
in my head.
I done good.

People sometimes belly ache
(sucking that belly in or not)
about getting older.
Like it's a burden
instead of a gift.
So, so much goodness.
My cup overflows.

Gotcha.

More Birthday, Less Belly

One of the most frequent hits I get on this blog is for the term belly button birthday, which I wrote about nearly a year ago and reread today. It's a term used to differentiate between your birth day and the day you celebrate your sobriety.

This will be a full week. For those of you who are so inclined, my spiritual director, Fr. Charlie, is having surgery in a few days and prayers would be appreciated. He often talks about the ripple effects of transformation in a person's life. I am a beneficiary of the ripples of his own transformation. And I think you may be, too. He has held out a beacon of hope for me when I've been unable to see any way out of the miry clay. This past week he kept asking me the same hard question half a dozen times during our session. It took that many tries before I was willing to consider the question and answer. Fr. Charlie's seen every avoidance tactic I employ and is not fizzed by them in the least. God bless him.

The radio documentary airs this week. That same day I will see my therapist, say goodbye to a friend who was recently diagnosed with cancer and has only a few weeks to live, and visit another friend who has been on the brink of death so many times that I've pulled back from the friendship because I can't handle that we're not going to grow old together. Those are more words than any sentence should contain. Oh well. Trying to wrap my head around death continues to befuddle me.

My birthday is the following day.

This year I have more birthday, less belly. Typing that makes me grin because my brain goes into overdrive with too much information. Sorry. Sixty pounds less weight means less belly. The same wonderful rising bread dough punched down flesh that comes after babies and more babies and weight gains and losses and the ageing process that makes it all go south eventually. When you live as far north as I do going south has a nice ring to it. Okay, okay, I'm done being corny. Considering that I was born 12 weeks too early in a time when survival was not expected, I'm grateful for every year I age. No, I don't always embrace that pimples, wrinkles and grey hair can coexist. But in the whole scheme of things, every day is a bonus. I get to live this day.

Friday night I will be on a team for Relay For Life. For 12 hours through the night, one of our 10 member team will be walking around the track with 140+ other teams. The event is held at night to remind us that cancer never sleeps. You know, with my chronic health issues, what a gift it is that I can take part in something like this. Yes, I'll be spoonless for a while afterwards, but I will bounce back. I will bounce back. Well, with my extra skin and less belly, I'll bounce a little further. Everyone should be so lucky. And they aren't. And I'm really aware of that today.

Resting

A change is as good as a rest. I've mulled over the past few months whether it was time to give the blog a final rest but as you can see opted for a change instead. The coolest new feature is found on my blogroll where you can see when those blogs have last been updated.

Of Presence and Presents

It seems like such an old pattern, one that's been mine since childhood: I'd rather go looking for distraction than be present in this moment. Distraction was the fuel that kept my addictions alive and growing while I was dying spiritually and relationally.

Distraction, being stuck, avoiding this present moment, all came to a head yesterday. Next week I'll be turning 46 years old. Last year on my birthday I decided to gift myself with no more binge eating. One day at a time, sometimes one nanosecond at a time, by the grace of God and my willingness, it continues to be a gift. I've often pictured my binge eating self as a ravenous animal tearing away at flesh, out of breath and still not satiated. I've certainly wanted to go there this past year. For today I ask God to help me choose not to.

I've been mulling over for a few weeks now what this year's gift will be. Centering prayer is the answer that's kept coming to me. Centering prayer places me right smack dab in today. One on level I see that as a huge gift. On another it seems like torture. Which is why I keep mulling it over, hoping another answer will appear. Yesterday as I went to do Yoga though, I decided that centering prayer would dovetail quite nicely at the end of my session. So I set my pocket timer for 20 minutes and began.

I cried from beginning to end.

From my journal:

"The tears just kept coming. First of all that I'm being called to this kind of prayer ~ that it will be my birthday gift to myself ~ as I acknowledged that I start to sob. The safest place ~held in God's embrace ~ feels so scary of a place to go. So I told God that. I cried out, "Daddy, I'm scared."
Then I got an image of one of my prayer candles, lit within me. Acknowledging the Divine presence within me I saw it expand and fill my being. More tears. What people have been commenting on ~ my peaceful countenance, my brightness, my radiance, is all His doing. His presence within me shining. Like a firefly who simply glows because that's what it's created to do. All I can do is surrender to God and being illuminated happens despite me. I can stop striving.
Then came whispering into my heart, "intimacy is found in me." And I laid there and sobbed and thought about where I've been looking for that intimacy. In that moment I knew that true intimacy flows out of my intimacy with Christ and that when it's present it's because Christ is at the core of it. Otherwise it's a false intimacy. In Him, With Him, Through Him.
The phrase "Merciful Jesus" kept coming to me. With Reconciliation tomorrow how else can I approach Him?"

Then today, as I met with Fr. Charlie, came more clarity into why distraction remains such an attractive option. One of my recovery heroes, Earnie Larsen has a phrase, "Who's driving your bus?" by which he means, whenever you find yourself reacting to someone, or a situation, what age are you? Is it your 5 year old self driving the bus of your life, the teenage self or your adult self? Where are you reacting from in that moment? My little girl self survived childhood by looking for distraction. It was a necessary tool back then. Back then. When I resist living in this moment I am letting my little girl drive the bus of my life today. Realizing this doesn't magically fix anything but it does give me a new awareness. It makes choice possible.

During the Sacrament of Reconciliation today Fr. Charlie emphasized two things:

God loves you as you are.
God's graces are being poured over you.
Know this.

Flipping Pages

Tagged by Steve to complete Dr. Benton Quest's meme.

Here are the rules:

Step One – pull out a book on the book shelf.
Step Two – go to page 123.
Step Three – read and write out the 5th sentence.
Step Four – tag 5 more people.

Unlike Steve, who looked in 8 books, I looked in nearly 3 times that many. Darn. I have many books with scads of lines highlighted and not one of them was on page 123, line 5. So here is my excerpt from By Way of Grace by Paula Huston:
"We are in the presence of God, and like human lovers who 'are content, sometimes, with being near or within sight of the person they love without speaking to her, and without even distinctly thinking of her,' we simply rest in God's nearness."

And then here are several of my favourite books with quotes from page 123, just not on line 5. And yes, Steve, I did want to cheat, badly.

"But the God of the impossible won't ignore my cry." ~ Carlo Carretto in Letters from the Desert

"Most of us are living a life of addiction to our past - its mistakes and the guilt we carry - or to a future that drives us like a tyrant." ~ Fr. Francis Stroud, S.J. in Praying Naked: the spirituality of Anthony de Mello

"Gratitude makes us whole, not stuff" ~ Earnie Larsen in Destination Joy

"There is a kind of knowing, a kind of powerful conviction, that comes from spiritual emptiness." ` Richard Rohr in Everything Belongs.

Tagging whoever wants to play along.

An Ember Letter

I came across a post on a new to me blog today that prompted me to write an email to a friend. An "ember letter" of my own, if you will.

What's that you ask? An ember letter is officially a letter between a postulant and their Bishop that lets the Bishop know how it is with them.

When I read the post I immediately thought how healthy recovery demands a daily ember letter of sorts. If not between myself and God, at least within myself. It could also be between me and my sponsor or another supportive person. The minute I start avoiding any of those options I am isolating and headed down a dangerous path. The problem is that isolating can feel so cozy and comfortable.

Last week my therapist asked me to take a step back and question what being stuck was doing for me. What the payoff was. I came to the conclusion, hashing it out with Bobbie, that stuck means avoiding being present to myself or to life around me. Stuck feels cozy and comfortable.

But it's where I'm at. That much I can be honest about. This week I've returned to Centering prayer because it's one 20 minute period of the day where I'm present or at least very aware of my inability to be present. It requires an honesty of me that is unavoidable. I didn't know 20 minutes could be so long.

I'm having a love/hate relationship with being stuck.
Waiting, waiting for something to happen.
It's such an old pattern.
Time to make a new groove.

In the true spirit of an ember letter
I know I am in a better place than I was a year ago.
A year ago I was preparing to go to treatment and feeling very scared.
A year ago I didn't have the tools and skills to do anything but
avoid my feelings at any cost.
A year ago I didn't know what it cost me physically to spend so much energy in avoidance mode.
Ah.
For many days now I've written in my body journal
"tired, so very, very tired."
That's too high a price to pay any longer.
I see that now.
Grace to be present.
Not straining, nor striving.
Just be.
That's my prayer.

One Lone Bird

I am not a morning person.
I doubt I ever will be.
But when you live in a land
where the sun is now close
to never sleeping
one becomes a morning person
by default.

It seemed like just last week
I got up to go pee
and knew it was the middle of the night
because there was darkness.
Last night I got up
and looked outside and thought
right
it's that time of the year.
Where one has to be a master of shades of grey
to discern how close
to morning it is.

Then one lone bird sang
in the twilight.
Damn.
Way too close to morning.

Day Is Done

It's time for a soak
in the shower and then bedtime.
I love my bed.
I love showers, too.
It's been a full day.
Mowing lawns.
Planting flowers.
A walk with dearest one.
Cleaning, dusting, vacuuming.
Chicken tacos for supper.
Ice cream for dessert.
Tomorrow might be a day
with no spoons
but today was worth it.

Easy Does It

There should be a halt button on blogs with a hand in your face that asks if you're whiny before they let you in. Don't say I didn't warn you. Go ahead and change the channel. I may still be whining when you return but chances are I'll be over myself by then. At least temporarily. We can always hope.

Seven years ago I had an episode of Bell's Palsy. It's never really gone away. Today one half of my face is tingling like I've been to the dentist and if I look in the mirror it has itself a mild case of dropsy. Having it flare like this is like getting a tap on the shoulder, reminding me to take better care of myself.

Dearest one is beside me listening to Supertramp as I type. A song that starts out with whistling. I turned to him and said, "Oh, are you whistling?" I've never heard a person whistle who wasn't also cheerful and I thought maybe some of his mood would rub off on me. Dearest one starts the song over half a dozen times and sometimes whistles along just to confuse me. I turn to him every time and catch him whistling once. Eventually I tell him to stop messing with my head. The half that still moves anyway.

Youngest son is in the livingroom watching mana depleting television.(Diablo fanatics live here) That's what we call it in our house. A year ago, when I was in a chronic pain group, I learned of a study which found people subjected to violence on tv had depleted immune systems for 2 hours afterwards and conversely when they watched something uplifting their immune systems got a boost for the same time. I don't really enjoy violent shows but that was motive enough for me to stop watching them altogether.

It's slowly dawning on me as I type that your immune system may be under attack from reading my blog today. However, if you whistle while you read, there's a chance you'll come out even.

Baby Stepping My Way Forward

I don't think I can stand another post about the radio documentary, can you?. I'm obsessing about it and that's not good. So for today I will change the subject on purpose. Tomorrow I'll try and do the same. No guarantees.

Today was a birthday meeting at AA. The guy whose birthday it was we've been wondering week to week when he'll show up for his cake. His sobriety birthday was last month but work took him out of town. He showed up today sans cake and so the chair of the meeting handed me the chair duties while he went and bought a cake. I had a wedding to go to right after the meeting.

About a year ago when I was getting ready to chair my first meeing I said how nervous that made me. My sponsor asked, "What are you afraid of - making a mistake?" Um, yes. Definitely yes. Her question simmered me down and gave me perspective. If there's a safe place to screw up it's in a recovery meeting. Well, except we alcholics/addicts tend to be perfectionists, but at least we can laugh about it and recognize the insanity of it.

So I didn't fret when the meeting ran over time. I just handed the chair duties back to the cake buyer and ducked out to go to the wedding. I have no appropriate clothes to wear to such a celebration. I didn't realize that until I went to get dressed this morning. After a nearly 60 pound weight loss no wonder I have no fancy schmancy clothes to wear. The only semi appropriate dress in my closet was too big so I opted to get back into my jeans. We're pretty casual at the little church in the wildwoods that I go to so I wear jeans every Sunday. And flip flops some days. Or thongs, as they used to be called, before thongs got hijacked to describe a different pary of the anatomy. Doesn't that just crack you up?! I have a pretty pair of lime green thongs on my feet.

Anyway the birthday fellow is one of my favourite AA people. He speaks wisdom every time he opens his mouth. Because I chaired I didn't get a chance to tell him how his journey has impacted mine. I have his phone number in my wallet though so I may just call him later on tonight. We have similar years of sobriety but he was the one who I watched at meetings and said to myself, "he has what I want." I listen hard when he shares at meetings.

Best thing I heard at the meeting today was that it takes baby steps to get where we're headed. Those baby steps add up but we have to be patient for them to do so. It made me make a mental note to ask myself every day what baby step can I take forward today?

For today it was not to write about the radio documentary.

My 15 Minutes of Fame

The radio documentary has an air date. For those of you who requested I'll be sending out an email with the details soon. There is at least one regular reader I'd love to pass the info on to so [if you're reading from southern Ontario] email me [writerchick62 AT yahoo DOT ca] if you like and I'll let you know the details. Otherwise, you may have figured it out from my posts and I'll leave it at that.

This week I had to speak up and share a few concerns I had about the piece with the producer. It's much easier for me to take the well worn path of "everything's fine" than risk god knows what by speaking my mind. I did speak my mind and then carried on. And the one line in the piece that was causing me no small amount of angst got edited out of the final mix. I've decided not to let my parents know when the piece airs. The first go round where I spoke to them about the abuse was hard enough. Hearing the piece will simply open up those wounded places again for them. So unless they ask when it's going to be on I won't be offering any information. There was a time when I would have enjoyed being in their face and forcing them to pay attention. Those days are gone. It sucks energy from my own healing journey, which is the only journey I have any control over.

Nappage

It's time for a nap.
But before I go do that here's a link to a post
I thought was too good not to share:
the story of a friendship.
As a kid I was often looking for a friend in the adults around me.
Wanting someone to notice and invest time in me.
Which is probably why this story made me really teary.

Fear, Hope and Everything In Between

My head's been in addiction land the last few days. Mulling over not only my own story but the story of others. Two books I've been reading In The Realm Of Hungry Ghosts and Love Sick have been fodder for my thoughts. Today I have 18+ months of abstinence from sexual addiction and almost a year of no binge eating. Some days both addictions nearly feel like a thing of the past and others they hound me, begging to be let back in. Fucking things.

Today I wrote an email and then followed up with a phone call to someone I was wanting to 'play nice' with instead of being honest and risking offending them. Fear is such a shitty motive for not being true to myself. One I don't want to live by so I wrote the email and then picked up the phone and said what needed to be said. No offense was taken, either. So there you go. Risk it.

Recently someone commented on the hope this post had given them: No Fear
That key fob is long gone. Dearest one recently bought me a silver one with the word hope engraved on it.
Which is what I keep doing, one foot in front of the other, day by day. This day.

Belly Down, Standing Tall

I've spent the last few weeks
travelling back and forth
between stuck and unstuck.
Some days find me belly down in the rut
and others have me standing back up tall again.
One afternoon when I was home
doing the radio documentary
I followed a well worn cattle trail
from the middle of the farm
back to the barn yard.
Those trails always lead home.
I'm trying to trust that the path I'm on
is headed in a good direction as well.
It means being present in the now.
Being present sometimes feels like being stuck.
Other times it means unstuck.
Being present.
I hope it won't always
be a place of fear for me.
A place I often avoid
even though I know it's the only
sane place to be
despite what it feels like.

Stuff

I'm healing.
I can handle drug free
childbirth better than
a gash to the knuckle.

There was a light mist of rain overnight.
It left a beautiful fresh scent in its wake.

The energizer bunny and the stray
came-back-from-the-dead cat
have become fast friends.
Watching a pug trying to learn
how to rub up against a cat
makes me laugh.
I did wish yesterday
that the pug could purr.
She seemed so content.

Dearest one and I planted
the garden last night.
Being healthy enough
to take on the responsibility
of a garden is a gift.

Painful Edges

I'll be offline for a day or two.
Call it a lost battle
with a plastic wrap sharp edge.
I got a gaping hole
alongside my knuckle,
middle finger.
Dearest one is a nurse.
Not much fizzes him.
I'm hopping around in pain,
freaked out by the sight.
He calmly tells me ER would
just put steri strips
on the cut instead of a stitch or two.
So he bandaged it up for me.
I can't bend that finger.
Typing was never meant to be painful.
I would never make a nurse.