Moments

My wish for you, today. 

Last night I was helping my granddaughters put together a colourful craft cart. They were so full of excitement I felt like bursting into tears. 

~ Hope

What Is

Opportunities abound to heal while I visit my daughter and her daughters. 

All I can say tonight is that every ounce of fight I’ve had within me, all the grace shone my way, and every one step in front of the other, no matter how much I’ve gone backwards - I’m full of gratitude tonight for what is.

~ Hope

This Chance

 It’s been a long day. Grandchildren awake way before dawn. Mornings are a struggle for me. I managed to get the girls delivered to school on time before I came back to their house to start my work day.

Before I started work, I read this post. It was just what I needed to gain perspective. To be reminded that this chance to love is a gift. 

Oldest granddaughter came home from school and shared about her day. Out of that conversation we came up with a plan to have a game night this weekend. 

Anyway, my bed is calling and morning comes early. 

~ Hope

Your Humanity Is Good

 That page of words over there could possibly sum up what I’ve learned in life. Or what I’m trying to, at least.

It’s such a far cry from the days when I would’ve said, ‘fuck that shit.’ I was striving for perfection or nothing at all.  And lest I think I’m all that and then some……

Today I was relaxing on the couch with my hand trailing off the side of it, absentmindedly petting the dog. Until I thought, “that doesn’t feel right.” I leaned over to see I was scratching the dog’s butt. 

~ Hope

Be Proud

 This is something my therapist reminds me of often.  I don’t know if we grow any other way. I don’t seem to. 

I was born stubborn. Sometimes it serves a good purpose. 

~ Hope 

Then

I

 I’ve been travelling for a few days to get to one of my kid’s houses.  My first time travelling with portable oxygen and doing so solo as well.  All is well. I saved the quote in the photo because it immediately made me think of my mother. There were worlds I inhabited that she wasn’t privy to.  One of those was my marriage. She was not good at listening and after a few times of shitty, judgemental advice I stopped trying. Things were very rocky in my marriage the last few years she was alive. She mentioned changes she’d seen in Dearest One and I knew she’d given me an opening to share and I deliberately chose not to. It felt unsafe. 

So here I am for an extended stay with one of my kids. One who I’ve had a rocky relationship with for chunks of time over the years, including non contact. These days it is calm. There is trust. Hard won on both sides. It’s hard to stop thinking you know your kids because you knew them then. My kids are mid to late thirties now. Then is a long time ago now. 

~Hope 

Kindness

Sparkly eyed grandchild is having a sleepover tonight.  We’ve watched the Home Alone movies many times together. Tonight we did so again. At one point in the movie tonight something kind happens. They looked at me and said, “Kindness and generosity are my hobbies.” I told them those were virtues and they gave me a very sparkly eyed look. May that be so, child.

My mother had a snarky tone that she used to let my father know how irritated she was with him. I used that same snarky tone with Dearest One for years. Less and less as the years have gone by. I was oblivious to my use of it for much of our marriage. One day I not only saw it but, for the first time in my life, I gave a sincere apology for how my actions had hurt another human being. Before this I had apologized to make myself feel better. Not that I was aware of that before that moment, either.

This is where my therapist would remind me that self compassion will bring about more change within myself than harshness ever will. She knows how apt I am to be unkind towards myself when I peel another layer off the onion called growth and healing. Learning how to live out the virtue of kindness continues. Including towards myself.

~ Hope

 

The Kicker

That’s the kicker isn’t it? Not running away when faced with a truth. I’ve spent serious time in my life believing I had a corner on the truth. And less time dismantling that belief. The important thing is that I woke up enough to see what I was going to lose if I didn’t change. I would’ve lost my most important relationships and a crappy relationship with myself. 

~ Hope
 

Walking

 I saved this as a photo to send to my therapist. I’m not sure I can go for even a calm eagle walk.  I haven’t tested my endurance too far since I’ve been on supplemental oxygen. 

People around me are being diagnosed with cancer. I think more about my mortality than I care to admit. I feel good about how hard I’ve worked in therapy to heal so that generations behind me have a better chance at healthy relationships without waiting 40 years for them to come to fruition.

For now I’ll continue walking on my journey.  Who knows how far I’ll get.

~ Hope

Seeing

 

Increasing awareness. Actually seeing. So valuable. So difficult.  One of the questions I ask myself and sometimes, others, is “What am I pretending not to see?” I have talked myself into a corner when I write and suddenly see something within myself that I sure didn’t set out to see.  The other place it happens is in my therapist’s office. 

Then there’s the question of what to do with the seeing. 

~ Hope

It took until I went on social media today to give some thought to it being the first day of the new year. 

I don’t think that life gives us lessons. That feels harsh.  Growth opportunities maybe? Whatever it is I’m not a fan of them most of the time. I’m not sticking my hand up in the air yelling, “pick me!” I doubt that anyone does so willingly. 

This past year contained much growth for me.  Deeply satisfying, hard-as-fuck growth. 

Who knows what the year ahead will bring.  I’m grateful to be alive to see it unfold. 

~ Hope

Good Enough

 I have the warmth of a small dog on my lap as I type.  As good a reason as any to stay sitting in my recliner. It’s a very snowy day although the temperatures are more liveable than the bitter cold of the past while. You know it’s bad when the high temperature for the day is in the -30Cs, with the windchill much colder.

Christmas was lovely. Dearest One and I exchanged gifts, which we haven’t done in many years.  We need so little and want less and less the older we get. We’ll see more family yet this week. It will be the best kind of noise and chaos within our four walls for a few days. The quiet that will follow will be both welcome and sad. 

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions anymore.  I try to look with compassion at my earlier self who was convinced that this would be the year that I’d get my life together and I made lists to that end. My oldest grandchild reminded me the other day that there was no perfection and I responded with, “ Right.  There’s just good enough.” So good enough it is even though I’m mulling over such things as what author Parker Palmer has shared - with the time I have left on this earth, what do I want to give myself to and what do I want to let go of.

I stopped reading the self help genre of books over a year ago. I have not missed it at all. Even when I’ve gotten the odd one out of the library I haven’t been able to stomach reading them. I’m not sure what that’s all about other than knowing that there’s no magic 3 or 5 or 7 step formula to becoming self compassionate. Which is what I’m after. And am gaining in brief moments here and there. 

The only non fiction I’ve been able to read has been memoir. Novels are increasingly my book of choice. I read one recently called The All of It by Jeannette Haien. Hauntingly beautiful. 

There are beds to be made and groceries to buy, in anticipation of grandchildren arriving in a few days.  It’s amazing what can be accomplished in 15 or 20 minute increments of energy. Gone are the days when I had to do it all in a day or else. It’s not the expectations of others that do me in. It’s my own fabricated ones.

~ Hope

Still here

My office, where I have always written these posts, looks almost like a hoarder’s office.  I never go in there anymore, even though my job switched to being a work from home one during Covid, and will remain so until I retire. 

I turned 60 this past summer and while it wasn’t a hard milestone, I’m grateful for every trip around the sun that I get, it has made me keenly aware that most of my life is behind me. 

I’m on oxygen 24 hours a day.  It has greatly improved the quality of my life. I’ve had lung issues for years and slowly my oxygen level has decreased. Thankfully we have managed to avoid getting Covid so far. Dearest One travelled on a plane this week though, so we are crossing our fingers that he didn’t bring home any sickness despite being n95 masked.

We have 5 grandchildren now and they are the joy of our life.  I’ve often said that I was never the mother I wished I’d been, but nothing is stopping me from being the grandmother I’d hoped to be.  To find out how deeply I can love, how abundant my compassion and kindness can be, and how there’s nothing to get all wound up about - has been pure joy. They are the most delightful children. 

Well, I need to go get ready for work now.  I don’t know how to get my signature on this post so I’ll have to sign off without it.  Talk again soon.

How Big.....

Maybe I was just waiting until an appropriate photo came along before I posted again. When this showed up today I thought it was perfect. It made me laugh.

What can I tell you? My beloved boss retired. The other person who I share work duties with went on leave at the beginning of June and they have yet to hire someone to replace them. So I feel like I am flying solo at the moment with a head full of corporate knowledge. Some days it feels like a blessing, and other days, not so much. 

Is it growth to not want to be a know it all anymore? Who am I kidding? I still want the gold star. I do. But I've also realized I am really good at my job and I no longer feel like I need to apologize for that or get anyone's approval. Maybe I gave myself a gold star somewhere along the way.

Cov*d is getting to me. Where I live they will drop all restrictions, including the need to isolate if you test positive, next week. See why the photo appealed to me?  Over the summer we saw two grandchildren who we hadn't seen in a year. In a few months we will see two others that we haven't seen in that length of time, either. Thankfully one grandchild lives just around the corner from us. Even at that we didn't see him for most of the school year. Once he heads back to school we will have decisions to make about that, too. Dearest One and I talk about legacy a lot and what kind are we leaving. With that in mind we spend a good deal of our energy in building up our kids and grandkids. 

Therapy is still hard work. Still worth it. I went through another near debilitating bout of depression this summer and realized one day that I knew exactly why people decided to end it all. That feeling is not unlike the reason I used to drink. Try to numb the pain. I was well enough to tell my doctor and my therapist. I am thankful that the realization was just that. A realization, not a destination. But it did catch me off guard. With some medication changes I am functioning (somewhat) again. My motivation is still missing. I care and I don't care. 

But I keep trying. I celebrate tiny victories. The kind that only another depressed person or a therapist would celebrate with you. It's too embarrassing to speak them out loud to anyone else. 

I have spent my life pushing through pain, both physical and emotional. Therapy has helped me see that there needn't be a gold star for doing so. It's not a hero's journey to push past physical and emotional needs in an effort to do what? Keep safe? Win "their" approval (whoever that is). I'm not willing to pay the price anymore. 

And writing this post must be causing me stress because I just bit off a fingernail, and I haven't been in the habit of doing that for eons. 

Maybe that's why I've avoided writing for so long. 

Camped Out

 

I'm camped in my office while the cleaners are vacuuming and dusting and generally making our home shine. They don't know that Dearest One and I spent many hours this morning tidying things up so that they could find their way to washing floors and cleaning bathrooms. I hired them before I had surgery to take the pressure off Dearest One. Covid has been stressful enough without more on his plate. He has been in care homes all semester with students. It's taken its toll. And even though he normally does all the floors and I do bathrooms, it's been a luxurious respite to do neither. 

I am still carrying around a drain tube almost 8 weeks post surgery. My hope is for my family doctor to remove it this coming week. No doubt it has partially grown into the surrounding tissues so that won't be fun when he goes to yank it out. Which is how you get a drain tube out. Yank. And out comes more tubing than you could ever imagine fitting into the space it has occupied. I will be glad to see it go. Glad to shower with abandon, after I ended up being allergic to water proof adhesives, and most of all to sleep on that side again. The little habits one takes for granted. 

I am very glad I had the surgery. No longer lopsided. No more pull on my body as it tries to navigate with extra weight on one side. No more ever wearing a bra again. My physiotherapist has said it's a win win for my body. 

Restrictions are such right now that one is not allowed to have anyone in their home who doesn't live there, housecleaners exempt. Neither are we allowed to gather socially outside either. It will mean a very quiet Christmas. I'm grateful for Facetime. And kids who don't mind calling to let us catch up with them and their kids. Some of them have had covid. Thankfully it was manageable. Pre covid one of them had a medical emergency and went to the hospital via ambulance. The thought that many people in similar circumstances don't get to talk to their loved ones again, makes anxiety go right up my throat. 

I have learned no new skill during the pandemic. I have not pushed myself to do anything out of the ordinary. Surviving it is enough all on its own. Our numbers continue to go up. We don't go out of the house except for the essentials that can't be delivered. We see no one. 

Well, I do see my therapist. We are working through hard stuff. We are always working through hard stuff. I have learned to let the tears flow instead of swallowing them. I've become secure enough with her to say it all out loud. The stuff one normally thinks but never expresses. The long held beliefs. The irrational. The awful. The dark. And in the midst of all that we find enough to laugh about as well. 

It is worth every moment, even the moments I hate. I am aware that I am not only changing my present and my future, but I am also changing the course for my descendants. If you would have told me at 25 that one day I could look at the behaviour of little people and accept it as it is instead of something to be fixed I would've laughed at you. Scorned you for being so stupid and short sighted. Grandparenthood has freed me to delight in all of it. I had no idea of cognitive development when my kids were little. No idea what was reasonable to expect. So I expected far too much. Unattainable expectations. As I find compassion for myself I find all the compassion and more for my grandchildren and their parents. 

I may go camp out there next. 

Minutae

 A sunny sky and cold ground. That's what I see outside my window today.  Dearest One has gone to buy a few groceries. Covid cases are on the rise in our small city. It causes him angst to go out. He is working with the elderly and students in a high risk environment every week. I doubt his body has truly relaxed in months.

A year ago I had a conversation with my doctor about getting my remaining breast removed. I'd stopped wearing my prosthesis the previous year and as I am not a small breasted woman, I often felt uncomfortable being out and about and looking so lopsided. 

This past week I had surgery and am now flat. Women in my online support groups talk about their buddha bellies that become so apparent after surgery. Last time around I thought I had a buddha belly, too. But I didn't. I just had an unobstructed view of my anatomy. 

This time around I have such a belly that if I didn't look my age, I am sure I'd be regularly asked when I was due. It is what it is. In therapy we have recently talked about mind and body and how they are meant to work as a team. Tears rolled down my face. I did not know they were meant to be so. That bit of my journey will take longer than it took to acquire my buddha belly, to unravel. 

We came home from the hospital and our kids texted to see if I was home. Dearest One took a photo of me and sent it as a response. I looked at it and burst into tears. I was not ready to have anyone see me in my newly flat state. I didn't know I wasn't ready until after the fact. Just typing that makes me want to hold my breath. If I was outside I could see my breath as I released it. Not in the puff, puff, puff bursts of little clouds that I want to breathe like, but in a long slow, exhalation.

Let Yourself Cry

It's been so long since I have been here. I don't know what to write about the situation in the world. I've felt like that's meant I couldn't write about anything else then, without coming across as a navel gazing bag.

Even writing that, I can hear my therapist commenting on my self judgement. I do that a lot. I am my worst critic. If you are familiar with the Enneagram, I am a One. I have even been critical of myself for being a One. ("Can't I be one of the nicer numbers?", I said to my spiritual director.) 

Here is a beautiful song about Ones. "No, I'm not saying perfect exists in this life but we'll only know for certain if we try."

I have tried so hard for so long. Since childhood I've believed that striving for perfection was the key to my safety. My head knows that perfectly imperfect is as close as I'm ever going to get. With time, I am hopeful that my heart will embrace that truth as well.

My therapist keeps reminding me that it is a process. Recently in a session she repeatedly said, "We know...."  When she does this she is reminding me of very true things in the process of healing. In a moment of push back I replied sarcastically, "Speak for yourself." We both laughed and then she pointed out that I keep coming back so there had to be some agreement, no?

I haven't come this far in dealing with my trauma to quit now. It's possibly the most courageous thing I've done in my life. I keep saying that because it keeps surprising me that I am willing to face this shit even though it feels scary and big. It is not getting easier. I've repeatedly told my therapist, in the middle of a session, that my instinct is to run. I often feel like I have a scream stuck in my throat. She described it this week as having lived my life with my foot on the gas pedal (urge to run) and on the brake (frozen) simultaneously. No wonder it has taken such a toll.

Several sessions ago I spent most of it keening loudly from deep within. The only person who has ever heard me cry like that is that nurse I had during my cancer journey. This time my back arched, too. So many tears. So much pain. So glad I was in the house alone. It went on and on for over half an hour.

If you only knew what a breakthrough that was. To cry unabashedly, letting emotional pain lodged deep in my core, out. It is a victory that I didn't shut my keening down. That I didn't swallow my tears. That I let them be seen and heard until I was done. When I opened my eyes and faced my therapist I could see that she had had tears as well.

Maybe I'm not a navel gazing bag after all. Maybe, I'm a brave, courageous woman, helping her battered inner child fight for her freedom. (So hard not to delete that last sentence as "Who do you think you are?" rattles around in my head.)

Welcome Here

I wasn't up to speed from the moment I woke up this morning. I managed to get up and to my work computer with 4 minutes to spare. Perhaps it's a bonus to be a rule follower at heart when you are sure your body cannot get out of bed. Turns out you can. And there's not even a gold star for the effort. Although there is a paycheck. I have to remember that part.

Some days I am fully engaged in my job. Some days not so much. It's been a busy week job wise and I am grateful for that as well. Grateful I am able to work from home in these weird times we are living in. I've gotten a whole lot of stuff done while my body and brain feel otherwise engaged.

The thing is I had therapy a week ago. It was intense. I haven't quite made my way back to normal since. I wasn't scheduled to see my therapist until next Friday but I got in touch this morning to see if I could bump up my appointment and thankfully there were a few earlier openings to choose from. Tuesday it is.

It's  hard to know if the funk I am in is from my last session. You know it's bad when your therapist thought you were referring to that rape and you were referring to this other one. It could have been another one or another..... Fucked if I know.

Or am I in a funk from being in isolation so much due to the pandemic? Dearest One and I are going out for groceries and appointments and that's about it. He tries to do most of it so I can stay home as much as possible. And while I am an introvert through and through, I am missing contact with other people. I normally work in an office with six other people. We chat a lot about our lives outside of work. I miss them and I don't. I keep telling them I miss seeing them but I don't miss being at the office.

Any time this week when I got still and tried to attend to that little person inside of me, I got teary.

And I've been fighting all week with that nasty inner voice that tells me that I should be done with this shit at my age.

At any rate it is Friday and I am glad.

Sitting With It.

TW - talk of sexual abuse.

There's a reason that the tiger in the picture is sweating it out. Hmm. I just took a closer look and realized she's sitting under a rain cloud. Oops.  I assumed that she was sweating or crying.

Not that I've had a lot of practice "sitting with it." Running in the opposite direction is much more comfortable. But I imagined that if I did, I'd be crying or sweating buckets.

So it meant something to me last week in therapy, when big, big feelings came up, I did not run away. The feelings were so big that it felt like I was standing directly under a tidal wave about to come crashing down on me.

In that moment I was emotionally right back into the trauma of being raped (the first time.) With guidance from my therapist and bravery on my part, I didn't run the other way. Out loud I said my usual, "I hate this."  "This fucking sucks."  comments. And I also took deep breaths and kept my eyes open and somehow stayed present while emotionally I was back in time 40 years.

I don't know how many times my therapist has shared with me that animals in the wild will shake or run and jump after they have been under threat.  And that in doing so they discharge the traumatic energy that would otherwise be stuck in their body after being pursued by a predator. Damn, how apt is that phrase. If you only knew.

And so I watched as 40 year old energy was dispersed from my body somehow with my permission and despite myself simultaneously.

I doubt I have ever been more hopeful in my life.
I'm truly know now that I am not a prisoner to my past.
At last.

Tears

I didn't know where the tears were coming from. They'd started at lunch time when Dearest One was sharing thoughts about his own counselling session earlier in the morning. Tears welled up and I couldn't stop them from spilling over. I have felt tender emotionally since the other day. Joy has not left completely. It's there under the surface when I think of the younger versions of myself being welcomed into my healing instead of trying to shut them out.  These tears felt like ones of gratitude and I welcomed them.

But then the tears did not stop when we finished up our lunch. I went up to my office and listened to a podcast (her latest one) while I finished up some work tasks. The interview hit close to home and I found myself with tears spilling over several times. At the end she talked about truth tellers. That hit a chord with me because that is my nickname in a group of women whom I meet with weekly to pray with and share in our journey as Christians. When I joined in with them I was told to pick a name for myself. A descriptor. The only thing that came to me was the name Truth Teller. So that is who I've been ever since.

Next I was browsing on social media and came across this video (you have to be logged into that big social media black hole to watch it) and cried some more.

And every time my mind circled back to my conversation with Dearest One, I cried.

Crying and I are not the best of friends. Of all the feelings I swallow with regularity, tears are at the top of the list. Sometimes during a therapy session my therapist will ask me if I just swallowed some feelings. She usually asks me that after I've swallowed hard with effort.

I decided that I was done with so much feeling. I plugged my phone in to charge, logged out of my work email and closed my office door.

I went down the stairs in search of Dearest One. As I reached the bottom step I thought to myself, "We should just get drunk." Well, hell. I haven't had a drink in over 32 years. This was noooot good.

When I found Dearest One I blurted out my thoughts. I told him I couldn't stop crying, that I didn't need him to fix anything, I just needed him to listen. His eyes got big when I told him I had had the thought that we should just get drunk. I told him my emotions must be overwhelming for me to think a drink would fix them. I still couldn't stop the tears from rolling down my face as I talked. Sometimes when you want to comfort and be there for someone there just are no right words that will help. I recognized that he wanted to and I also recognized that he couldn't give me what I needed in that moment.

So I called and left a message for my therapist. Late on a Friday afternoon. The only other time I have talked to her on the phone was when we had our initial intake phone call nearly three years ago, to see if she would accept me as a client. Since then our in between appointment communication has been via text messaging.

She called back and then spent an hour, after her last scheduled appointment of the day, putting a figurative arm around my shoulder and walking me off the edge of the cliff called overwhelm. Thank God. In the midst of it all I told her about this day and that. By the time our call ended I was much calmer and where there had been feelings of anxiety in my body, there was now some space. She helped me come up with a plan until I see her next week. The tears no longer overwhelmed me. A drink no longer a solution.

Thanks be to God.