Archive for July, 2011

The Heat Wave In and Out of D.C.

I sit down to write and my mind is blank.  Suddenly I remember all those night-before-major-paper-is-due panic moments in college.

Oh yeah, this isn’t college, no one is grading me (except in comments!) and the topic is one I love so writing this blog is heart work rather than head work.  I get to write about being present and practicing mindfulness and walking steadily through emotions and . . .

(Anyone feel a big ‘ole “yes, but,” coming on?)

Yes, it’s true that I love writing about all those things; but I sure don’t feel like I’ve been practicing what I preach lately.  I haven’t been all that present; I haven’t necessarily been practicing mindfulness and I have been stumbling like a drunken sailor through my emotions.

If you want the unabashed truth, I’ve pushed myself the entire month of July to just get these posts written.  And I do mean pushed.  It’s a good thing I committed last month to writing two posts per week:  Mindful Monday and Thursday Thread.  Without that commitment to you, you may not have heard a peep from me all month.

Today is the 27th consecutive day of 100+ degree heat in the Dallas metroplex so I’m hot and I’m irritable.

At this writing, the Washington politicos are spitting in their colleague’s Wheaties (cleaned that one up, didn’t I?) over whether my dad will receive his Social Security check next week.  Messing with my father makes me hot and irritable too.

Add to both those insults a broken toilet handle, $50 to fill my 13-gallon gas tank and doctor’s office staff who don’t return phone calls and my hot and irritable meter keeps rising.

Oh please.  Cue the tiny violins.

People are dying in this heat wave, for goodness sake.   I was out this afternoon picking up a few things, dropping off others, and letting my car run to stay cool while I dashed in and out. I came home, lessened the amount of clothing on my body, turned the AC down and sprawled in front of an oscillating fan (I own seven or eight) while I called my dad.

Excuse me, do I have the right to complain about the heat?

Let’s put this issue in perspective, shall we?

I am darned lucky–scratch that, to read BLESSED–to have a cool home, money to pay the AC and gasoline bills and a landlord who fixed the toilet handle within 24 hours (and I do have another toilet).

Furthermore, I am BLESSED that there are men and women, regardless of party affiliation, who serve this country as elected officials willing to make decisions that are–let’s face it–way above my pay grade and ability to figure out.

Finally, I am BLESSED by the abilities to both sit and write this message to you.  Many people suffer pain when trying to do either of those two physical necessities which I too often take for granted.

So, I am now officially over my hot and cranky self.  In the words of the great Andy Rooney, “What do you say to that?”

Changing Playmates and Playgrounds

Hangin’ out choices.  We all get to make them; we get to determine how and where and when and with whom we choose to spend our time.

I used to hang out with people and in places where I didn’t belong or had no business–unhealthy places–but I thought I was choosing to be there.  Now I know that my addiction made the choice for me.

Then I got sober and found myself still making unhealthy hang-out choices.  I’d go places because I thought I was supposed to or because I thought it would make someone else happy.

Never mind my own desires.  I let others make choices for me. I sacrificed myself a lot back then.  Today I know that I am worth more, that I am worthy of stating, and then following, my own choices.

Today I make good hang-out choices.  I go where I want to go.  I go there because I want to be there.  I go with–or without–the people I want in my life.  For the most part, I go when I want to go (although this one is a bit trickier.).

Can you say the same?  I hope you can because giving your power and choices to another out of  obligation could be habit-forming.  Should’s and would’s can become ought-to’s and could-have’s.

I’ve spent the last few days hangin’ out at Tender Acres in Bartonville, TX, with a sweet 11-year-old boy and his grandmother.  On this Mindful Monday, I feel re-charged and re-focused.

I know for sure that life is good.  Even the barn cat says so!

Where are you hangin’ out today?  Are you there by your choice or because someone else wants you to be there?

Balancing Grief With Love

It has been hard to breathe today.  The pain in my heart, eased for months now, has been a constant accompaniment to the hours of this day.

Today is the one year anniversary of Mom’s death.

I woke to the presence of grief and immediately felt a strange dichotomy of peace.  I sensed her presence right away and knew she was okay with my mourning–that seemed proper today–but she also wanted me to feel her peace.

So this post is the story of finding a broken conch shell and how I began to learn to balance grief with love.  It’s the story of feeling love’s presence, even as it transcends time and space.  Finally, it’s the story of energy that connects a mother with her daughter and how awareness sustains that energy.

This story begins with the explanation that over the years, when I’ve had extra money and inclination, I’ve had flowers delivered to my mother on my birthday as a token of gratitude.  This past April, as I celebrated my 50th birthday in the Turks and Caicos Islands, I was grief-stricken that it was the first year I couldn’t even call my mother on my birthday.

My traveling companion, God bless her, concocted a plan to ceremonially deliver a beautiful red hibiscus bloom to Mom.  At sunset, on the night of my birthday, we waded into the North Atlantic and after saying a few words to Mom and shedding a few tears, we released the bloom.  We watched for the longest time as it bobbed on the waves leading out to the sinking sun.

My hurting was immense as I realized there would come an instant when I would no longer see the flower and the symbolism was nearly impossible to bear.  Yet, the giving of the flower to her–sending it to Heaven on the rise and fall of water–felt right and good.

After a time, I turned and tears-streaming, walked out of the ocean, careful of where I stepped in the dusky light.  Then, as I looked down, half buried in the sand was a broken conch shell.  I bent, retrieved it and then caught my breath as I noticed that wedged inside the smooth opening was a tiny, baby-sized shell.

I knew instantly that Mom had received her gift and sent one to me in return.

The broken shell is now a treasured possession, as is my new Mother and Daughter figurine called Close to Me (a Willow Tree design by Susan Lordi).

That same traveling companion–the one who has walked every heart-wrenching step with me over the past year–gave the piece to me this morning.  Her love and support is the balm that soothes the grief and brings balance to the vulnerable spots in my heart.

Today is nearly done as is the first year of everything without Mom. But in reality, everything that I do and see and experience, is with Mom, if I nurture that connection.

I like knowing that she stays close to me, for now and for always.

Mindful Monday Mission

I’m a tad bit late getting this post out to you today because I decided to give myself a break.  Self-care is not an over-rated concept.

Why am I working on taking care of myself?  I’m coming off one of those weekends that wipes you out emotionally.  I was with fabulous people and was exactly where I wanted to be, but the emotional commitment to be present there touched a whole bunch of core issues for me.

I felt like this Crepe Myrtle tree that I saw on my walk this morning.

Can you see how the bark has thinned and been worn smooth?  It looks exposed, doesn’t it?  That’s exactly how I felt this weekend, and continue to feel.

And notice in the apex of the tree that  a branch has either broken or was sawed off.  Up close, it looks like a scabbed-over wound.  Again, that’s my feeling as I walk through this week of the first anniversary of my mother’s death.

But what caught my eye and I hope you can see, is the new growth coming out of the wounded area of the tree.  Growth that is happening in spite of all the surrounding tissue and bark looking so vulnerable.

Hmmm . . . nature is a great teacher . . . if we but take time to observe . . . and live with our senses wide open (no matter how raw we feel).

That’s my mission today.  Can you describe yours as it relates to your senses?

A Sober Horse Thief

Occasionally during one of my meetings, I hear an old phrase that I haven’t heard in awhile.  At Monday’s meeting, I not only heard not one, but two golden oldies.  Plus I learned one that was new to me and one that made me weep a bit.

How about the two oldies first?

“You can sober up a drunken horse thief and you still have a horse thief.”

Simply, put, if an alcoholic puts down the bottle but doesn’t addresses the root causes of behaviors that perpetuate the drinking, then his or her tendency to still have those behaviors is great.

I know I’m not alone in the experience of encountering extremely angry, although sober, people in recovery.  My guess–and I am only an expert through my own experience, not because I play one on TV–is that extreme anger is but a symptom of a deeper problem.  Hooray for the sober part–and that is huge–but please get honest with the rest of the factors that motivate you to behave badly or, at a minimum, cause you misery and pain.

“Drinking again makes as much sense as stepping into the ring with Muhammad Ali.  You can’t win.”

For those of us who truly believe we’re 10 feet tall and bullet-proof when fortified with our own brand of poison, then we are delusional.  But the actual delusion that we talked about in Monday’s meeting was having a period of sobriety and thinking (or not) that “this time will be different.”

My friend said she actually told herself on a bad morning after that she was sure she just needed to give up the carbonation. Uh huh.  That’s like saying if I would only look left, the punch from the right wouldn’t happen.

No mas.  No more.  My drinking was no longer about carbonation or potency or whether it came in a can, bottle or box.  My drinking looked like Ali’s knock-out opponents–just about as ugly as they come.

Now for the new saying heard in Monday’s meeting:

“I figure I wake up every morning with untreated alcoholism.  Each day is about treating my disease.”

I’m told that this golden image arrived in North Texas via one of our peeps visiting Floria.  Don’t you love the way it places the disease squarely on the shoulders of the individual?  There is absolutely no room for a victim or a “pour me” to reside in that space of waking up.

I love the no-nonsense and realistic approach.  And here’s the really cool part:  Should you adopt this morning mantra, it doesn’t mean you have to sit around first thing talking about what you are and what you’re not.  I pretty much disdain labels but I do have a huge appreciation for accepting truth.  My truth is I have the disease of alcoholism.  Why not acknowledge that first thing?  No boo-hoo, why-me mentality, just a matter-of-fact statement that invites a daily course of treatment.

Now for the sentences that caused me to weep:

“I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about what is or isn’t.  God reveals that information to me when He figures I can handle it.  If He gave it all to me when I sobered up, I would have had little choice but to kill myself.”

God bless my friend Joe.  I really want his peace and serenity.  He has a gentle way of simplifying things and cutting straight through the drama and tension that is too often  my life.  He also says things like, “What can I do to help?” and “You know I’m here for you.”

I find that I do spend far too much time worrying about something that may or may not happen in the future.  My mind wears out its own carpet wandering back and forth between what I could’ve, would’ve or should’ve said 10 days, four months or two years ago.

Yes, there are times when I’m still a horse thief and times when I do begin to crawl back into Ali’s ring.

Then I remember that those are choices available to me.  Thank God for choices.  They mean I get to choose better ones today.