Letting Go of "Should"

I am always reflective at this time of year as we wind down to the holiday season and begin to look forward to January, the month of new beginnings, fresh starts, and resolutions to be better than we have been. Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the motivations in my life, and I have realized that much of what I do...and what I have done for almost 50 years,,,has been based on the notion of "should."  On its surface, "should" seems harmless enough.  I should get up earlier so I have time to get things done at home before I head out to work. I should watch something more educational than "Real Housewives." I should really clear the chocolate out of my house.  Certainly I would be a better person if I always adhered to the "shoulds" of my life.

However, there are two problems with "should."  The first is, "should" is always predicated on a judgment.  And it is not always our own judgment.  Many times "should" comes from that little voice in our head, that critic who sits on our shoulders, who always reminds us we are not "enough." "You should lose weight because you are not thin enough." "You should get your nose fixed because you would be more attractive." "You should get a different job because you don't make enough money." "You should wear a helmet because you need to be safer."

Even though that inner critic is part of me, she has been formed not from my own judgments necessarily, but from those around me.  Live long enough with a critical person, and you indeed take on a constant state of being less than...and always measuring yourself up against someone else's standards.  Anyone who has lived in this situation knows that always striving to please another leads to stress, anxiety and an ever diminishing sense of self.  In our quest for acceptance, be it from a parent, partner, child or even society as a whole, we are always in a state of never measuring up, of never being enough.

And that leads to the second problem with "should." As long as we choose to exist in a place of inadequacy based on some outside standard, we contribute to our own lack of self worth.  We are culpable in our own misery, whether we realize it or not.  And instead of existing in the present and sitting with what is, of being content with who and what we are, we are constantly looking for what could be. This is very different than setting our personal goals for growth and self-fulfillment and working toward them.  This is about always judging ourselves by someone else's standards, and as a result, always coming up short. This is about allowing someone or something else to determine our own worth.

So, I am now closely examining all "shoulds" in my life.  Every time that little critic on my shoulder reminds me that I "should" be something other than who and what I am at this very moment, I will listen closely to determine whose voice, whose judgment, that really is. Is it my mother, the person I spent most of my life trying to please? Is it the partners or "friends" I have had over the years who needed to diminish me in order to elevate themselves? Is it the media I am surrounded by that tells me how I should look, how much I should weigh and what I should buy?  And if that "should" is not authentic to who I am right and how I choose to grow based on my own observations and analyses ("I should use my words more carefully because I do not want to cause pain to people I love."), I will recognize it for what it is, and leave it in the past where it belongs.

Today, I am enough. 

Down the Rabbit Hole

I have been on this journey without a map, leaving my destination up to the universe. But, instead of turning right and heading out into the world to seek my fortune, I have turned left onto the road less traveled.  In fact, it isn't a road at all, but a path full of turns and switchbacks that continues to take me deeper and deeper into myself and the issues I ultimately must uncover in order to move forward. I think, of all the things I have done in my life, this is the most difficult task I have undertaken.  There is no one who can share this journey, and no one who can really understand what I have lived and what I am currently experiencing. However, I have chosen my partner well, and although he hasn't lived my trauma, he supports me in processing it and provides me a safe place to fall when I need it.

My current journey has included another round of therapy.  In the past, I have sought out therapists to work through disruptive circumstances that have been bound by time, particularly radical change and tragic events.  My therapists have helped me to process my feelings and choose effective responses to these times in my life, and I have come out of therapy with new tools to call upon if I face similar circumstances in the future.  This is how therapy is supposed to work.

My current therapy experience is the result of an incident this summer that uncovered long-unresolved trauma from my childhood in an abusive household.  I was visiting my childhood home (which I escaped from the day after I graduated from high school) to see my step-father whose health has been declining and who is now slowly dying at home from cirrhosis.  In the middle of an innocuous conversation, he asked, "Do you remember when...'" and proceeded to describe one of the most terrifying events of my early adolescence.  I was speechless, not just because he brought this up in the middle of an unrelated conversation, but because being in that house again, all of the physical terror of that day came back in a rush. 

This is not a memory I have suppressed, but I have become very adept at intellectualizing my childhood abuse which effectively removes the emotion attached to it.  In this case, my defenses were down, and I was once again experiencing the terror of that day.  I held myself together for the next few minutes until I made an excuse to leave, and when I got into the safety of my car with my husband driving, the trembling and crying began.  I had shared this particular event, a recitation of facts, with my husband years ago, and we were both surprised by my reaction.  I really thought I had this under control.  But, as I have since come to realize, this is not something to control.  I need to really examine my childhood in all of its ugliness, including the fear, pain, humiliation and deprivation I experienced, in order to move forward. I have headed down the rabbit hole where nothing is as it seems.

The people who knew me during that time in my life would never have suspected that my home life was as awful as it was.  My defense has been to overdo and overachieve and put on a smiling face in public.  I believed my own ruse because that is how I survived.  Through my therapy, I have realized that I developed an amazing skill set that has allowed me to accomplish much, but I don't need the defenses anymore because I am safe now, and those things that have terrorized me for almost 50 years can no longer hurt me.

My treatment includes a good deal of reading, and I appreciate this because this honors how I process information.  I have come to understand that my mother was a narcissist, and because I did not fit into her construct, I became a target for her own anger and frustration.  Trapped in the Mirror has helped me to see myself in others' stories about their relationships with narcissistic parents who were unable to provide the love and care every child needs.  The Drama of the Gifted Child has helped me to understand how my coping skills have been a blessing, but have also shut me off from my own feelings. I am about to start M. Scott Peck's People of the Lie which explores the idea of evil and may provide some insight into how I avoided the fate of many children of abusers who become abusers themselves. 

My own escape is something I need to address because I am not sure, at this point, of how I managed to survive relatively intact.  If I had to guess, I would say that reading saved my life.  I knew, from an early age, that my situation was not "normal" because I didn't see it in the books into which I escaped.  But that is a topic for another therapy session.

In the meantime, I am about to hit the road to go back to my childhood home to visit my dying step-father and hopefully to recognize that even in that house where much of my terror originated, I am safe.  THAT is the work for today.  Wish me luck.

Remembering

For most people, tonight is a night for costumes and candy, bobbing and begging, tricks and treats.  For me, however, this night, Samhain, represents a time to reflect and remember those who have gone before us, honoring the souls of the loved ones who now reside in the spirit realm. This year has been especially raw because just yesterday, my deceased mother's birthday, I had to put down my sweet red Dobe Baron who suffered from lymphoma and heart disease, not quite a year after we gave this last gift to his Dobe brother Titan. And, my step-father now enters his fourth week in the hospital, steadily deteriorating from advanced cases of cirrhosis and COPD and not realizing that he will never, ever go home again. 

Tonight, as I do each October 31, I lit a candle in my front window to guide those departed spirits should they want to lift the veil between the worlds and make their presence known.  Tonight, I will say prayers of blessing for the loved ones who have gone to spirit before me and will greet me when I arrive. Tonight, I will pay close attention to my dreams.

I will look for the grandfathers who died the year I was born, and the grandmother I barely knew whose death from colon cancer didn't come to light until a random phone call from a cousin two years later.  I will look for  the grandmother who raised me and had a stroke when I was 11 followed by seven years in a nursing home bed where gangrene finally took her life.  I will look for my father, the parent I found and lost and found again, who waited for me to get to New York before falling into a coma and dying from AIDS in 1988 at the beginning of the epidemic. I will look for my father-in-law who never came off of the ventilator after surgery in 1998 for an aortic aneurysm and in whose hospital room I spent four months writing my dissertation before he finally decided to have his ventilator removed and let us send him on.  I will look for my mother who died two weeks after being diagnosed with lung cancer in 2006, and I will let her know how it haunts me to this day that I had to be the one to take her off of life support.  I will look for Adam who took his life the night before my birthday in 2008 and whose absence is at the edge of my awareness every single day, and most especially on those days I spend with our Hayli who still talks about the daddy she lost when she was two.  I will look for my mother-in-law whose fierce independence was ripped away by the stroke from which she never recovered, and I'll let her know that I wished I could have ended suffering when she begged me to do so.  And finally, I will look for every animals I have loved and lost whose shadows I sometimes still see and whose weight at the foot of the bed I still feel some nights. 

Tonight I will let the tears fall, take time for silence, and most of all...remember.

Preparing to Hibernate

This time of year, as the days grow shorter and the light, when it shows up, is uniformly gray, I feel the urge to store up and hunker down.  I gather everything in from the garden, fill the freezer with pre-made meals and baked goods and get my house just so, lining up inside projects that will keep me occupied for the next several months of darkness.

This year, however, my hibernation preparations have expanded to represent my life at this point in time.  I have gathered in all of my scattered belongings from the places that I used to be.  The totes from my last cubicle are stacked neatly in the garage, and the personal items in my current office can all be rolled out in the one wheeled case I have there in the closet.  I am gathering myself into one place, the home I have created over the past thirteen years. And the honest truth is...I really do want to hibernate.  I have said many times over the years, "I just want to quit...everything."  This year, that is a reality.

When I left my last job at the end of August, I knew I had a safe place to land at the university where I spent eight years as part of the university "family."  But four years has made a great difference.  Now, I see the institution through the eyes of an outsider, and although I dearly love my friends, I am not one of them any more.  I am an outsider, an interloper.  No matter how much I am enjoying spending time with my colleagues, I just don't belong.  You really can't go home again.

The truth is...I don't want a full-time job, and even this part-time job has demanded a great deal of the time I thought I would have for myself this autumn.  I am happy to be welcomed back so enthusiastically, but I don't want my tenure back; I don't want a full class load; I don't want the responsibility of the almost 90 student teachers I will have in the spring and all of their emails and texts and phone calls.  I just want to quit...everything.  At least for a little while.  At least until I figure out what I really want to do.

There have been novel ideas swirling around in my brain for quite some time, but I have never had the time or energy to even give that a try.  Now, I really want to.  I want the freedom of not having ANYTHING external on my calendar for long stretches of time.  I want to wake up without an alarm EVERY day.  I want to sit on my window seat and  read the books that have been accumulating on my shelves. I want to finish the painting that I started months ago and print out all of the photos I have taken that are inspirations for future art projects.   I want to fit and sew the pants that have been hanging out on my cutting table for over a year and needle felt the jackets I have had hanging in the closet for two years.  I want to learn to play the guitars and ukulele and piano that sit and wait for me.  I want to build a raised bed garden on my deck.  I want to cook out of the cookbooks I have gathered for almost 40 years.  I want to hike, and bike and kayak and walk the dogs.  I want to listen to music and dance and do yoga and move my body in ways that give me pleasure.  I want to travel and actually see the people I love. And...I want time to do absolutely nothing.

Since I have committed to next semester, I will have to wait a few more months, but I know now what I didn't know in August.  I don't have to be afraid not to have a job.  We have saved and been smart about our money and have everything we need.  I will not be one of those women in three overcoats pushing a shopping cart full of my worldly belongings. After a lifetime of being in survival mode, I know that I am safe.  That is a huge step for me.  It is one thing to leap into the void, and another thing entirely to know you will land safely wherever that may be.

Last May I gave myself a year to do what I needed to do to bring joy back into my life.  In August, I quit the job that was sucking at my soul.  Now, I am on the home stretch.  By this May, I will be done with an external job and all of my other professional commitments I am in the process of eliminating.  I don't need another thing to add to my vitae.  In fact, I don't need a vitae at all.

Now, I think I'll have a cup of tea.

The Illusion of Control

I think that I am finally understanding that I have been delusional for most of my life.  I spend a great deal of time plotting and planning and orchestrating so that things turn out the way I think they should.  Sometimes it happens.  And it is those sometimes that feed into my delusions, fueling my notion that I actually have control over life.  But when I stop and look back...really look back...I see that the only control I have is over myself, and even that is subject to circumstances far beyond my control.

For quite some time, just when I think I have it all figured out and am ready to start the next phase of my plan, I hit a major bump in the road that has set me back, and that bump is usually accompanied with pain--physical, emotional, psychic.  I am beginning to wonder if this life is about learning that, in fact, I don't have control, and that I need to let go and not hold so tightly to the plans I have made for myself and the people around me.

I have gotten better at this as I grow older, but even now, I experience the sting of disappointment over things that I know I cannot change, but desperately want to.  I have been a "fixer" for most of my life...another of my coping mechanisms, because if I can "fix" whatever is wrong, I have taken control of the situation...or so I think.  I the past five years, however, I have had far too many instances where I have been blindsided by circumstance, providing a regular reminder of my own impotence.

My son's suicide four and a half years ago dropped me to my knees.  As a parent, you think you know your children, and even though my children came to me through marriage, I had been their parent since they were small children, and in the years before his death, Adam and I were very close.  He came to me with his problems and asked for advice.  He opened up about his hopes and fears; he talked freely about his struggles.  Or so I thought.  The Sunday before his Monday night death, he was here with us and his daughter, sharing pizza and his latest problems with the woman he was seeing. Late Monday night, those problems came to a head, and he chose to end his life. We got the call Tuesday as we were coming home from my birthday dinner.  From that moment and for the next several weeks, I was on autopilot because the enormity of what had just happened was just too much to comprehend.  And it still is.  As parents, we both keep asking ourselves what we could have done differently, what we had missed, and what finally drove him into his bedroom with a gun as the only solution.  And we just have no answers.  We could have helped, could have maybe "fixed" some of the problems we found out about later, but those options didn't exist because our child was an adult who ultimately made his own decisions.

Now, as parents, we struggle again with circumstances beyond our control.  Like most parents, we wanted better for our children...better than we had, freedom from the struggles we faced early on, an easier path.  And like most parents, we tried to teach and model how to get to that place in life.  But adult children make their own choices, and whether we agree or not is irrelevant.  We can only sit by and watch how things play out.  We have no control.  And what we want for them is irrelevant.  Yet, we still ask the same questions with no answers.

So, once again I sit on the sidelines, hurting for my child, but not in a position to change anything.  My therapist tells me not to "futurize," and that is difficult for me, because I still plot and plan and orchestrate, even though I recognize I can only do this for myself and ultimately, my outcomes are hit or miss depending more on circumstance...or planetary alignment...than anything else.  The illusion of control is still very pervasive in my life, even with eyes wide open.  Burns knew this long ago...

The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often awry,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!

Finding a New Rhythm

 
I am a creature of habit.  I have known this about myself from the weekly anticipation of Saturday morning cartoons as a child, to the "live by the bell" schedule that most teachers adopt.  I take comfort in knowing where I am going to be when and what I will be doing...usually.  However, over the years, I have found myself filling every empty slot in my day with...something.  And I have been acutely aware that for the majority of my life, I have zoomed through my days like a whirling dervish, spinning so fast I can barely see where I am going (that may explain all of my "accidents"), straining to finish just one more thing, one more task, one more email, one more whatever before I allow myself to stop moving.  And even then, my brain hadn't gotten the memo because my monkey mind was still busy racing up and down trees and swinging along from this vine to that, rehashing the day or the week wondering what I could have done differently and rehearsing for all of the things coming up.  I spent quite a few years on anti-anxiety meds just so I could turn the volume down and sleep at night.  In case you didn't know, this is a symptom of childhood trauma, the constant moving and doing to avoid the awfulness at home.  It was my way to cope.  And as a result, I have achieved a great deal and been very successful at almost everything I have ever done, and since I was my own worst critic, I would never settle for anything less than perfect. I am sure you see the self-destructive spiral here.  The achievement fed my ego and drove me to do even more, the doing more put me in a position of "let's give it to Mikey" in all of my jobs, and I was happy to earn more positive recognition because it fed something in me that was empty and had been for all my life.

But the world was going by without me. I was a human doing and not a human being, and I didn't know how to get off that damned hamster wheel.  And then my mother died.  It took a few years, but I finally realized that it didn't matter how much I did or how much I accomplished or how many degrees I had or how much money I earned...it would never be enough.  I was looking for love in all the wrong places, and I had no power to make my mother be anything other than who she was...a flawed and miserably unhappy human being who wasn't capable of nurturing another person.

When I turned 50 this May and had my epiphany, I realized that I had been perpetuating the same pattern over and over and over again, in different aspects of my life, in different jobs, with different authority figures that took on that surrogate parent role.  I had created my own prison. And even though I had the key (or the ruby slippers), I never made the choice to use it because I was comfortable in my habit of over-doing, having operated that way for so long.  I spent a great deal of time complaining about never having time for the things I wanted to do when in reality, I was doing EXACTLY what I wanted to do because I needed to hang on to that coping mechanism, that habit that made me feel safe.

And now...I have stopped. And it is hard.  It is honestly like breaking an addiction, and I am sure a 12-step program for over-achievers is out there somewhere.  But quitting my job has been like going cold turkey.  My new part-time job was just as crazy at first (and I knew it would be), but now I see stretches of time that are not scheduled.  I have no "house" projects since I finished my 13-year rehab this summer.  I have no work projects that are sucking the life out of me.  For the first time in so long I can't remember, I am riding the wave instead of being tumbled in the surf.  I am observing the world around me and living in the moment more and more often.  I am finding a new rhythm for my life that is not run by alarm clocks and meeting schedules, but is more organic.  Here are some examples...

• I don't use my alarm clock unless I have to be somewhere early in the morning.  I go to bed when I am tired, read for a while and sleep all night, waking in the morning usually about 7:30.
• I taste my daily cup of coffee.  I don't drink much coffee anymore, and I really savor the one cup I have in the morning. And sometimes, I also have a lovely afternoon cup of tea. With milk and sugar.
• I let my body tell me what it wants.  Food?  Exercise? Bubble bath? I have been disconnected from my body for so long, that I have to listen very carefully and honor what I hear.  I am no longer driven to get myself off to bootcamp at the crack of dawn or be sure to eat by 6:00 p.m.
• I am really experiencing the change of the seasons.  I spend time outdoors smelling the scent of fall drifting in and watching the clouds boil up as a front comes through.  I am paying attention.
• I am cooking and baking again. I love food...growing it, cooking it, eating it, and especially sharing it with people I love.  I have missed cooking.
• I am picking up projects only when I feel like doing them, and I am not pushing myself to work through to finish.  A little here, a little there.
• I am finally reading through the magazines that have been piling up for almost a year.  Because I am making time to read.
• I am spending time with myself...just being.  I am trying to take time each day to sit in quiet or listen to a meditation CD.  This is truly one of the hardest things for me to do, but after having an amazing 90-minute energy work session with a very talented Reiki master today, I know the benefits vastly outweigh my discomfort with stillness.
• I am spending down time with my husband and my dogs.  Even if we are just sitting around the same area doing different things there is a sense of contact that had been missing while I was running on my wheel.
• And...I am not planning ahead much.  I am moving along a week at a time.  That is a nice doable chunk for me.
• Finally...I am considering an art piece or two, and maybe the piece that needs to be written to finally exorcise some of those demons.  Not making a production schedule, but just pondering for the moment, letting the next steps unfold as they will.

Time really does feel different.  And I hope that I can continue to be more present, continue to actually notice the changing light in the sky, and continue to listen to that little voice inside.  I am hopeful.

Transition is HARD

I am now entering week three of my "transition," and I have to say, I am struggling.  I know a few things about myself.  I like routine, knowing where I am going, what I am doing and how I need to do it.  For the past three weeks, I have been improvising.  I am back in a place that is definitely familiar, and although everything is the same, everything is different, too.  And I have to learn all over again.  I recognize that part of my struggle is the pressure I put on myself to know enough to be the "expert" (that would be a GREEN in True Colors analysis--http://www.true-colors.com/content.php). So, this has been the equivalent of a cram fest at work...my full-time part-time job.

But it's not just at work.  I have a lot of transition at home, too.  A change in lifestyle due to a salary reduction, a reduction in the level of health care benefits to which I have grown accustomed (I didn't realize how fortunate I was until I realized that my "new" insurance means that doctors I have gone to for 30 years are all 'out-of-network'), and even a change in internet and email providers because part of the transition is cutting back on finances.

Add to all of that the pain I have been dealing with for months (torn shoulder and broken foot), and I am not in the best position to deal with rapid onset change.  But deal I must.  Thank goodness that I have a mostly supportive spouse who stands firm when my crazy surfaces.  Which it does under extreme stress.

I am, however, confident that this too shall pass.  I opened a letter from my Nia trainers that I wrote in May, and it reminds me of the place I need to be.  So...I am making the effort to put myself in that place.  That place where I can celebrate my small victories (and large ones...today we conducted a transaction that most people wait a lifetime to accomplish), where I can tune in to what is happening in my psyche, and where I put my health (both physical and mental) as a priority above all of the rest.

And most of all, I need to do what my therapist recommends...breathe.  Breathe deep and slow into the places that need it most.  I have an appointment next week with a cranio-sacral therapist to move some energy around, I have planned a weekend around enjoyable social activities, and I am going to head up to the third floor and do some PT for my shoulder in the hopes that surgery won't be necessary.  Also, I am thankful for all of the people in my life who send their love and support my way, whether or not I see them every day.  I love the "family" I have gathered in my life. 

And tomorrow will be a better day.

This is my funny for the week...from the Late Night Slice truck at Hot Times:

Today is the First Day of the Rest of My Life

I honestly believe that if you put energy into the universe, the universe will respond.  The trick is that you have to be able to listen.

During my epiphany week in May, I made the decision to change my life.  That is where this blog originated...I realized I was wearing the ruby slippers all along, and only I could get myself "back home."  Of course, the problem was, I didn't know where "home" was, but I was willing to let it go (and for those of you who know my...umm...I have control issues), and trust in what might happen.

As it turned out, through a series of events that included the deaths of two people connected to me who were just about my age and a last-minute resignation of an instructor at the college where I had been tenured before, I turned in my resignation, and August 31 was my last "official" day employed in my own position.

I would like to say it was a seamless transition, but it wasn't.  My previous employer was totally shocked that someone would walk away from a six figure salary to go to a part-time teaching gig at a private school (read "wages just above volunteer rate"), but I knew I had to leave a negative environment that I could not change.  And, being a change agent, that was difficult for me.  There were obviously some hard feelings from my immediate manager since he refused to let take any work time in my last week to monitor phone calls and emails if I wasn't sitting in a chair in my fishbowl cubicle where he could see me, so I had to burn vacation days (the semester began, so I was teaching a couple of hours each day).  But, in my new position, I am respected, liked and treated like a professional.  And because my colleagues are well aware of what I have to offer, they are thankful that I was able to step in at the last minute and continually tell me so.  Not to mention my colleagues are also my friends...even those in positions of authority.  It is certainly refreshing.

I have taken the Labor Day weekend to reset.  With the drastic reduction in income, we are reprioritizing and reorganizing our lives.  I am looking forward to cooking more and eating out less, to finally being able to enjoy the things I have accumulated instead of accumulating more things, and most of all, having time to do things that enrich my life.  I have time to write, to create in my studio space and to enjoy the outdoors on bike, in kayak or just walking through the woods.  I have been back to the library, one of my most favorite places in the world, and I finally saw the exhibit at the museum I have wanted to see for months.

I have also decided to pare back to the essentials the enrich me physically, too.  I have suffered over the past two months from a broken foot and even longer from an injured rotator cuff.  I made the decision to drop the bootcamp activity, the yang of the exercise world, and concentrate on Nia and get back to yoga and a more yin space.  Lo and behold, my best friend won a semester yoga pass from my favorite studio and turned it over to me.  The universe, once again, delivered.

As we move into fall, my favorite season, I feel lighter and more free than I have in a long, long time.  I am actually looking forward to every day instead of dreading the drama that and mistreatment I dealt with every day at my old job (I really like saying "old job.").  And I have forgotten how much I enjoyed teaching...and how good I am.  I have always identified as a teacher, and I have come back "home" in this respect.  Teaching rewards me in a different way every day, because I know I am making a difference in my students' lives.

As I transition to a new kind of life, I still have fears that aren't easy to shake.  Having had to struggle for survival early on in life, I don't want to go back to a place of desperation and deprivation.  And even though I know that, financially, we have saved and planned for many years to be right where we are now, I still have visions of being a bag lady and pushing a shopping cart with my belongings along the sidewalk.  Irrational, I know, but those old patterns are hard to break.  I guess that is why I am in therapy again.  But I do know...and I mean REALLY know...that the key to having more is wanting less.  We all have lots of stuff, and I finally get the opportunity to enjoy mine.

Stay tuned...I am sure that there will be bumps along the way (oh yea, there is that health insurance thing), but I am moving forward with optimism and happy anticipation.  Look...I said happy.  THAT is worth the whole experience.

When Opportunity Comes Knocking

The past few months have been a series of ups and downs.  The ups were finishing a major rehab that has been a 13-year process, really making the time and effort to reconnect with the people I love, and watching my garden flourish in spite of the unending heat and drought.  The downs have been the stress involved with completing multiple projects on a short time frame, the realization that our RV at the lake has become more of a burden than a place of relaxation and it's time to move on, and the worry about our daughter and next grandchild who is soon to join the world in less than ideal circumstances.  Oh, and breaking my foot.  Again.  Only a year and a half after I broke my leg. Which was a bit more than a year or so after I broke my foot the last time.

I don't do "helpless" well, and having to navigate, once again, on crutches...and ask for help doing even the smallest of tasks...put me back into a dark place for a while.  But I had a choice, something I have recently realized, to either fight against my circumstances making myself and everyone around me miserable in the process or to accept what has happened and try to make the best of the situation.  I pouted for a day or so, and then turned it around.

The truth of the matter is, I am a "doer."  I have, from an early age, been constantly busy and constantly driven to achieve.  In a large part, this has been my method of coping with an awful childhood, and as a coping mechanism, it has served me quite well.  I have accomplished a great deal in my fifty years.  I have enough degrees for everyone else in my family. I have had success in my career. I have created warm and welcoming homes.  I have learned how to play instruments, lay tile, make pies, sail, read Tarot cards and so many other things that I mostly lose track (although belly dancing lessons are in the near future).  I imagine that my diverse interests stem in part from my tricky Gemini cusp, but mostly it has been my innate insatiable hunger for knowledge and experience.

However, being physically limited has forced me into first gear again.  Forced me to stop "doing" and spend some time "being."  And the truth is, I don't do "being" very well, either.  But that little voice whispering in my ear is saying, "Michele, it is time to slow down, take stock and recharge your batteries."  Usually, I just ignore that little voice because, of course, I have far too much to do.  This time, though, I listened.

For me, slowing down means catching up on my reading.  It means spending time by myself in my house, not feeling like there is something that needs to be done right now.  It means going to bed before the sun goes down and sleeping through until morning. And it means making room for different energy to fill that "doing" space.  Just being.  Now there's a concept.

Planting Seeds

Maybe I should really call this "intention gardening."  I believe that when you plant seeds regarding your intentions, they take root and grow.  So, I have been planting seeds all over, sharing my intention to move my life into a very different direction with everyone I know.  I have told my family, friends, business colleagues, and obviously, I am planting those seeds in cyberspace with this blog.  Even though I don't have a definitive plan or even a specific timeline yet, I know that I need to move on, so I am scattering those seeds as I go.

Part of intention gardening is also fertilizing what you've planted, so I am actively looking into all of those things that I may have wanted to do at some time in the past, but have been either too afraid or too busy to pursue.  I have put out feelers for teaching Nia at the university at which I formerly was a faculty member.  I have been following up on leads for the voice-over acting I have wanted to do for years and years. And, I have also been fertilizing my mind, visiting websites, reading books and trying to learn and grow in new areas. 

The thing that I find most interesting is I am noticing how all of the pieces I have been collecting over the years are finally coming together.  I am seeing that the inspirational artwork, affirmations, books and the "little altars" of things large and small I have filled my space with for years are finally speaking back to me.  They are saying, "This is really who you are, who you have been all along.  It's just taken you a while to figure it out."  This is another Ruby Slipper moment, recognizing what I have known subconsciously all along.  Go figure.

Learning To Say No

I'm just a girl who can't say no.  Even when I really, really want to. 

I am sure this has its roots deep in childhood where I always struggled to please a mother with a narcissistic personality disorder (shrink talk).  However, even knowing this, throughout my adult life I have still sought external affirmation, often going out of my way in my professional life to do for others at a cost to myself.  That, of course, leaves me drained and with little of me left for the people I love.  Heck, with little left for me.  Not a healthy way to travel through life.  As a result, I have found my days filled with obligations--the "gotta do's"--with no time or energy set aside for the things I really love doing--the "wanna do's."

Today, that changed.

I had two opportunities to respond to others' requests.  One would have obligated me for a day and is a repeat of the current training I have been doing that I call "The Road Show."  The other was actually an honor and a nomination that would have obligated me for two years and required me to bring my work home on a regular basis.  In both cases, I declined.

Now, that may sound like an easy thing to do, but in my world...not so much.  I think I have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility (no doubt another childhood artifact), and I really hate to let people down.  But today, I put myself and my own needs first, and...it felt good.  It felt liberating.  It felt like I was peeling off heavy winter clothing while standing in the hot sun.  What a relief.  And I intend to do again and again until I am stripped bare of all weight of unasked for obligations.  Good thing I'm not shy.

Wearing the Ruby Slippers

A little backstory about this blog…

Having just turned 50 (yesterday), I have had an epiphany. 

It is almost too cliché to have a mid-century epiphany, and my wonderful astrologer friend L will say it has something to do with my Kyron return, but the reality is that I unconsciously set this whole thing in motion gave myself an amazing 50^th birthday present—a week of intensive training in Nia, a fusion movement form that has a large spiritual component. 

After spending five days in my body, dancing for hours and experiencing joy and freedom of movement I haven’t felt since childhood, my group of trainees and I were examining the Nia principle that deals with creating a sacred livelihood and determining if we are accruing a cosmic salary that fills up our joy tank.  That stopped me cold in my tracks, and I had a “Dorothy in the Emerald City” moment. 

Not only has joy been elusive for quite some time, my day-to-day existence has actually become spiritually and emotionally painful.  I spend every day devoting all of my energy to my job, leaving little, if anything for the people I love and the activities I enjoy.  For the better part of two years, I have been running on fumes.

And I have been wearing the ruby slippers all along!!! 
 
So, I gave myself permission to change my life.  

This blog is a chronicle of that change, and I will say at the outset, I have no idea where I will end up.  I only know that I need to shift my focus and my energy to those people and activities that bring me joy and peace, and literally leave behind anything that drains my energy and sucks on my soul.  I don’t have any illusions about the heavens opening up and a chorus of angels singing, so I am strapping in, knowing that this will be a bumpy ride.

Let the journey begin…