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Love – Take What is Already Yours. You Have Been Given Love.

Stef's Present with Handmade Wrapping

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Self-Care Tip #194 – Take what is already yours.  Be a friend to yourself.

Parenting, we hold the power in the relationship between us and our child/ren.  If we are emotionally maltreated by our child/ren, we parents are still the ones with the power.  What are we giving to her if we teach her that we will take the terrible words and dark emotions?  When we take the projected anger when we have the power to choose not to, what message are we giving to ourselves about ourselves?  What is the message if we say by our actions that Love demands from us to accept, to take and to be a victim to the emotional abuse?  Is that what love tells us?

It is difficult to receive maltreatment from anyone.  And because of the suffering involved, we can misinterpret the message, “This is the sacrifice that Love demands” – the sacrifice is doing what other people want before taking care of yourself.

It is difficult not to receive maltreatment as well.  Which choice is more consistent with our understanding of Love?  The words in the message might be the same, “This is the sacrifice that Love demands.”  However, the interpretation of the message, of what the sacrifice is – that meaning is different.  The sacrifice is, rather, taking care of yourself first so that you have the best of you to offer to others.

To read more on this topic, please see posts, Criticize if You Love Me, Listen to The Intention in What People Say and Stop! Before Hurting Yourself or Others.

Because we as parents hold the power in the relationship, we can feel trapped by our own power.  What a confusion for many of us.  Holding power but feeling helpless.  Holding a stick in both hands, so to speak, not seeing that we can still use our occupied hands for anything else in the mean time.

This kind of choice takes Love.  This is the kind of choice that is a work of a life-time or of a moment, but is life.  See, Let It Go and Keep Going.

We can’t teach others that we are valuable and how to treat us with Love if we don’t do it ourselves for ourselves.  When we act on Love, self-care means that we don’t accept treatment that is inconsistent with Love.  If we accept bad treatment, we are saying that self-care is accepting our lack of choices versus making the choices that are still available despite the circumstance.

FriendShip... A gift of God.

Image by ~FreeBirD®~ via Flickr

This of course applies to any relationship.  It applies to any connection, whether it is in the work-place, marriage, if you are the child in the parent-child role, friendships – take your pick.  You can choose Love.  You can choose.  Self-care starts and ends with “Me.”

Freedom is a gift.  No matter how many times it is wrapped up and placed in our hands, if we don’t open it, use it, own it, we will never have it.  Freedom to choose has been given to us before we were born, just like our salvation.  The salvation will never be taken away.  Nor the freedom.  Both are elemental and constant.  But if we don’t pull on the ribbon, lift the lid and take – we can’t expect anything but living without what was inside.  Does the title “victim” even hold if it was our choice not to take what was already ours?

Question:  How do you claim your freedom to choose when all you perceive at the time is what has been taken away?  Please tell me your story.

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Just to Feel Pleasure

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Self-Care Tip #189 – Heal for yourself, and you’ll see that also, everyone heals.

The best thing I ever did was go on antidepressants.

Bianca sat, but her whole body was talking.  She was telling me about her changing life.  She had read some of her journal from a year ago when she pounded on herself for her behaviors.  She thoroughly grieved the time with her children when they heard her scream about small things that kids do.  She told me about her sons face when she was irritable.  He showed all the waiting tension that an open child will when waiting for Mom to lose it.  She was trying to push it aside and think rather about how she now could finally enjoy them.  Bianca said,

I just had no idea before how much better life could be.

Bianca’s face became tight and she didn’t make eye-contact,

There’s no way to describe what it’s like to not enjoy your kids – My own kids! – for most of their born lives and then wake up and experience something different.  I just can’t explain what it means to now actually like being with them.  I’ve always loved them but I didn’t feel the pleasure and I hate that.  I want that time back but I can’t have it and I can’t give it to them either.

I’m so scared it will end, the pills will stop working and I’ll lose this new life.

Before her medication, Bianca worked hard at taking care of herself.  She was a check-list of responsible self-care.  Bianca thought it was important that I knew this.

  • Aerobic exercise – check!
  • Healthy diet – check!
  • Sleep hygiene – check!
  • Bianca talked about God but things got confusing for her there.  She didn’t like to think about Him being on “a list.”  He was in her life and didn’t feel He failed her even though she couldn’t feel pleasure or joy.

Still, she continued to coil up and release hard punchy words at her kids and then hate herself for it.  She had prayed so much about this and wouldn’t even mind if God had to puppet her, if that’s what it took, in order for her to treat her kids better.  She could not stop herself from being what she called,

Crazy Mommy.

But now, after she was treated, Crazy Mommy was gone.

Aside from dropping the shame, the best thing for Bianca was knowing that her kids could trust her, felt safe with her and that she felt safe with herself.  Everyone was healing subsequent to Bianca healing.

How many of you have told us a similar story.  A similar rescue.  Yet, never-the-less others of us are afraid to go there.

Question:  How are you present with others who don’t understand your rescue story?  How do you stand beside someone who needs medical help for emotional illness but won’t accept it secondary to stigma?  Please tell us your story.

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Get Out Of The Company Of Comparisons. Forget About Fairness.

Tail lights, lights, rain on my windshield, co...

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Self-Care #186 – Forget about fairness.

It’s raining here; herding us.  I don’t like driving at night, but driving in the rain at night is worse.  Driving in the rain at night, with a rabid sheepdog tailgating me is still worse.  However, I do love slowing way down when I’m tailgated.  That was nice.  And seeing some family, including my folks, made it all worth it.

My kids were in on it too.  They were doling out banana smoothie and repeating a favorite theme called, “Make it fair!”  In Parenting, the frequent reminder that life will never be fair for my kids, and wondering if they’ll ever get it, gives me almost as much pleasure as being tailgated at night in the rain.

“Make it fair,” isn’t far from any of our hearts desires.  It’s easy for me to forget humility and judge my kids, but when people aren’t looking, I’m also checking to see how much I got.

I met a girl in clinic, Britt, who was also working this out for herself.  She was holding it in her hands and turning it over; a foreign object.  Britt said,

It doesn’t matter what has happened to me, I’m still responsible for taking care of myself…

She said it many ways, and the tail of her pauses kept flipping up into question marks without actually asking,

With my abuse…?  No one else will…?

I could see her with all the rest of us suffering folk, checking the fluid line in our glasses, saying

With all the hurt I’ve received…

I was poor my whole life…

I just can’t seem to get a break!

For Britt, coming to a point of owning her self-care felt like losing social support.  She had for so long sipped on her succor as a victim in the company of her received wrongs, that she felt awkward.  Britt needed to find a new group of friends.  She stood there toeing the floor,

I have to take care of myself.

Britt will be alright.  She will be emotionally healthier and in better company very soon.  She will move past where so many of us are still gripping our goblets asking about why we didn’t get more.  She will say, without that question, self-care begins and ends with “Me.”

Britt hasn’t been able to do this without medical help.  For her, part of seeing herself as a victim to what life gave her was symptomatic of her major depressive disorder.  She was personalizing what wasn’t personal.  Not everyone will need medication.  Some of us will do well just recognizing that, “Life is not fair,” and will be able to move on.

Question:  How have you gotten out of the company of comparisons?  How has putting fairness aside been a form of self-care for you?  Please tell me your story.

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Goodbyes Are A Way To Connect

15th century adaptation of a T and O map. This...

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Self-Care Tip #184 – Respond to your goodbyes deliberately to be friendly to yourself.

One of the Regional Centers that I work at is closing their telemedicine clinic.  This means I’ve said goodbye to many beloved patients and their families, whom I’ve worked with since round 2003 I think.  Saying goodbye to people we respect and enjoy is not as casual as we stylin’ people make it look.

Two days ago I said goodbye to my girlfriend of around five-plus years and her family.  Moving far far away makes the flat world feel lumpy and luminous.  I now have all her leftover food and knock-offs she didn’t want to haul across the lengthening world to remind me that she is gone.

Watching parents and/or grandparents age is also an exercise in saying goodbye.  My parents have a hard time making it over to visit on week-ends for all the funerals they go to.  Their calendar sends over that whispering voice that they are growing old.  “Look,” it says.  “See me.  I am aging.  Time is connecting and taking me with it.” Even so, their essence holds its own, apart from Time.  That makes me feel more comfortable.  When that whisper gets louder I may respond differently, I can’t know until then.  But for now, this is good.

“Goodbye” is something that begs a response.  “Oh yes!  Goodbye!  See you later.”  I even say, “See you later” to people I know I have less than one percent chance of running into again.  The word calls to me and I respond.  The word implies a disconnection, but even so, beckons us to connect.  It spreads us over the space of our time shared and into the future apart.  Peanut butter and jelly, it sandwiches us up with the one who says “Goodbye” when we say back, “Until then.”

Today with these people and remembering all the ones I won’t get to see before my contract ends, I feel the pull to respond.  My response can be something deliberate.  It is another bit of something I get to choose.  I hope it will connect me.

Question:  How have you responded to the goodbye’s in your life?  How has it been a connecting force for you?  Please tell me your story.

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Sharing Will Take You Out of Isolation

Flowers for Valentine's Day

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Self-Care Tip #180 – Sharing will take you out of isolation.  Be a friend to yourself.

If Valentine’s is about Love, today felt like Valentine’s Day to me.  Your support, my friends, came to me like bouquets of home-grown roses, lilies, daisy’s and bird-of-paradise.  You swept me up and carried me over a threshold of something I didn’t want to cross alone.  Thank you.

Carl, dear Carl, is always surprising us.  He told us yesterday about his own amazing dad and then said,

I can truly say I know how you feel.

Even though much of this feels unique to me, I know it is not.  Pain is not unique.  It is our choice to experience it alone or in community.  I choose you.  Thank you for choosing back.  Thank you for my flowers.

Mom has always been a fierce lover of flowers.  She arranges them dramatically and gives them out, believing that their beauty is enough for now.  She never worries about when she won’t have any.  I actually don’t ever remember Mom without them.  She just can’t stay away.  Either she goes where they are, or they seem to some how follow her.  Sounds like story fodder but it’s true.  She will be one of the loveliest in heaven, just because she was designed to be.  I can’t imagine all that Mom will learn on beauty through an existence disconnected from time.  I’ll know where to go when I want to gather some for you.

Mom goes to see Dad every day.  She’s usually wearing something shiny or bright or both.  Dad’s hospital room is in full bloom and there is always food for nurses or visitors.  This is how Mom does her fighting for Dad.  Through beauty.  Not bad, huh?  She washes him every day so she can spare him as many further humiliations that come with illness.  He is lotioned up; more able to receive than he ever is outside of the hospital.  In their own way, he and she give to each other like that.  I’ve seen Dad cry and Mom just push aside the tubing and get in beside him on his electric bed.  In the hospital, a lot can happen.

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day and Dad said,

Well, I guess I’ll just have to let this one pass.

But if Valentine’s is about Love, he doesn’t have to worry too much.

Since round high school, Dad has told me that I have to sing some day at his funeral, “The Only Thing I Want Is To Be With Jesus,” By Joni Eareckson Tada.  I am sure I never will but he refuses to believe it.

The only thing I want is to be with Jesus.  Just to see Him smile and say well done, what a day that’s gonna be.  I want to feel His strong and Loving arms just hold me to His side, and to be with Him, throughout eternity.  Just to be with Him is heaven enough for me.

My seven year old asked the other day,

Mommy, will Papa be alive when I have kids?

I told Dad and he laughed.  He’s an easy laugh.

That’s a really good question.  What a mind.

Dad has almost died about a zillion times and it’s easy to feel like he will live forever.  All I know is that if he keeps putting me through this, I’ll need you there to take me out of the isolation and remind me that none of us have been chosen to be alone.

Question:  How has pain been a connecting force in your life?  What has helped you share what seemed impossible at once to let outside of yourself?  Please tell me your story.

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Dad Is In The Hospital. My Reality.

Open-face helmet.

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Self-Care Tip #179 – Get inside your reality and be with Love.

When I was eight my family left me at Grandma’s farm for the summer.  There’s not much more inland to go than Iowa.  If the United States of America were a house, Iowa would be perhaps it’s cellar; full of smells, goods and it is a great place to play.  I played a lot that summer – as well as stepping in a cow-pie or two, riding tractors with Grandpa Jack cutting hay, pulling on cow tits and seeing the milk come out to shoot right into the cat’s mouth.  And I gathered eggs from pecking feisty chickens that would scare the bravest of any Coasters (those of us from the East and West.)  Grandma was no-nonsense and didn’t waste much time on coaching.

Just stick your hand in there and take the eggs.

As an eight-year-old you haven’t known real fear until you face down a mother hen in a musty unlit poop filled coup, and reach under her feathered skirts for eggs.

That summer Dad came to get me early.  I was really happy to see him.  Uncle Mel and my cousin Dougy had been in a motorcycle accident.

Dad is an orthopedic surgeon and since my summer in Iowa,  Dad has called motorcycle helmets, “brain-buckets.”  He’s seen a lot of them in emergency rooms, so he knew what his brother had looked like.  Dougy was in a hospital bed being introduced to his now forever useless arm.  I came in shy, because Dougy was so cute.  I was thinking about what he thought of me.  I know.  I did.  Despite my diva-self, despite the horror and grief, Dougy gave me a brilliant white-boy American smile.  I hid under Dad’s arm where I didn’t have to look but could still hear Dad’s voice.  I think I may have even whined.  I’m still embarrassed.

These days, unfortunately I rarely get to see Dougy, but when I do, I still want to hide under Dad’s arm as if he’d remember me there.  I wonder if he remembers Dad’s voice.

Today, Dad is in a hospital bed with a blood clot the size of a rattle-snake crawling up his leg, fighting for his right to walk, let alone live.  It is his voice, or maybe the bed, that brought Iowa back to me.

Cousin Patty was crying at Uncle Mel’s funeral.  She wouldn’t go up to the casket, just sat and cried.  I was a little bummed my cousins weren’t interested in me.  It was who I was at eight years old.

Grandma, who left me unsupervised to gather eggs from angry-chickens, cried and asked me for more kisses.

They taste like brown-sugar!  Give me some more.

Dad’s hands now have Grandma’s same wormy veins, raised over blotched ecchymosis (purple patches from leaking blood vessels into the skin); begging to be touched.

I went to see her with my brother Cam before she died.  She was delirious.  But I trusted her so.  I laid beside her in her hospital bed and looked up for a shoe she told me was stuck in the ceiling.  I thought, “There just might be one and these people don’t believe her.”  I was miffed.  Now I realize I was mostly angry because Grandma was dying.

The farm is gone and I wish I had the metal tub Grandma bathed me in outside on the lawn.  But I do have this connection in me to all she gave, the people who came from her and her showing me how to live and die.

If she was still alive and knew Dad was in this danger, she’d say, “Rob, I’m praying for you.  I Love you.”  And unlike my emotives, that would be about it.  She was from Iowa, you know.

This is my reality.  Dad is in the hospital.

Self-care includes being in our reality.  Sometimes it’s too much for one person to handle.  People need Love.  The reality of the world and of the individual is that we need Love.  We are better to ourselves and others when we can be inside our reality.

Telling you about this is my self-care.  This is part of my Love story.

Question:  What is yours?  Please tell me your story.

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Celebrate Insight, Choice, and Hope. Celebrating Can Be Self-Care.

A young paper wasp queen (Polistes dominulus) ...

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Self-Care Tip #161 – Celebrate your insight, your choice, and your hope to be a friend to yourself.

I realize autism has taken over my life and I’m not sure how I feel about that.

When April said this, I jumped.  The insight into her situation, the implication of her own ability to choose, the hope of what those potential choices might do for her and her children – all these leapt at me, so of course I jumped.  Startled.

April was the parent of three lovely although autistic children.  She was wiping her face.  “I never cry.  I’m usually really strong.”

And then she said those words.  Her realization.  I don’t know how much thought she had put behind them.  She certainly didn’t have much time to self-actualize.  Getting only a couple broken hours of sleep every night.  Responding to complaints from the school.  Springing towards her son every time he tried to hit himself in the head to stop him.  April was busy.  Mostly all that I had been able to do so far in our treatment together was help her kids via medication therapy.  We were clearly still working on things in that department.  She was willing to wait for us to make our slow way towards her children’s health, even though she was falling apart in the process.

Go low and slow.

Nothing like a cowgirl psychiatrist in the saddle.  I try to keep my spurs off and make no more than one medication change at a time.  Then, when something happens, negative or positive, we know what we are looking at.  April’s children were taking their time getting to their therapeutic responses.  But at least we hadn’t done more harm than good.

We had made the changes to our plan of care that we were going to make, and April was about to leave.  She had just said what she said and my mouth was open.  Unfortunately for April, I’m not consistently articulate.

Yes April!

And then she left, while I was still bouncing on the chair.

I don’t know if she’ll celebrate that marvelous epiphany.  If she does, I know her kids will benefit.  I’m confident about that.  If she does what is not intuitive, that is self-care, she will still be able to do what is intuitive.  Taking care of our kids is the most natural instinct.  Wild dragons and other mythical or natural creatures could not keep us away from it.  Now taking care of them well, however, is something that definitely is more likely to happen when we as parents are healthy, too.

For now I will celebrate this.  April has insight.  She has choice.  She has hope.

Yes April!

Question:  What has your life been about?  Where is your choice and hope?  Please tell me your story.

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One More Honest Way To Say, It Starts and Ends With Me

Hi! I am feelin so good today. At present: joi...

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Self-Care Tip #150 – Be honest about why you don’t like them.  Be a friend to yourself.

Today I spent with my in-laws and my own parents:  a blend of the Philippines, farm-white middle America, and Lebanese superstar.  It was tense at first but was, despite my husband’s and my paranoia (based on preformed something-or-other) nice.

When I look around at my family, I see their good features all the while remembering their not-so-good bits.  Depending on my state of mental health, the good is more apparent than the bad, or vice-a-versa.  It depends on Me.  When I am feeling confident, loved, and am doing what I like to do in life, their fabulous selves seem like the people who came to visit.  Not the ones I “walked out” on X-number of times before.  I’m sure it goes both ways, even if they haven’t typed it up for the world to read.

All of us do form opinions about each other.  You, me, or any other connection do.  We all have some level of judgment about who is holding the other side of the string.

See, I like people more when I am doing well.  Is that so unbelievable?  Well sometimes, yes.  It is more unbelievable than we first think.  It would be more believable to say, rather, that I like people more when they are nice.  Or I like people more when they do good things.  That is easily believable.

When we have opinions about people who are less than lovely, this little epiphany is there to help:  We like others more when we like ourselves more.  Introspection is useful if we know what we’re looking for.  Using this handy-dandy epiphany-tool, we might be able to get inside ourselves and see that how we feel about others is about “Me.”  It feels like we don’t like someone because they are a baddy.  But the truth is, we aren’t feeling so good about our own selves at the time.

Inversely, we might be able to do the same for others.  When they behave negatively, pull out your epiphany tool.  (It comes in many colors.  Mine is pink.)  We can remember, “Quisas!  They don’t like themselves so much now.”

What this little epiphany-tool patent banks for us is the ability to own our feelings in one more honest way.  Feeling good in life starts and ends with “Me.”  Isn’t that refreshing!?  Ah.  Sigh.  Relief.  At least we have a place to start and finish.  Me.

My mom, sweet Mom, tucked into her car about to leave today, was swelling with joy about my melting body-fat.  It was a little overwhelming for her, dear thing, and she reacted by throwing out her “gift.”

When you get to the size you want to be, I’m going to take you shopping!

I’m not going to get into all the history of my mom (whom I do love to no end) and me as it relates our “compatibility” in the arena of fashion (very little of which I naturally have) nor shopping.

I said,

Mom, just take care of yourself.  You are the best gift I could ever want from you.”

And she is.  This healthy part of Mom is.  She, that has fought so hard all these years to be healthy, is a treasure without a number.  I just want her.  And I can say that because I feel pretty good right now.  She’s always been a treasure, even when I didn’t appreciate her enough and wasn’t using my pink-epiphany-tool.  When I think of the parts of our history that are less warm and fuzzy, I think, “That’s how things go.”  And it rolls and ripples through to the space where angels fly.  A place big enough for our good and bad parts.

It all starts and ends with Me.

Question:  When is it hard to see your own role in how you feel?  Please tell me your story.

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Emotions: The Physical Gift We Can Name

Leprosy hand affected fourth digit

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Self-Care Tip #148 – Identify your emotions, navigate, and get help.

Mad.  And when Mia was angry she wanted to go eat.  Nervous.  When she was nervous she wanted to go eat.  Like a wire with a current, she couldn’t stop her thoughts from moving and moving.  Although eating soothed her in less than a shard of a second, it was also followed by self-loathing.  Self-loathing brought on more eating and then purging.

Sitting in my office, Mia said it was like she was looking at herself from the outside in and the self on the inside could hear the, “Stop!”  Demands, petitions, and begging to stop came from the other Mia, who was loosing her command-authority in a scary-fast way.

How often we hurt ourselves but blame a trigger, an emotion, a person, or an act of malice.  If only we could say, “Put the offense down and take two steps back.”  But sometimes we can’t.  It’s easy to piously say, with habits and cassocks or soutane (French for traditional priest’s attire) in place, “Don’t make decisions based on emotions.”  It’s easy to say, “Be objective, we can’t trust our emotions.”  But if emotions are what we use to interpret the world around us with, if that’s all we have, what can we do?

Emotions are ideally the color, texture, perfume, music and salt in our physical self.  Emotions are our spiritual sensory system.  Not being able to trust them is a big loss.  Being blind, deaf, anosmic (can’t smell,) unable to taste, and numb would make it really hard to interpret the world around us too.

Paul Brand, MD, coauthored with P. Yancy, “Pain:  The Gift Nobody Wants.”  This book uniquely tells Dr. Brand’s story of working with lepers in India.  Leprosy is a disease that causes a person’s nerves to stop working so they lose their sense of touch and subsequently can’t feel when they hurt themselves.  A once harmless thing like bumping a finger for example, is extremely dangerous.  Lepers can’t feel the pain, and so don’t accommodate for it and protect themselves. You can imagine that bumping a finger but not reacting to it leads to tissue damage when it is done over and over, until one day the finger falls off.

Dr. Brand is right.  Pain is a gift.  And so are emotions.  Including emotional pain, if serving as intended, to protect the individual and not self-destructive things such as bingeing and purging.  The purpose of this post is not to get into what binging and purging is.  That’s just an example of behaviors that might grow out of emotions gone amuck.  Emotions that we used to trust.  That use to tell us who is a friend and who is an enemy.  Emotions that used to know who’s side they were on.  Emotions that forget their own like that can be just as extremely dangerous as leprosy is to our tender fragile fingers.

The purpose of this post is to flatten the mountains of understanding between here and there.  Between understanding that emotions are as physically important as anything else, such as the spinal cord.  The purpose of this post is to furthermore say what to do about it once we can 1) identify the problem and 2) get past the stigma.  Mia did the eating and purging stuff, but she also asked for help.  3) Ask for help.

Lepers have still so few options to help their disease.  Us with emotional illness are very blessed because we do.  We have medications, psychotherapy, coping skills, miracles, and more.  We have a lot.

Question:  How do you define the space between emotions and other “real” medical illnesses such as diabetes?  How do you navigate around stigma?  How do you ask for help?  Please tell me your story.

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Oh Well. That’s How Things Go.

Artist's rendering of Georgiana

Self-Care Tip#146 – Hold your wonderfuls and your non-wonderfuls together.

Oh well.  That’s how things go.

Today the kids were needing “parenting.”  Go figure.  I was trying.  About mid-day I heard,

Oh well.  That’s how things go.

At first glance you may not see its brilliance.  You may not see its hue of acceptance and texture of presence.  If you turn away too fast, you might miss the tension taking the back door out.  See?  The perfectionism is dissolving into the scum on my drinking glass that it is.  So look.  The room is crowded and for such a small statement to be noticed you have to really look hard.

Oh well.  That’s how things go.

Bits of us panic, thinking that sort of low-religion only leads to mediocrity, or worse.  But it’s not an either-or.  We can strive for excellence and still be present with what we don’t think is so wonderful.  We can include the non-wonderful in our consciousness and definition of self.  When the non-wonderfuls come around, wave, chat, take in the weather and carry-on.  There’s no crisis here.  I can see security waving excellence on.  No rubbernecking.  Things are ok.

Oh well.  That’s how things go.

I am reminded of the “The Birthmark,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne.  The gorgeous, lovable Georgiana, has a little hand print on her cheek.  A birthmark.  Her husband Aylmer, begins to detest the birthmark intensely and progressively.  It is so distracting to him that he stops seeing “her.”  In the end, it comes down to either be perfect or die.  Great story, and yes Aylmer, read my blog.

Question:  How have you made your peace with perfectionism?  How has it affected you?  Please tell me your story.

If you’d like to read another post with related information, see, “Adequate.”

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When You Are Hurting – Suffering Just Is

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My dad, excellent in his suffering, has shown how to lose, how to spend the time it takes to grieve it and enjoy the rest that makes life worth living.  My dad should have a medal in suffering. If I knew where to get them I’d send word.

Some of his suffering, he played a causal part in, but who cares.  It doesn’t have a qualifying relationship to “deserving” empathy and the spiritual nod.  Those come because of Love, not our performance.

None of us are foreigners to suffering others, ourselves, cause, accident, defined and ignominious explanations.  For reason and for lack of reason we suffer.  No, the etiology of suffering isn’t why we care about its abuse.  Sure we hope not to repeat mistakes that lead to suffering and that makes it’s etiology worth reflection, but not as
a qualifier to caring.

So no.

Between one grief and another, between this fault and that fault, the loss “Is.”  It just Is.  That’s Dad’s presence I’m talking about.

In a culture counting and studying our wrongs and our rights for the purpose of squeezing currency out of it, we need presence.  Presence allows for all the rest.  The healing.  The forgiveness.  The grieving.  The hope that remains.  Presence allows for us to continue valued.

Presence allows us to live for what is still worth living for.

After writing blog-post “When You Are Hurting, Remember Why You Want To Live, And Live For That,” I heard from someone suffering via his fabulous on-line monthly journal “Psyche’s Flashlight.”  He said,

I read this after a recent stint in the hospital, and I can’t tell you how much it resonates with me. This is what saved my life.

Suffering Is.

Question:  What has helped keep you away from qualifying your suffering or that of others?  Please tell me your story.

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Feeling Human. Get to Work.

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Some days, I feel more human than others.  Today was one of those days.  “Chalk full,” as my Aussie-friend says, with stuff.  Started when I got up with the usual dishes, laundry, breakfast and such.  Thankful for it you know.  Means we’re living here.  Moved on to the car dealership to get some work done on my mom-van.  They said thank you and promptly shuttled me and my 3 small children to the mall.

Spending time with kids at home can be too crazy for me on a good day.  Spending time with the kids, without transportation, in the mall 3 days before Christmas….  Words cannot describe it so well.

Four hours later, the shuttle came back for us to collect their $730-some dollars.  I said thank you and drove my kids home.  This was around 2:30pm.

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We found our basement flooded.  Really flooded.  It is 9:41 and I just sat down.  My basement is now mostly just wet.

I am tired.  But still grateful.  I fell a little more in love with our house today, thinking, “I will do this for our house.”  “Home.”  (Myuaaah!)

You can yell at things and sometimes people you love and it doesn’t have to mean you love them any less.  A bang-up fight in fact can make the bond even stronger.  I fought with my home today.  My fingers are numb.  My back hurts.  After the rain I can fix the original sin causing the flooding.  However, I imagine that because it is still raining, I’ll have to do this again tomorrow.  There’ll be more fighting.  More love.

The thing that got me through today most of all, was the commonality.  Work.  Work just has to be done.  So human.  To live is to work.  There is no emotion attached unless I put it there.  Work is.  There is a lot of life satisfaction when we do it and don’t get all personal about it.  Don’t dance around, away, negotiate it.  Get it done and or don’t.  Either way, you get what you worked for.

Self-Care Tip #139 – Get up and live.  Work it.

Question: When have emotions, issues, temperature gotten in the way of your work?  Please tell me your story.

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Things Will Always Be About “Me”

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Self-Care Tip #138 – Stay aware of “Me” to be more present with them.

The second thing I learned from Toastmasters is that no matter how good I get at doing the 1st lesson, in my eyes, things will always be about “Me.”  No matter how skilled or self-aware or Mother-Theresa I become, “Me” won’t disappear.

Mother Theresa, by the way, did exactly what was congruent with her temperament.  Doing what she did for others tied her in more closely than ever with them …her.  Doing what she did naturally only made her more present with herself, her own journey, her own awareness of self and at some point with others.  There is a symbiotic relationship so to speak.  Remember Nemo and his home in the sea anemone?

Doing well for myself and for others is not a problem of effort towards altruism or other saintly motives.  It’s a matter of biology.  More than ever, I believe in hard-wiring.  Acting like it isn’t about “Me” is boring and even irritating at times for others to watch.  Even when we are trained actors or Toastmasters in this case.

When we say that the acts of heroism someone did was temperamentally congruent, it takes a little shine off.  Would you still call Mother Theresa a saint if you knew this?  How about “Me?”  That shouldn’t make it any less wonderful, what we do in life when we do it this way.  Yet the sense of enchantment gets a little fainter.  It’s a shame because who we were made to be is magical.   Doing what we do best by design is what our personal angels might have a hand in, I think.

If we can’t keep sight of ourselves, of “Me” while still seeing who’s around, there might be something medical going on.  No one wants you to disappear.

Question:  How do you keep it about you even while remembering that it isn’t?  How do you live symbiotically?  Please tell me your story.

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When You Are Hurting, Remember Why You Want To Live, And Live For That

 

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Self-Care Tip #133 – When you are hurting, remember why you want to live, and live more purposefully for that.

My daughter has a viral upper respiratory infection.  She is laying on the floor in her sleeping bag that has the stuffed puppy dog head for a pillow.  She just wants to be near me today while I work.  She wakes up and coughs, I check her out and dose her if she’s febrile.  She goes back to sleep.  Awakens.  Trundles up to drink some mango juice, water, eat 3 noodles, comes down again and lays there, pink in the cheeks, red eyes and chafed upper lip.

Sometimes when one of the kids is sick they stay home if I’m here.  It usually stresses me out but I’ve been getting better at believing more that we can take what comes and still get the work done.  Today, in-between patients, I laid down beside her.  Face-to-face.  She leaned in, opened her eyes and smiled!

She is one of the most delicately framed little people I know.  My nuclear family has never had small bones so this must be from someone on my husband’s side.  My daughter swung that tiny arm, warm with fever over my neck, put her face on mine, and fell asleep.

Lying there, thinking I’m so glad I could do this for her, suddenly felt wrong.  It flip-flopped over in my mind and I realized that I was glad.  But for me.

Having her near me while I work is a connecting force.  To both of us but maybe more for me.  My family has been exchanging this virus for 2 weeks now.  It hasn’t been hell but it has not been a delight.  Yet here I find myself delighted.  I wonder how long I’m going carry this gladness around.

Come what may in this world, it is these surprising moments that convince us about the rest.

In psychiatry, I’m required to ask each patient if they have thoughts of wanting to die.  Then I ask, “What do you want to live for?”  That catches some people off guard and I’ve gotten looks that could defend anyone in war.  But we aren’t at war and eventually they tell me why they want to stay alive another day.

At some level we all answer that question even if indirectly.  Everyone suffers.  If I were asked, my daughter’s smile would be on my list.

I am often amazed by good things that come out of bad.  Knowing that, gives hope.  But it also gives purpose and we can choose to angle ourselves more purposefully towards that rather than passively.  We can choose to live for the reasons we think worth living for.

My husband prays, “God please turn my posture toward you today.”  I’ve always loved that.

Question:  Why do you want to stay alive?  What are you living for?  Please tell me your story.

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Go Toward The Pain To Get Connected

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Audrey came in looking fresh.  Better than before for sure.  She had an aura that brought to mind the moment just when tearing off wrapping paper.  It was nice to see her.

I am doing better.  I’m able to let more of the little things go, like the house doesn’t bother me as much when it’s not clean.

She was more able to do self-care with less forethought.  What did take her by surprise though, was her guilt.  She could see that it was inappropriate but insight didn’t entirely remove what shouldn’t be there.  She said these thoughts and feelings were something her husband likely never struggled with.  She didn’t think he was worried about her home doing dishes when he was at work.  However, the reverse for her was true.  She gave a coughing laugh.

I do!  I feel bad when he does the things.  It doesn’t make sense.  If he wasn’t washing dishes when I was working he’d just be watching TV.  But I still feel bad.

For her, working her job, taking her jogs, and attending Mommy groups were all in a grey category of “extras” for life.  Not necessary but bonuses she was spending their retirement on.  However, despite this, she looked the champion she was when saying,

I still am able to take care of myself.  Even though those thoughts come.

Audrey, by thinking about, talking about, and materially man-handling these thoughts, she was able to join her personal journey.  These things became connecting forces in her life.  They drew her closer to her family and not away.  Resentment dissipated and she was able to take part in her available positive emotions and thoughts.

It could have been different.  It had been different at other times, before medications and other positive deliberate choices in her life.  But it wasn’t now.  The could-have-beens trickled away together, the other near misses that sometimes we know about and sometimes we don’t.  There they go…

Going toward the pain in life, not averting from it, is a connecting force in our lives.

Question:  What have you been avoiding?  What has it done for you when you went toward the pain?  Please tell me your story.

Self-Care Tip #124 – Go toward the pain to feel connected.  Be a friend to yourself.

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“You” Are The Best Gift

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Self-Care Tip #123 <–> Take care of yourself.

Before I was found by my man, my brother Vance Johnson used to tell me, “Become the woman whom the kind of man you hope to marry some day would want.”  It was one more thing that helped keep my focus off of searching for boyfun-friends and on to living my life.

Of course it doesn’t end when we get what we want.  When we stop growing, we stop living – as Sarah said in the blog-post, “You Are Enough.”  Regardless of where we are in life, we are responsible for being the person that the people we want in our life want to be with.

Many of us deteriorate under the guise of service, employment, obligation, parenting, care-giving or whatever reason.  We neglect ourselves and then give that battered up self to our hopes and to the people we love.

Don’t be misled.  If asked, those very people we are serving would say, “Just take care of yourself.”  If you don’t believe it, reverse it.  What do you want to say to the over-extended people you love?

Jennifer who is a stay at home mom, tells me that she feels so guilty when she takes time to go for a run.  She laughs, saying her husband wants her to go.  He comes home and tells her, “Go!  I’ll watch the kids.”  Yet she still feels bad.  She thinks about her husband’s long day at work and the kids moods, their needs, what she could do for them, and she can barely force herself to leave.  Once she does, she says she always feels great about herself and them, and comes home having more than she did before to offer.

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Taking care of ourselves, is giving the best gift to the people we love.  “Me.”  Taking care of ourselves might be the most selfless thing we could do.  It keeps us connected to our life journey, which by definition includes keeping us connected to the very people we love.

Keep on!

Question:  Where are you in your journey?  Taking care of yourself, connected, disconnected?  How does it affect those you love?  Please tell me your story.

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Don’t Waste Your Time. Do Your Thing.

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Self-Care Tip #101 – Don’t waste your time if you don’t have to on things you aren’t good at.

Ben is almost 16 years old.  His parents are happy because he’s not as depressed, more interactive and more interested in connecting with others.  They came with him to see me.  Ben gets easily overwhelmed trying to tell me about himself and his parents often interject to help him out.

Ben’s parents are parents to admire.  Patient and clear-sighted regarding values and presence.  I’ve caught my breath more than once in the company of their comfortable regard and affection for their disabled children.  (Ben’s sister also suffers from mental retardation.)

During clinic, Ben struggled to tell me he was bothered and stressed by the school staff pressing him to learn things he didn’t care about.  He lost his words over the bits about how it related to his self-esteem and looked at him mom.

Mom told me Ben doesn’t care about some of the topics he’s taught and he gets sad and anxious when he thinks about it.  He’s embarrassed by it because he doesn’t finish as quickly as others and misses some of his lunch time.

I’m not a high school educator but I still told Mom and Dad that they can feel more confident advocating for Ben’s interests and needs with his teachers.  Ben will excel more in areas he is interested in.  He will find more pleasure in them.  He will be more empowered emotionally.  He will  be more ready for his adulthood needs.

The pressure many of us grew up with to be good at everything, is bogus.  We shouldn’t.  What we should do, is be good at what we are talented at.  We should be good at what we are interested in.  In fact, be shameless about it.  I spoke about this in the post “Do What You Were Designed to Do,” amongst others if you want to read more.

Ben with his parents looked at me with something of relief.  They had “permission” to do what they wanted.  The rest is mostly a waste of time.

Question:  What has opened you up to doing what you want to do in life?  What has that done for you?  Please tell me your story.

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Walk Away From Your Junk

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Number one on Bella’s List:

There are endless new beginnings.  Had a bad day?  Stop right where you are and call-it out.  Then if you want to, if you are willing, if you are able you can start again.

But who is able?  Anyone who wants.  Even the severely disabled can say at some level that they want to end the hurt.  New beginnings are a privilege.  They are the dandelions we pluck and make a wish on.  It reminds me of when Jesus,

walked right through the crowd and went on his way.

The people were trying to push him over the cliff and they just plane didn’t see him walk among them and away.  We do that sometimes with our “start-over” opportunities.

There’s an interplay of forces that make our new beginning possible or impossible.

  • Humility – a willingness to learn.
  • Biology – a physical ability to stop, drop and roll the fire that’s scorching our emotions
  • Insight
  • Choice – choose it

Bella told me more of her story.  After she said, “The day has been ruined!,” her husband took them all to the table.  He told the kids, “Mom’s right.  The day is ruined.  Now who wants to start over?”  And then they all prayed for a new start.  They walked away from the junk.

Self-Care Tip #93 – Start over any time, every time you want.  Be a friend to yourself.

Question:  Do you find this to be true for you?  Is it a real option to start-over when you want?  Please tell me your story.

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    Bella’s List – Tell Me Your Thoughts

     

     

    “The day has been ruined!” Bella said.  Her eyes sparkled and flashed as she spoke of her injury.  Bella was not so pleased with her labor’s reward.  She was not so satisfied with being accountable for her children‘s behaviors, when they thwarted her every effort at having a good family experience.

    Five pieces to Bella’s puzzle:

    1. endless new beginnings
    2. victim or what?
    3. our reward
    4. accountability in parenting
    5. all-or-none catastrophizing

     

    today.msnbc.msn.com

     

    There are many approaches to these provocations but I’ll tell you mine – a blend of others.  There’s a lot in Bella’s list.  Let’s take the next few days to explore them.  I’m not sure how long I’ll be interested in these topics but that’s the plan for now!

    In the mean time, it would be GREAT! to hear from you.  Please tell me your thoughts on any or all of these.

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    Rebel Against Your Own Intuition

    Cover of "You've Got Mail"

    Cover of Youve Got Mail

    Self-Care Tip #87 – Be a rebel towards your own intuition.

    My husband was telling me about how consumers are demanding a more human approach to industry.

    In the 1990’s the film written and directed by Nora Ephron, You’ve Got Mail, showed us how the small personal touch was muscled out of business by the book-superstore.  Today, my husband told me that the inverse is happening now because technology allows it to.  Counterintuitive to thinking, the very thing that took out the mom-and-pop store is the very thing that is bringing it back.

    Author of the blog CreatingBrains, Joana Johnson, wrote a post, “Is Barnes & Noble Changing for the Worse?”  She describes their palliative efforts to feel their way through the current changes in the book sale market.  Clearly, buyers and readers are wanting something different from the superstore ambiance again.

    Readers have written in to me about their demands for a more human approach to their own selves.  Here are 2 recent examples.

    My mother always said that it was selfish to attend to your own needs when you were a wife and mother.  I’m happy to see a Christian woman refute that so eloquently.

    I have been recovering from a complete emotional breakdown for 16 years and… the hardest thing I have had to convince myself to do for nearly 70 years now is learn to be a friend to myself.

    These women are rebels in their own way and time.  I’m not a sociologist but I see these changes influenced also by technology and information.  It’s not so easy to stay barefoot and pregnant these days even if you wanted to.  “All things bright and beautiful” beckon to us.  Nor is it quite as easy to fool ourselves into believing that we’ll be able to take care of anyone – children, work, rescue dogs – if we haven’t taken care of ourselves first.  And although we still try to all the time, we just can’t believe any more that we can give what we don’t have.  Our current upside down economy is also testimony to that.

    I wrote a blog post some time ago titled “A Woman’s Work,” that largely speaks to this as well.  Because of many contributors, including temperament and conditioning, in many of us self-care is not intuitive.  It is disruptive.  Taking care of ourselves is even a bit scandalous …but it is more humane and it is possible.

    Self-Care Tip #87 – Be a rebel towards your own intuition.  Be a friend to yourself.

    Question:  What barriers are you passing to care for yourself?  What is making it possible?  Please tell me your story.