Levity, Lessons and Love

For those of you who have been visiting my little blog spot in Etherland for awhile, you might actually recognize the man in the lobster shirt with the Shitzu on his head.  For anyone else who might have just happened by while innocently looking up information on Shitzus first off, I apologize.  The dog likes it up there, he really does.  Second, allow me to introduce my father and my dog-brother.  No, I was not adopted(although my dog-brother was) and yes, my daughters think that I am just as much of a nut as their grandfather is only when he does things the girls think that they are much, much funnier than when I do them.  Pop-Pop gets all the laughs and I mostly get the eye-rolls.(Must be a generational thing, I am looking forward to my future grandchildren.)

When my father and my step-mom first adopted this little guy, his name was Augustus or Auggie for short.  Very befitting for a Shitzu residing in Palm Springs.  After a few days, they realized that he was more like a battering-ram on four short legs than a sophisticated little dumpling so they started calling him Rambo.  And as incongruous as the name Rambo and those beautiful eyelashes are, the name really suits him.  He follows our father around like an enormous watchdog would, barking at anything that he perceives as danger.  He recently received a new sister named Lizzie.  She is a wire-haired Dachshund.  She might need some doggie Prozac.  She makes Rambo look very, very calm.  Very calm.

But of course, then there is my human family.  This includes both my children and,

their grandfather, my father.

There is a sign that I have hanging up in our mountain house.  It says, "My family tree is full of nuts."  This is not a figure of speech in my case.

Over the course of the past several years, I have boiled most of those nuts down to the good kind because unfortunately, I also have my share of the other kind.  The kind that will constantly give you indigestion and heartburn all the while expecting a pass-go pass for forgiveness.  Which is something that I do: forgive.  Sadly, forgiveness cannot always include a free pass on forgetting which is something that they also expect without repercussions.  They seem to confuse the two, and up until fairly recently, I had a difficult time with the concept as well.  I not only forgave the abhorrent behavior but tried my best to forget about it, too.  But I think that this is just one of the many lessons that I am here to learn and for the most part, it is a good one for me because I am getting it.  I can forgive without trying to forget.  It is actually quite important to remember.  It breaks my heart more to move ahead in these stale relationships that cause me more pain than pleasure.  I think it is time for someone other than myself to put actual effort in to learning from life and then using those lessons to improve upon how the behaviors might adversely affect somebody else.  Patterns are very difficult to break, but if everyone involved continues dancing the same dance, then nothing will ever change.  Nothing will ever improve.  Nothing will be learned.  And nothing will be gained.

So, I am learning to embrace the "nuts"  who are willing to grow along with me, while distancing myself from the ones who leave a horribly bitter taste in my soul.  I mean, I enjoy pecans.  Walnuts, not so much.  So instead of continuing to add walnuts to my brownies, I might add some extra pecans.  Makes sense, yes?

A couple of weeks ago, we went out to Palm Springs to spend the weekend with my dad for his birthday.  Living two hours away from each other is hard and although we speak on the phone almost everyday, we do not get to see each other nearly enough.

We all arrived on different days and at different times, but everyone made it and we had a really nice trip.  My dad can make me laugh harder than anyone else in this world.  Not only that, he is as intelligent and as big-hearted as a man can be.  He mentors my daughters as if they are his own and motivates them to do things that Mark and I could never convince them of.(Once again, that generational thing.)  Would you believe me if I told you that he has several projects going on right now, one being that he is seriously considering opening up a college in China???  Who does that?  Who even believes that they are capable of doing that?  This man's mind is never, ever at rest.  Lordy, lordy...

Angel Daughter Number Two and Joshua drove out to join us on Saturday and stayed with my dad and Rita.  The rest of us stayed at the beautiful La Quinta resort across the street from their house.  We like it there and we can bring our thirteen year old pup, Becca, so it works out perfectly.  Becca is getting to the point in her life(and mine) where I do not feel comfortable leaving her with anybody else so we just set her up in the backseat and take her along.  Makes me happy, happy.

The girls adore their grandma Rita so much.  Twenty-five years ago when our oldest Angel Daughter was born, my step-mom felt like she was too young to be called "grandma" so the girls all called her Rita.  Now, she loves it because when she goes out with them, people think that she is their mother.  She now readily admits that she is their grandmother and qvells(Yiddish for "bubbles over with joy") when people don't believe it.  Too, too cute!  The girls absolutely love going into Rita's closet and coming out with all sorts of goodies that she doesn't wear anymore.  How many grandmothers can claim that?

Three generations.  This is what makes me happy.

I had to share a photo of a Palm Springs traffic-jam.  When Mark pulled up behind this golf-cart, I couldn't resist snapping some photos.  Yup, life is hard in my father's neighborhood.

On our way home from Palm Springs, I am always fascinated by the miles and miles of desert covered in windmills which seem to magically sprout up from the mostly baron land.  Leave it up to human ingenuity to take advantage of a natural resource that cannot be seen(the wind), and utilize it to create power for thousands and thousands of homes.  Something from what seems to be nothing.  There is so much beauty in the thought of that.

Update:

I am grateful to everyone who follows my blog either silently(I can feel your presence but don't be shy, say hello sometime:)), or those of you who have become my dear friends.  Thank you for all of the comments and e-mails and phone calls(Hi Nessie!) that you left for me after my previous post.  At first, I considered not writing anything at all about what I was going through, but then I decided that it was important for me to be authentic about my life when I write here because that is why I write here.  Life is messy sometimes and that goes for every life.  The object is to learn from both the wonderful times and the messy ones.  Things are better now.  I was able to verbalize the truth about what I was really going through over the course of the past four plus years since Robert's death, culminating in a pretty bad depression during the past few months or so to my husband, Mark.  In doing so, I have also come to terms with something that was pretty damn hard to admit.  I have been in a pretty big hole for awhile now.  I did not write much about the court case seeking visitation with my nieces after it ended a few months ago.  I thought that I would be able to handle the verdict regardless of what it was.  I thought that if a judge told me that I have no rights to my deceased brother's children, that I could accept it and move right along with my life.  I thought that I had properly grieved for my brother.  The truth is that what I should have known is that that was a bunch of crap.  I didn't consider that I would actually have to grieve the loss of my two nieces in the event that the court case did not end in my favor.  Unexpected feelings sucked me into a place of isolation which in turn, caused my physical pain levels to soar, which in turn spiraled my entire body into a flare.  My family, not really understanding what I was going through, made some major assumptions because those assumptions would have actually been much easier to deal with than depression, especially because I have never been seriously depressed before.  I am a very happy person and even though I have difficult days, essentially, I snap out of it very quickly. I don't think they knew what to do with me.  They did what they thought they needed to do and for that, I love them.

I am feeling much better now because I was able to acknowledge and in turn, got Mark to understand that what I was going through was profound sadness.  I have taken some steps toward healing but this will take some time.  There is no time table for grief.  There are still some things that I feel that I have to do before I can move ahead such as visit my brother's gravesite for the first time since the day of his funeral.  I know that his soul is often with me, but I can no longer use that as an excuse for not visiting the place where his body will forever remain.  I have been examining the reasons that I have stayed away and it is now time for me to go whether alone or with my husband.  I am not sure what I will feel after doing this, but it is something that I must do.  It is only right.

So here I sit, in a place of acceptance, forgiveness and contemplation and I am doing okay.  I am proud of myself for being a strong woman just as my grandmothers and great-grandmothers were.  There is a very tough gene residing someplace within my body and I am pretty sure that this gene has been inherited by my four beautiful daughters.  I mean, I may not agree with the way that they went about doing things, but I admire them for doing something.  I admire them for being proactive.  I admire them for not giving up on their momma.   It is an odd feeling knowing that one's own children are turning into adults right before their eyes and it is new territory for all of us.  If I have taught my girls nothing else, at least I know that there is one thing that I have taught them for sure, to lean on one another and to stick together when life gets messy.  Because it is so much easier to clean things up when you share the job with someone else whose motives are in line with your own.

Wishing you peace, my friends.

Coming up for More than Just Air

Just a few photos that were taken over the past month and a brief explanation as to where I have been hiding.  Even in the midst of mostly joy, life can be very messy and sometimes we must spend some time trying to clean it up.  More about that later...

Angel Daughter Number Three turned 20 on the first day of spring.  She is becoming such a beautiful and mature young woman with such a great head on her shoulders.  I am prouder of this child than I can even express.  She has been through some rough times but instead of becoming jaded and delving inward, she reached out and in doing so, has shown a level of maturity beyond her two decades.  I can only see her life getting better and better as she continues to grow into the lovely woman that she is.

My oldest and my youngest.  There are six years between these two(with two other sisters in between) and sometimes, it is as if they grew up in different worlds.  We often talk about the differences in the things that AD1 was allowed to do when she was AD4s age at various points in time, and there are some huge differences!  That being said, they are both wonderful girls with so much to offer the world.

I am such a lucky momma.

And Mark is such a lucky dad...

Okay, so my 20 year old is a little bit taller than I am.  She is also wearing heels that double the difference!

Angel Daughter Number Two congratulating her little sister after her dance competition in Long Beach.  It has been a great season!

So here it all is in a nutshell:

On March 26th a very unexpected crap-storm came flying at me from what seemed to me to be out of nowhere.  Actually, it did come out of nowhere for me because I had not been privy to the conversations which were taking place over the course of a couple of months.  It blew in from the mouths of those I love and trust most in this world, forcing me to stand mostly on my own, confused, frightened and in immense pain.  I felt like a cornered animal who was being forced to explain fangs and claws and venom while trying to protect myself.  Chronic illness, chronic pain, and chronic fatigue are symptoms that I am forced to live with because of an illness that will more than likely be a part of me until the final day of my life,  but they are also enemies of the people who I love.  Aside from the life that this illness has attempted to take away from me, it has also robbed my husband and my daughters of the very vibrant person I was before the focus of my days became staving off the constant pain and lethargy, trying desperately to conserve the minimal reserve of energy that I am left with after fighting a daily, hourly, momentary battle with something that even I, myself, do not fully understand.  I understand their frustration.  I am sensitive to it and do my best to remain cheerful and positive in the face of the physicality of feeling like hell much of the time.  But having lived with this mysterious illness throughout some of my younger twenties and then again, after a long remission, for the past decade during my forties, my acceptance of what is apparently appears to be complacency to my husband and daughters.  I readily admit that it is often easier to give in to the physical pull to remain inactive physically so that I can be emotionally present for the people who are so important to me, yet it is difficult for them to comprehend what it is like to live with constant, chronic, nagging, sometimes severe physical pain.  I get that.  I do not dwell on it too much which sometimes creates a false veneer over the truth of what I go through.  Maybe this makes it harder to comprehend?  I forgive them for their chosen approach.  I know that it came from a place of worry and concern.  I do, however, wish that things had been handled very differently.  Feeling ambushed is an extremely lonely and helpless feeling, especially when the individuals who were helping to fuel the charge knew nothing about me personally and had a huge financial gain as their main interest.  This is the one part that I am having trouble not resenting.  Strangers should never, ever have been involved.  I think that we have reached a point of understanding.  I am making some changes in my medications which might enable me to feel less sleepy during the day(under my doctor's care).  I am also increasing my activity levels so that I can better keep up with these five, very energetic, very healthy people who I love so much.  I may or may not choose to write more about this in the future.  It has been extremely painful for me.  If I do, it will be to inform and assist others who might be in the same sort of position that my family and I are in.  Having a family member who is chronically ill is not an easy thing to cope with, but being that family member is always worse.  Please be gentle with those you love, but also be gentle with yourself.

Here For Now

Angel Daughter Number One as Peter Pan at Disneyland on Halloween

A little fun because sometimes my mind gets so busy working overtime that I need to find some peace amongst the chaos just to quiet it down.  Nothing in particular other than life continuing on whether I feel well physically, or not, and for the past month the status quo has been well into the or not category.  I hate to focus on my physical pain and most of the time, I am able to push through it to a place in which it becomes nothing more than a dull ache, a nuisance lingering remotely in the recesses of my mind, a gremlin in my brain.  But sometimes, it is very, very hard to live a life in constant physical pain.  And no matter how much I rest, how much strong(almost frighteningly strong) pain medication that I have on board, or how hard I try to push my mind back into a positive place, I begin to feel beat down, beat up, beat period.  I have been here before, and I accept that I will be here again.  The weather has been funky with heat and then rain and then cold and then heat, again.  This is Southern California after all, and although we do not have the changes in seasons that other parts of the country experience, we do get weather.  This time of year is notorious for some pretty extreme changes.  So here I exist.  Until something nudges my physical body into a better place and suddenly I stop to realize that an hour has gone by without any mind distracting, mind numbing pain.  And then another, and then if I am lucky enough, a decent reprieve so that I can take a decent full-body breath.

Tonight, as I was scrolling through photos, some that I took, some that I (a-hem) borrowed from my daughter's Facebook pages and some that they texted to me, I began feeling the joy that can only come from loving so hard that the smiles make your face hurt and that is the kind of pain that I know that we can all use more of.  Please indulge me as I remind myself that these are the most important reasons that I keep on truckin' along when I might feel as if I am running on empty.

For Halloween, Angel Daughter Number Four and her darling friend, Daisy, dressed up as Harjuku girls.  They were absolutely adorable.  The blow-up pirate ship in the background was on our front lawn at our main home on the ranch.(as opposed to our smaller homes on the beach and in the mountains)  The girls are seventeen years old but they wanted to go out trick-or-treating anyway.  Heck, I wanted to go out trick-or-treating!  When they dressed up, they kind of looked like they were around fourteen which is fine with me:)  I only wish that I could keep them that way for a while.

I love this picture of Angel Daughter Number One and Angel Daughter Number Three.  They got up very early in the morning because they wanted to visit the Tim Burton Nightmare Before Halloween exhibit at the LACMA in Los Angeles on the very last day that it was going to be there.  I love it when my daughters make plans to just get together in different combinations.  It reminds me that they do feel connected even when outside of the whole family as a unit.  I have been feeling very disconnected from that type of bond lately because my only brother is gone and I am no longer a part of his children's lives.(for now)  I truly am very blessed to have the family that Mark and I have created together but aside from them, I am pretty alone in the world now.  Yesterday my doctor reminded me that this is the time of the year when people tend to focus on losses and that it really is not quite as jolly as all of the retailers would like for us to believe that it is.  That resonated deeply with me.

I love this picture, too.  I borrowed it from one of my daughter's Facebook pages.  Angel Daughter Number Two and Angel Daughter Number Four found out that a very popular band that they love(Mumford and Sons) was playing at a local store without publicity and for free.  They were not sure if it was a rumor so they decided to meet there anyway along with around fifty other lucky people. The band showed up.  My girls were in the front row only a head-shake away from the lead singers sweat.(very cool and big yuck at them same time)  Sometimes life can really shine upon us when we take a chance to follow a lead that others might not bother to.

Angel Daughter Number Two and Luis, her new marmalade cat, a self-portrait.  She rescued him and now he rescues her from loneliness and a cold lap.

AD3 arrived home from work, one evening, looking content and happy.  The glow was back.  There is nothing more in the world that I could wish for her.  I love the way the shadow from her eyelashes gently kisses her cheek.  She spent around three weeks shaking the mud out of her wings, but she is learning to take flight once again.  I suppose that is what being nineteen is all about.

AD1 is my woman-child at twenty four years old.  Listening to her talk about her own plans, ideals and goals for the future really makes this momma proud.  I do not really spend too much time worrying about this one anymore.  She has proven that her wings work really well.  I am proud of her beyond compare and I just know that life holds wonderful stuff for her.  Watch for her Ask.com commercial coming out soon!  This one will be on national television so I will let you all know when it comes out.  This way we will all be able to be proud of her at once;)

My baby and her baby, Micah.  This child was born under a cheerful star.  She is filled with warmth and joy and compassion.  She came into this world with a twinkle in her eye and a dance in her step.

When people talk to me about nurture vs. nature, I must admit that I used to believe that the emphasis was on nurture but when I look at my own children, I can see that who they were as babies and as children is a lot like who they are now as young women.  Mark and I are the very same parents with the same values and ideals who are raising four female children in mostly the same way.(I say "mostly" because each child has different needs, strengths and weaknesses.)  Yet our girls are all unique, all special and all different. Some things just are as they are, inherently.

I will try my very best not to draw back into my cocoon of chronic pain.  There are times when I end up here and do not even remember the onset. I try to pinpoint an event or a day when I overdid it, or even something emotionally overloading that burst like an infected cyst into the rest of my body.  I only know that my soul feels broken open and that my body feels beat by the pain, right now, and I want it to stop.  I need for it to stop.  But in the in-between, I will hold myself accountable by doing things as if the pain has subsided.  I will continue to cut myself some slack(fighting with oneself is mostly futile) but I will remind myself that in spite of it all, I have a pretty darn amazing life and that unlike my brother, I am still here to care for the people I care for and to love on the people(and pets) who I love.  When I breathe into that thought, it momentarily soothes my soul enough to get me into the next minute, and then the next one, and then the next one...Until I know that there will be better days ahead. I just have to hang tight for a bit.

With love to all,
Debbie

And Sometimes the Waves Will Block the Sun

It has been a rough couple of weeks and sometimes it feels as though coming up for a deep breath is something that might just never, ever happen.  Amongst a rise in blood pressure(at a regular monthly check with my pain doctor) which was precipitated by a seemingly never-ending conversation with my mother and her husband that stressed me out in a way that is not at all healthy and finding out that my best friend's father whom I have known for thirty-seven years passed away that morning, I became even more focused on the numbers flickering frantically at me from the monitor.  That caused the numbers to increase even higher which prompted my doctor to inform me earnestly that if she made me sit there for another ten minutes so that she could take it for a third time, it would more than likely rise even higher at which point she would be forced to send me to the ER just to be on the safe side.  Considering how much I dislike the ER, coupled with the fact that I have not had a problem with high blood pressure in the past, I hightailed it out of there.  When I reached the safety of my car, I promptly called my general doctor to schedule a long overdue physical for next week and then, I called my husband and cried.  I am not a crier by nature, but the toll that all of this had taken on my body caused a flood of tears to rush to the surface and before I even knew it, I was sobbing uncontrollably.  I am a very strong woman living inside of a body that I feel has failed me over the past ten or so years.  Each day, I wake up in pain following night after night of terribly disruptive sleep which is another reason that my blood pressure might have been high.  Pain causes elevations in blood pressure, but chronic pain can cause a constant elevation in blood pressure.  This scares the hell out of me.  My brother had high blood pressure for most of his adult life and although he was being treated for it, his heart eventually failed.  His heart failed.  Rationally speaking, I know that my brother and I have/had very different bodies and since both of our parents are still alive, there is a very good chance that I will be here for a very long time, as well.  But still.  I get scared sometimes.  And when things are extra hard, I absorb too much emotion from other people which really causes my heart to physically ache.  My mother is a master of bringing me to the edge of my own sanity with her constant guilt-tripping and it just breaks my heart.  First I become devilishly angry with her, and then my heart just throbs because it should not be this way.  She thinks that she and her husband should be my responsibility.  I have watched them behave in ridiculously financially irresponsible ways for over thirty years and now, they have reached near-bottom, yet it is not their fault.  Never their fault.  And even though Mark and I have given them $1500.00 in the past couple of months, it is never enough.  It can never be enough.  So the waves in my soul rise up with pain and anger and it can take days for them to calm down enough to show the sun again.  But I know that the sun is there and I will always bring myself back to a place in which I can calm the waves.  It just takes time and the older that I get, the harder it is to bring my body back into a state of balance after one of these incidents.  I see the lessons that I am meant to be learning in all of this, but how can I totally ever walk away from my own mother?  Especially when I am all that she has left at this point in her life.  After all of the tests that we must experience during this lifetime, why can't there be an answer key that we can refer to, just to make sure that we are coming up with the correct answers after each test is complete?  I want, so badly, to do this right.

More importantly, one of my Angel Daughters is going through some very difficult heartache of her own right now and since my heart is spiritually connected to each one of my children's hearts, my soul has been so heavy with her sadness, only this is a sadness that I would gladly carry for any one of my children at any point in time.  We have been taking it one day at a time and I know that she will make it through to the other side of all of this, but to watch her going through this has been heart-wrenching.  To observe one of my typically happy daughters experiencing this depth of anguish is almost beyond any other pain that I have ever had to endure.  The other night, I watched her rock back and forth on my bathroom floor as she expressed to me the amount of pain that she was feeling.  And although I could completely relate to the level of loss that she was coping with, there was so little that I could do to comfort her except to allow her to sink down into the treacherous waves of her own deeply wounded soul while acting as a lifeline if she needed it.  She is such a sensitive spirit and her pain has been so palpable.  But I have put everything else on hold for the moment in order to focus upon being her mother and in doing so, she has expressed to me that I am the only one who has been able to make her feel better.  Thank you, dear God, for endowing me with enough maternal instinct to be able to soothe my child's tender soul.

Of course there have been sunny moments in the midst of all of this.  There always are.  They are what sustain me.  There are just times when we must allow ourselves to exist in the middle of it all in order to prove to ourselves that we indeed, can.  None of this will kill my mother, or me, or my daughter.  It will just prove to those of us who are capable of understanding that there are lessons in all of it.  It will teach us to learn from the difficulty and the anguish and then to move forward on to the next lesson.  If there was not difficulty or pain in life, then how would we really know what it means to feel unbridled joy?

Time to get back to my sweet girl.

Because Our Hearts Ache, We Search For the Silly

There is a throbbing sensation propelling itself wildly into all of the nerve endings in my body.  Pain messages firing haphazardly, ricocheting off of my every cell and I tell myself to disregard them, there is no inherent danger.  Some of it is chronic illness rearing its painful head, and some of it is the psychic pain that I have not been able to shake since Friday.  All is not right with the world.  It never is.  Which is why it is so incredibly human to search for that "rightness" within ourselves.

I was told, many years ago on a trip to Sedona, Arizona with my family, that I absorb pain.  If there is someone standing across the street from me and they are in physical or emotional distress, I will somehow zero in on them.  When this happens, I try to take a moment to access the situation, but this has never been my first instinct.  My first instinct is to react.  To respond.  To rescue.  I do this often and sometimes to my own detriment.  God did not provide me with the necessary body-type to carry people out of burning buildings, but he did give me the spirit to react as if I could.  One of the many examples of "We make plans.  God laughs."  And yet, I have to believe that somehow, I am as I am meant to be.

So, my body is resonating with the pain of those who live over five thousand miles and an ocean away.  I am looking for ways in which to escape from the pain.  Their pain, my own pain.  My body's pain.  And so I began randomly scrolling through recent photos that I have taken with my cellphone.  Merely a distraction, I know, but a necessary one, at that.

I came across these photos of my youngest Angel Daughter, AD4, with our Parolette, Cody, and I was struck by the old "people and their pets often resemble each other" theory.  Momentarily, I was lifted out of the striking pain and transported to a place of tender amusement.  How I love my children.

And how they try to ignore me when I am doting upon them.

Because if there is one way to find your way out of yourself, spend some time observing a teenager equipped with a cell phone and a laptop computer trying to ignore their parents admiration.

Or a six inch bird,

which shares the same feather-color and lack of enthusiasm for the parents amusement as said teenager.

And see who gives in first.

Duality, Pain and Strength

I am trying. I am trying. I am trying. And the harder that I try, the more the confusion whirls throughout my mind like a seaside carnival ride on a sizzling summer afternoon. The sensation of possibility allows me to experience a certain ethereal freedom, but then the ride comes to an abrupt stop. The warm breeze ceases. And I am back to where I began...Trying, trying, trying.

Yesterday, I had a conversation with somebody about the duality of one of my most dominant personality traits. I do not give up on those I love. Call it loyalty, allegiance, stupidity or the faithfulness of an old, stubborn dog. I will piece together the shrapnel of a relationship until there is barely anything worth saving. But if there is anything worth fighting for, I will remain high up on that hill of hope. This is one of the spiritual reasons for my chronic illness. I am not saying that physical illness is not physical. Nope. Never. Absolutely not. What I am conceding is that every, and I mean every illness, from a simple headache to cancer, contains a spiritual component. The soul is connected to the mind is connected to the body. Each one affects the other. So, in many ways, my undying loyalty is detrimental to my own health. I have come to understand this very, very well.

The other side of that very sharp sword is this. I do not give up on those I love. I do not take the easy road. I often remain loyal long after others would run in another direction, screaming as if their hair were on fire. I will stand strong. This makes me someone worth knowing. It may be detrimental to my physical health, but herein lies the duality. This is one of the qualities that gives me the ability to look at myself in the mirror every single day of my life.

At the moment, I am once again being challenged spiritually, emotionally and physically from more than one corner of my life(in turn, so are my four Angel Daughters and my husband). And since I am still lacking the wings in which to rise high above it all, I am being forced to decide if this is the hill that I would figuratively choose to die on. In one instance, the answer is quite complicated. In the other, there is no alternative option other than to give up and give in. I have already established that this is not my style. I must try.

So I stand here from my vantage point up on the hill, and the view is definitely somewhat overwhelming. But I can gather so much strength from those who love me, from what I feel but cannot see, and from you. From my perspective, that makes it feel as if there is an entire army standing behind me waiting to charge if needed.

May the beginning of autumn bring with it many exciting possibilities for whatever it is that you would like to achieve in your life. May the change of seasons energize you by adding newer and more vibrant colors into your tapestry. And may it allow you to settle into a cozier version of yourself.

When The Pain Blurs my Vision

Living with a chronic illness, sometimes means having a whole lot of downtime in which to count my blessings.  I view this as a benefit.  Something that can rescue me from the onset of a long-lingering bout of focusing on the pain, while going through the litany of the "Why me's?", only to feel worse for the wear.  When I awaken sometime around noon, most days, I am faced with unrelenting pain which forces me into an immediate state of reality that upsets my balance.  This morning was a particularly bad morning.  We have been experiencing a heatwave here in Southern California that is both unbearable and seems to be unending.  The high temperatures and humidity(Yes, we do sometimes have humidity in So Cal.) have made it harder for my body to recover, leaving me helpless against the outer conditions that I have little to no control over.  This morning, as my body ached and throbbed and rebelled against me, I quietly laid in bed praying for relief.  The pain began to worsen, as I began to make a mental list of each pang.  But then I stopped myself.  I began to breathe in and out more deeply as visions of my husband and our daughter's smiles floated through my mind's eye.  I began to focus on the joy that I have in my life.  My husband, our four daughters, our pets, the beach, and suddenly, the pain was only a background to the inner peace that I was experiencing.  Physically, I was still dealing with the pain, but mentally, I had created some images that had much more power.  The power of love.  The power of choice.  The power of knowing that everything is going to be okay, and that eventually the pain would subside.

It's important to do that.  To store up the mental and physical images that can restore your inner balance during times of pain, be it physical, spiritual or emotional.  To give yourself the tools with which to bring yourself to a better place.  To capture the moments that can make you laugh.  To remind yourself of the things which can bring your sight back into focus.  It is important to allow yourself a little time to wallow, but a lot more time to count the things that make you complete.  For me, this includes my family.  They can make me laugh like nothing else in this world can.
And this morning, these images are what saved me from the pain.  Images of Angel Daughter Number Three and Angel Daughter Number Four being silly with one another.
Angel Daughter Number Three is usually not too excited about having her picture taken.  Maybe it has something to do with being seventeen.  But yesterday, I caught her wrestling around on the floor with Angel Daughter Number Four, and we all laughed.
There is almost nothing that gives me as much pleasure and as much joy as seeing the way that my girls can love on one another.
The older that they get, the more that their childlike nature becomes submerged by more serious issues like boys and school and life.
But when I can catch them just being sisters, those are the moments that I love to hold on to.  The moments that make the hard parts of mothering virtually disappear.  The moments that can take away my pain.
These girls.  My four daughters.  My husband.  They are what bring my life back into focus.

What does it for you?

Happy Feet

These are my happy feet, but sadly, they are not feeling all that happy at the moment. I just had an Epidural Steroid injection done in my lower back, and so, very soon there will be 60 milligrams of steroids coursing through my central nervous system. This will wreak havoc on my ordinarily happy moods for the next several weeks. I must explain and apologize all at once. There is always that very fine line between the cure being worse than the ailment, hence the reason it took me quite a while to make the decision to have this injection performed. The previous one allowed me to stand on my feet for more than twenty minutes at a time, without experiencing excessive amounts of pain. I decided it was once again time to take the bullet out from in between my teeth, and allow my doctor to work her magic. Knowing how the steroids will effect me is a benefit, as I won't think that I am losing my mind for no good reason, this time. However, there will be moments, little pockets of time, when my irrational mind will try to convince my rational mind that I am indeed, losing my marbles. Those will be the times when I will have to dig down very deeply into my own psyche, to remind myself that I will once again, be able to find my "happy feet", and that they are not gone forever.

Our minds tend to play lots of tricks on us, especially when we are feeling ill. It is up to us to have things within our own "tool boxes" which can trick us back into believing that everything is going to be okay. A few of my favorite distractions are my books, my laptop computer, and my five kitties and our dog. I also love getting hugs from my husband and my angel daughters. Their hugs are one of the greatest cures in the world for me. I love chocolate which my husband supplies me with on a regular basis.(Part of the many reasons he is such a keeper!) I love reading your blogs. I also love reading the wonderful comments that you leave for me here. Your kind words make me smile. They make my happy feet even happier!

I was hoping that you would share some of the things that you keep inside of your "tool boxes", to help you move through the gloomier of moods. What are some of your favorite ways to bring your own feet back from dragging to happy? Please share!

May you always find a reason, even in the midst of sadness or pain, to smile just a little bit. And on those days when your feet are not exactly at their happiest, may you try your hardest to get them dancing, once again.

Out of the Darkness

There are murky borders which divide the darkness and the light within our daily lives. Each day, many of us make a conscious decision as to which part of the spectrum we would like to dwell in for that day. The sky in this photo reminds me that although there is always black and white, there is also grey. For the most part, we tend to live within the grey portion of our lives, but now and again, we are pulled willingly, or unwillingly into the dark or the light.

Through this blog, I have often been pulled into the light. My heart has been launched by a thousand kind words. My spirit has taken flight on the wings of a single kind gesture timed just at the perfect moment. I am finding that, more and more, I look towards you to save me from falling head first into the darkness. Just knowing that you are there gives me the strength to combat the individuals in my life, who knowingly or unknowingly, try to drag my generally happy soul into the dark spaces in which they mostly reside. Sadly, these individuals are extended family members who tend to be cold, inconsiderate and mean-spirited. They test my optimistic outlook by jarring me out of my happy, little world. If being chronically ill has taught me nothing else, it has taught me not to allow others to bring me into the dark on days in which my pain has not achieved that by itself. I am learning that I can choose light over dark, happy over sad and good over not so good. I am learning that an ounce of genuine kindness from a stranger, is worth a ton of forced niceness from someone who is supposed to love you. I am learning...

May the light that is in your life always find a way to overpower the darkness. May there always be someone who can help you to soar, midair, back into the light, when you feel as if you are just about to plunge, head on, into the darkness.

Amen.

The Festival of Lights, or Chanukah as it is better known, ended about a week ago. Christmas is five days away. Tonight is the Winter Solstice, which means that we will be experiencing the darkest day of the year. During a period of so much darkness, it is important for us to be able to look towards the glimmers of light which help in leading us to brighter times. I think it is very interesting that all cultures and religions find ways to associate light with this time of year. We seem to have an innate need to brighten our darkest days. The holidays which fall at this time of the year provide us with so many ways to "turn on the lights", so to speak.

This time of year brings out both the very best and the very worst in people. It seems that the darkness that dominates our skies, also overwhelms the spirits of certain individuals who insist on rushing around, being rude and not caring for others who might get in their way. I have seen this in parking lots, grocery stores, and on the roads. The craziness tends to reach a crescendo as we get closer and closer to Christmas.

Thankfully, there are also individuals who are filled with light. They are helpful, calm and generous. They exemplify the brightness of the season through both their actions and their words. They are a pleasure to encounter, and they remind us that even the smallest gesture of kindness can be the light that brightens someone else's day.

Reflecting on the light and dark of this season, I felt the need to express my thanks to those of you who have consistently provided me with daily glimmers of luminosity, during even my blackest of days. Living with a chronic illness can be a very disempowering experience. I try to focus on the bright spots of life, but there are times when try as I might, I just cannot keep my mind from wandering into the darkness that overshadows the light. Distracting myself by reading your blogs, be it funny, touching, thought-provoking or just plain real, can sometimes provide the spark that I need to move myself out of the darkness, back into the light. The comments that you leave for me, here, in my little corner of the world, remind me that I am not alone. Your words of gratitude, encouragement and understanding allow me to remember that I am still strong, that I still have a voice, and that I can still give something back, even if it is in a different way than I am used to.

As we move through the twilight of the blackest day of the year, I wish for you, the flicker of radiance that can come from an act of kindness. I pray that you will see the reflection of joy that you bring to the hearts of others, mirrored back at you through their grateful eyes. And I hope that in times of darkness, you will always find even the smallest of lights with which to guide you back into the brightness of life.

Whatever your personal celebration is, during this time of year, may it be filled with light.