Crayola Colors

My daughter and I have completely different parenting styles – I overparent – she underparents.

She brought the grandchildren for a visit during March break when the girls were younger and still in school.

These visits usually did not go well because I always felt compelled to pass some parenting tips on to her (which were never received in the light they were intended).

I was discussing the upcoming visit with one of the seniors I worked with at the time.  She told me I was just wasting my breath,  and it would be better all the way around if I didn’t say anything.

I decided to try things her way.  I didn’t have anything to lose – except making my daughter angry at me – and I could live with that.

I went out and brought 8 double skeins of brightly colored yarn – one for each color in an eight pack of Crayola crayons – to make a Crayola colored afghan.

I started working on the afghan the day my daughter and granddaughters arrived.  During the week, every time I was tempted to offer some “constructive” criticism, I disappeared into my bedroom and worked on the afghan.

If the children were doing something that annoyed me, instead of reprimanding them like I would normally do, again I disappeared into my bedroom.  Picking up my afghan, I would crochet until I calmed down.

The week went swiftly by, and with my several trips to the bedroom to “crochet another hundred stitches”, I had completed that afghan in record time.

As my daughter was preparing to return home, she admired the afghan I had completed in such a short time.  She went on to say that she almost backed out of  coming to visit, but now was really glad that she came.  She had really enjoyed the visit she said in a somewhat surprised tone of voice.

“Me too!” I said as I lovingly gave her the completed afghan to remember the week by.

The Sacred Journey

Her grief for what she lost
reflected back to her
an image
of all that she had been.

A distant drum
just a heartbeat away
faintly
mysteriously
calls her home
to Herself.

Bravely
she steps out
of her cocoon
not knowing what she will find
but knowing
she can not stay
where she is now.

Darkness envelops her
waiting
to be warmed
by her Presence.
Instinctively
she remembers the way
and returns
to her Center.

Jeckyll & Hyde

I remember as I was growing up, coming home from school with tales of woe sometimes and complaining about it to my father – how a teacher had been unfair to me – or another kid had been mean to me.   Instead of acknowledging my injury or pain, he always tried to get me to see their side of the story.  You can just imagine how much I appreciated this. (Not!)  I always felt he was taking their side.

But now I am very grateful to my father for this tendency of his.  I know it would have been better if he acknowledged the injury to me and my pained feelings before moving into the possible reasons behind their behavior.  I eventually learned how to do this for myself.  But his tactics left me with an invaluable tool - which sometimes feels like a curse.  I grew up being able to see beyond people’s behavior that was hurting me to the person behind the behavior.  I have to admit that it leaves me feeling pretty torn sometimes as I work my way through the emotions, but I am still grateful for the ability to hate the sin without hating the sinner.

The other day I heard a young man (wise beyond his years) say these words(I don’t know if they are his own or somebody else’s but they are worth repeating):

“There’s so much good in the worst of us and so much bad in the best of us; that it doesn’t do any good to talk about the rest of us.” 

Joy

“Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.” – Joseph Campbell quote.

Sometimes that joy is found by recovering a memory from a moment in our past.

Sometimes it is found in the hope of a future possibility.

 And sometimes it is staring us right in the face, waiting for us to pull ourselves out of the morass of pain we have become addicted to, and respond to it.

Shared Journeys

It took me a long time to learn that if I am looking to anyone else to make me feel whole, I am inviting trouble.

Eventually one of us will recognize the dependency that has developed between us and will have to pull away.

 The other one will be left feeling abandoned and betrayed.

Each one of us has to find our wholeness within our Selves and then we can find joy in each other as we accompany one another on a shared journey.

Relapse

I had been successfully following my new food plan for three weeks without a single cheat when a situation presented itself in my family that required some emotional work on my part.

I was not up for the challenge and ended up heavy into the Hallowe’en candy that was packed away waiting for the day of the trick or treaters.  The candy had been in the house for the three weeks that I was following the new food plan but did not tempt me once until the emotional upheaval.

It took me almost two weeks to sort out what happened and get myself back on track.  It did not happen until I worked my way through “the situation” and admitted to myself what I had to do, and then put those wheels in motion – painful as they were.  Then I was able to also get my food back in order – choosing a food plan that was not so restrictive that it excluded some of the healthier carbs that my body needed.

When I was trying to make sense of what happened, I wrote in my journal: “I went down the slippery slope of self-hatred and punished myself with food.  It became so intermingled that I was unable to determine which came first – the food or the self-hatred.”

But now that I am looking back, I realize that all of it was about running away from my emotions the same way I always have - instead of facing up to something that was not working in my life and doing something about it, I would escape into the food until life forced a solution on me.

My Recovery leaves no room for that kind of escapism any longer and the feelings of self-hatred that always accompany it.

A Deeper Look At Impotence

When we hear the word “impotent”, our minds automatically take us to a man’s ability to perform sexually.

If you look the word up in the dictionary, it will give you the following definitions for this word: inept, unable, sterile, helpless.

 We are all impotent in at least one area of our lives, and some of us are impotent in several areas of our lives at some point in our journey.

Our impotence expresses itself differently in each of our lives.  And each of us reacts differently to its presence. 

 Some people sink into a deep, dark depression feeling hopeless about themselves and their life.

Some people become very active sexually trying to prove their prowess.

And some people rage and storm at everybody, terrifying them with their fierceness.

The wiser people surrender to their feelings of impotence with truth, honesty, and compassion; and find themselves Blossoming in ways they never dreamed possible.

Impotence

It matters not what remarkable insights you are gifted with;  
unless you find a way to put them to work in somebody’s life
in a way that works for both of you -
their Impotence will take all you have to give.

Trusting The Process

Identifying what I am not has always been easier for me than identifying what I am.  Maybe that is why the temptation was always so great, when a role ended, to quickly replace it with another.

 Like ships, we each must chart our own course and accept the consequences of our choices.  But I have learned that we can trust the direction we are headed in when we let God do the navigating.

I am grateful that the judgmental God of my youth has been replaced by a more merciful God who lovingly guides my footsteps today.

I am grateful for remembering, without a doubt, that I really can Trust The Process.

Letting Go Is Hard To Do

I was putting my all into thriving rather than just surviving these past couple weeks – doing my best to rid myself of any thought patterns that were standing in my way.  And I was doing really good; or so I thought.  I seemed to be taking some giant footsteps forward.

Until………………….

 My eleven year old niece got in trouble at school on Thursday.  Friday she came home in tears, hating her life.  I probed her for details.  From what I could tell, she went out of her way to be rude, unpleasant, and uncooperative with her peers and then got upset when they retaliated in kind.  I tried to point out to her that her behavior was the initiating factor in all of this. She got really angry with me, and I got really angry at her, and it turned into a screaming match.

I have had to accept that I am definitely not the right person to be trying to have this conversation with her.  All it served to do was unbury all the anger in me that I had been barely managing to keep a lid on.  And our situations are just too similar for comfort.

I feel so cheated.  I know this is the wrong way to be looking at things but I have ignored it as long as I can.  I have tried to pretend it wasn’t there – it wouldn’t go away.   I have tried to rise above it – it didn’t work.  I have tried to move on from there and be thankful for the experience – while that is happening in small ways, I need to own and acknowledge these other feelings as well in hopes of being rid of them.  I have tried everything else, now I will just try embracing these feelings that I wish were not a part of me.

I look at other people who still have the person they love in their life and I feel cheated that the person I loved so much is no longer here.  Every day was worth living when he was here; now every day just seems to be such a struggle.  There are still so many days that, though I try to ignore that feeling, it just doesn’t seem worth it to even make the effort.  I do make the effort and some days are really nice, but all my days are shadowed by these feelings I don’t seem to be able to let go of.

I have finally learned to let go of him but I haven’t learned how to let go of these terrible feelings that have replaced him.