Direction ... Not Destination

“It becomes easier for me to accept myself as a decidedly imperfect person, who by no means functions at all times in the way in which I would like to function. This must seem to some like a very strange direction in which to move. It seems to me to have value because the curious paradox is that when I accept myself as I am, then I change.”
- - Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy

About a month ago, I sat across from someone who really listened to me and heard my concerns. He wasn't a therapist, and quite frankly, to listen to his career accomplishments, I would have considered him to be unapproachable under normal circumstances (at least, what normal was for most of my life). However, I had heard him open his heart and share his passion with people... and I knew instinctively that he could be trusted.  So I poured out my heart to him. And he listened. And he cared. 

In doing what I did, I admitted to myself that I was not happy with the current state of affairs and that I wanted something to change. I also admitted to myself that I didn't have the power to change anything about my circumstances, but I could talk to someone who did. 

And you know, it happened. When I heard what had been done to fix things, it was like someone removed a 70-pound pack from my back, one that I'd been carrying around for a year. The relief was so great and so tangible that I welled up and spilled over in tears for a few minutes. And then I contacted the man who had listened - and I thanked him. It was all I could think to do. And it was as natural to do that as to take my next breath. 

I write all that because ... because seven years ago, I never would have been able to reach out like that and ask for help. I would have suffered - perhaps not in silence, but in helplessness and misery - and today I realize that the person I was then was me, and the person I am now is still me ... only better, healthier. And the catalyst for change was nothing other than accepting the me that I was then the WAY I was then - and learning to like that person. (By the way,  I had help.)

Photo "Woman Relaxing With Her Eyes Closed"
courtesy of photostock at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

Without realizing it, my behavior and my attitudes about things (not necessarily in that order) began to change. The change was automatic. I didn't have to work at it, except to realize and be aware of my behavior patterns. There were a lot of uncompleted sentences and one-eighties in the beginning as I learned a new way to be. I was becoming a better me. And I still am.

As you can tell from the above quote, I love to read things that Carl Rogers (father of modern psychotherapy) said or wrote. (I even listened to part of one of his taped sessions once. It was amazing.) He also said something else about personal growth. He said that it wasn't a destination ... that it was a direction. A process, not a product. That is my experience. Some of that experience was pretty intense - it involved doing things that were hard - but I tackled them when and as I was ready for them, and not before ... and I still do. 

But the weird thing about it all is that without that core of acceptance of who and what I am at the moment, none of the changes I've experienced (and am experiencing) would have been possible or would be possible. It is, as Rogers said, a "curious paradox." 

I can't explain how it works. It just does. Slow but sure, millimeter by millimeter.
And I'm okay with that.

Empathic Listening

It was over 25 years ago and I was a new mother. I'd been given all kinds of misinformation about nursing my baby - from all kinds of sources - and I was really, really sore as a result. At my husband's suggestion, I called a local La Leche League Canada leader. The lady on the other end of the phone listened to my predicament for a good five minutes without saying a word. And I'll never forget what the first word out of her mouth was (said with the kind of feeling that said "I've experienced this and I KNOW it's not fun in the least..."). The word was, "OUCH!"

The empathy in the tone of that one word was exactly what I needed. She went on to give me basic information that fixed the problem in minutes and allowed me to heal within a week.

What I liked most about our conversation was that she didn't come off all superior, she didn't preach at me, she didn't overreact, she didn't jump down my throat, and she didn't try to "convert" me. She just listened and she knew how to show that she was there to help - without making me feel like I was beholden to her. And oh yes, she left the choice up to me without insisting or belittling me, or saying that she was going to check up on me later.

All of those things that she didn't do? I've had them done to me.

Yeah, and by people who should probably know better. Or who have forgotten that people are people, not numbers or statistics.

Photo "Psychiatrist Examining A Male
Patient" by Ambro at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

Empathy, as described by Carl Rogers (the father of modern psychotherapy), looks more like a quest to understand what it is like to BE the other person rather than an effort to appear knowledgeable about the problem. In this quest, (these are his own words, below):

... the therapist senses accurately the feelings and personal meanings that the client is experiencing and communicates this understanding to the client. When functioning best, the therapist is so much inside the private world of the other that he or she can clarify not only the meanings of which the client is aware but even those just below the level of awareness. This kind of sensitive, active listening is exceedingly rare in our lives. We think we listen, but very rarely do we listen with real understanding, true empathy. Yet listening, of this very special kind, is one of the most potent forces for change that I know. 

I feel blessed to have had the privilege of seeing a therapist who actually could sense what it was like to be me, to feel my feelings as if they were his own. It was a remarkably freeing experience, one I've never forgotten, and one I want to emulate if I ever get to be a counselor. There was no judgment, no "you should...." (which usually means "You should be more like me...") ... and I must say that being listened to for what felt like the first time in my life was a remarkable step toward wholeness. It gave me permission to find out who I really was, to get to know me, and to learn to like me.

That was huge. And I really hope that someday I can provide that atmosphere of trust for someone else who needs to follow that same path to self-discovery.

Same same

There is a [word-] sign used by the local deaf community that means "Same" - it looks like the ASL sign for the letter Y - as shown - but the hand is not raised up but facing the floor (in other words, palm side down). The hand goes back and forth horizontally a couple of times between the two items or people being compared, as if sliding back and forth on an unseen table. If the deaf person talks when he or she signs, the words that come out are "Same-same." 
The idea usually is that the thumb and pinky point toward what or who is involved in that comparison. 

That doesn't mean that differences don't exist. It just means that at some level, there is something essentially the same about those two things or people. 

Illustration "Sign Language And The
Alphabet,the Letter Y" by
taesmileland at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

And that sign can be a complete sentence when the second component is added - facial expression. Take for example the comparison between two people. I've seen my deaf friends sign "same-same" over the years with amazement, sympathy, sarcasm, boredom, delight, disgust, and a whole host of other reactions that convey tone of voice - something that (as yet) the printed word cannot do very well. 

I was thinking about this sign a couple of days ago and it came to me that no matter how same-same people think they are, there is always something that is different. And not just different, VASTLY different - just like the pinky and the thumb point in nearly opposite directions. 

And no matter how different people are, there is always something that is the same between them, just as the pinky and the thumb are part of the same hand and signifying (in their differences) that they are same-same. Basic feelings are the same regardless of gender, gender identity or socioeconomic class; the colour of the blood is identical regardless of the colour of the skin. 

I might feel uncomfortable around someone because of our differences, but looking for common ground helps me to accept that person and acknowledge his or her right to take up space. And ... (this is a more subtle but just as important a distinction) just because I might share an identity label (same workplace, same church, same family relationships for example) with someone else, it doesn't give me the right to assume that this person thinks or believes or has the same values as I do. 

Or that the person can automatically be trusted because of that one similarity. 

Or that someone of another group is automatically untrustworthy because of the differences between us. 

"Peoples is peoples," a wise man once said. (Pete from Pete's Diner in Jim Henson's "The Muppets Take Manhattan", haha). More and more, I'm coming to live my life on that simple principle. Each person is capable of both good and evil. 

My quest in recovery from the chains of my own limitations is to find the people in my life that I can trust, the ones who help me be truly me (without trying to make me exactly the same as they are in every respect), and then surround myself with them. And to discover those - while I might care about them - who are toxic to me, who try to manipulate or control me ... and to distance myself from them. To make sure that the "sameness" between my circle of friends and myself is concentrated in the things that matter most to me, and to let go of the differences that would tear me down and hinder my growth.

It's a tall order, but no other human being has the right to do it for me.

Worth it

“If you had asked me, before this happened, what the worst thing in my life would be, it would be to lose a child. To lose Sarah. I now know that there is one thing worse and that would be never to have had her at all. Right. So what that tells me is to look at all these wonderful things she did accomplish and to enjoy them, let them bring you happiness.”
- Jan Phelan, Sarah Burke's mom.
Quote retrieved from the video at:  http://olympics.cbc.ca/blogs/author/nick-purdon/article/sarah-burke-legacy-lives-sochi-olympics.html

I forgot an appointment today. I missed my reminder on my email because I was away from my desk when it popped up on my computer. So fifteen minutes later I got a call from the person with whom I was to have met. "You coming?" Apologies and ten minutes later I was meeting with her. The meeting took less than the hour we had budgeted, but it did go over the time we were supposed to be finished (she had to see another person right after me). 

So I was late leaving her office. What that meant was that I took short-cuts through stores and a coffee shop on the way back to work. And in the coffee shop ... I saw her. It was someone I used to work with a couple of years previous and who hadn't seen me since my daughter passed away last October. 

She'd heard. It seems most everyone has. And she conveyed her condolences. We chatted for a bit as her to-go order came up and that's when she told me about the interview with Jan Phelan and the quote (above) that struck her and was so powerful that it made her cry. 

It was so powerful that it made me cry too. Which is as it should be. 

It was moving - the tremendous attitude of this mother whose daughter's life was cut short on a snowboarding slope as she trained for a lead-up to the first-ever half-pipe competition in a winter Olympics. It was inspiring. 

It was just what I needed to hear. 

There were times in my youngest daughter's life that I wasn't so sure if it had been a good idea to have another child. Times when I was fighting with schoolteachers and the mental health care system and even wondering why she would deliberately pick friends that made me uncomfortable... It wasn't easy parenting this kid who was so unbelievably the opposite from me. Sometimes I messed up royally! Most times I wondered if she was stringing me a line. 

And ... were it not for the last 35 days of her life, I would have said that it wasn't worth the trouble. All the nights I cried myself to sleep wondering if she was alive and safe. All the times I checked the weather forecast in Edmonton, Alberta to see if she might have frozen to death in her car the night before. All the money I poured into her bank account hoping that she'd find a place to live, thinking that all she needed was a chance to prove herself. There were people who told me that I was letting her take advantage of me.  I had given until there was nothing left to give and still I gave some more, going into debt to do it. And by rights, I should have given up and let her fend for herself. It wasn't worth the anguish and the sleepless nights. By rights.

But then ... there were those last 35 days. Those last, priceless, 35 days.

Summer 2012 at Victoria Park

Don't misunderstand me. She wasn't a saint and (we are learning now) she still pulled the wool over my eyes again and again about where and how she was spending the money I sent to her.  However, something fundamental ... something wonderful ... happened inside of her on September 17, 2013 that turned her life around ... and made the bad times seem more worth it. We connected on a deep, spiritual level. I remember her saying to me, nearly awestruck, in early October or thereabouts, "I just can't believe that you and I are talking about God. Of all things." It's all I ever wanted for her. It was my finest prayer, my finest hope for her to be able to experience Him in a real way like she did that night in September.

And no, I'm not some sort of masochist (someone who enjoys pain) when I say that it was worth it. And I'm not about to say that I'd do it all over again. Once was quite enough ... thank you. I'd rather crawl on my hands and knees over broken glass than go through that again. But ... I can see that there was a purpose in it all being allowed.  

Family relationships have been mended. New friendships have been forged. Existing friendships have been deepened. Some people have had their lives transformed by her legacy. Many other people all over North America, and even as far away as Australia, have been deeply touched by her story (link to that story here) and I believe firmly that it needs to be told, again and again. 

I also believe that it was no accident that I was running late today, that it was so cold that I was cutting through buildings to get where I was going. It was no coincidence that my old acquaintance was there or that she had watched the highlights reel of the Olympic coverage and caught that snippet of an interview with the mom of one of our would-be athletes. No, I don't believe in coincidences. As Albert Einstein said, coincidences are just God's way of remaining anonymous. 

Let her story touch you. That's what it is for. That's what makes the tragedy of her death worth it.

One Step at a Time

Already the journey seems long. 

Every day drags into the next; there is a same-ness to them that is somehow numbing. Numbing feels good sometimes, now that the initial surreal-ness of the grieving process has worn off and the hurts (when they happen, usually unexpectedly) hurt worse. 

The problem with the numbness is that sometimes I forget how fragile I still am. 

And a large part of me just doesn't want to "go there." There are issues I need to work through, but try as I might, I just can't make myself open that Pandora's box. Looking within, I can tell that I do have unresolved feelings and that these feelings need to be addressed, but it's not an experience I look forward to having, because it involves allowing myself to be angry at someone whom I love dearly and whom I miss so much that it aches. 

When I have "impatient" or "self-critical" times like this, I try to think about what my counselor would say to me. Or what I would say to someone else who was going through this. And it helps me to turn the Golden Rule toward the mirror, to treat myself the way I wish to be treated, to be gentle with myself.

Grief looks different for every person and also for every loss for the same person. There is no right way to do it; there is no timetable to follow. It takes however long it takes and it takes whatever path it takes. If I am not ready to tackle a certain part of my process and I am truly honest with myself, I will discover (as I have so many times these last three months) that the part of the process for which I am not ready is not where I am supposed to be for right now, that I can let it go. It will return when I am better equipped. 

Right now I'm not ready to even look at my anger. I am currently at a different stage - psychologists call it bargaining - and part of that stage (for those who are dealing with a death) is a tremendous sense of guilt: the "if only" mentality. 

"If only" is not pleasant. But it's normal to feel those feelings. Realizing that all the "if only" statements in the world aren't going to change what happened has been a process in itself, and applies to each regret in turn; there is no 'blanket' coverage for it. Every time, the process is the same.  Feel the feelings. Look at them and figure out why they are there, and do what I need to do in order to look after myself. 

Image "Watering Stump" by rattigon at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

Objectively, I can see that going through the process in this way is necessary. Personally, I can't work through feelings of anger against someone else until I've faced my need to work through my own guilt and forgive myself for so many things. Some of it I've processed; that is progress. At least I can sleep past 1:30 a.m. without sleep aids now. 

It doesn't stop me from wanting this whole thing to be over with, though. I keep wanting to "skip to the end" but ... it doesn't work that way. I need to take one step at a time. And then I get to take the next step, and the next. Eventually I'll have worked through the tough stuff ... even the anger that I am unable to process right now. 

The blessing about going through the process as it happens (without borrowing trouble from the next step before I get there) will be that the memories, the good times that bring comfort and laughter - these will remain. It doesn't mean that I'll have stopped grieving, or that I have ceased caring, or that the pain will go away. It will just be different.

Maybe different will be good. I hope so.

Even when they don't "get it"

When I was a few decades younger, my parents would never allow my brothers and me to fight. Not once.

When we disagreed or got angry at each other (which invariably happened) we were told that we didn't hate each other, that we loved each other, and what would we feel like if something horrible happened to that other person and we never got a chance to make things right? Guilt and shame were the weapons used to coerce us into "making up" ... we were never allowed to work it out between ourselves.  We weren't allowed to feel what we felt.

All that really succeeded in doing was to make us doubt ourselves, to doubt our own feelings, and to not know how to resolve issues we had whenever they arose. We were forced into forgiveness before we'd even gotten a chance to fully define the problem. We learned to be insincere and to get away with it. This had far-reaching repercussions on our own emotions. Depending on our personalities, we either withdrew into ourselves, exploded in angry outbursts, or poured on the guilt and manipulation to make the other person capitulate. 

 Nobody said that he or she was sorry. We instead tried to make it up to the other person by doing something nice for him or her. We also never learned what true forgiveness was. 

Thanks to Tina Phillips at
www.freedigitalphotos.net 
for this photo, "Young Love"
Notice how what appears to be love ... isn't.

It wasn't until much later (many years after I left the family homestead) that I learned that an apology is actually being sorry and saying so, not for being caught but for hurting the other person. And in the same way, I learned that forgiveness isn't saying that nothing is wrong, that I was wrong to feel what I felt, or that what the other person did wasn't really all that bad. 

That kind of mentality kept me in a type of emotional slavery to my own sense of self-justification. I held onto things that people did to me out of a sense of not only being wronged, but of wanting someone else - anyone else (but especially the ones that wronged me) - to admit that I was the victim.

I learned, through therapy and some intensive working on my inner self, that forgiveness is recognizing that there is a moral debt that someone owes you, but choosing to write that debt off and not expect repayment. 

Ever. 

And that it is a process. It takes time. Sometimes a LOT of time.

And over time, I also learned that forgiving someone doesn't require the other person to apologize or to change in any way. In fact, very often the other person doesn't know that he or she has committed an offense and - if confronted - would never admit to any wrongdoing. Or, if they admitted it, they'd go right back to doing whatever it was all over again.

Instead, I learned that forgiveness is not really about the other person at all. It's about the person who forgives. It's about letting go of the need for justice. And what happens when you forgive is that it frees you. There is a lot of energy expended in maintaining a grudge. Forgiveness makes that burden disappear. 

And it does more. It actually liberates the other person to experience the consequences of his or her own actions without my help or influence. Don't ask me HOW this works; I just know that I've seen it over and over again. And every time I struggle with forgiving someone and finally come to that place of letting go, I learn it all over again. 

Even when they don't get it, even when they continue on in the same behavior, forgiving them allows me to acknowledge the wrongness of their behavior, and then to choose to release myself from the obligation to extract my pound of flesh from them. 

That's energy I get back. That's strength I need to live my life every day, unencumbered by the torture of "what they did" or "what they said." 

Forgiveness, even when the other person doesn't know or does not care one bit, does what very few things can do in the inner life of the one who forgives. It does what Abraham Lincoln did for the slaves after the American Civil War.

It emancipates. 

Storm Stayed

This morning, of all mornings when I would have loved to have slept in, I was awake at 5:30. I awoke to the low moan of winter outside our window, rising occasionally into a whistle.

I hate winter. I've made no secret of it. I hate everything about it - except for the fact that it doesn't last all year long where I live. I detest the cold, the wind, the snow, EVERY winter sport or activity, the ice on the windshields, the shoveling, the slippery roads, the ice underfoot, the slush, the slow traffic, the lack of greenery, the short daylight hours, the bulky clothing and ... did I mention the cold? Uggh!! 

"An Old Mountain Shelter Covered with Snow"
Image courtesy of Michal Marcol at www.freedigitalphotos.net

I've learned to survive, of course. I'm Canadian after all. We accommodate. ;) 

I've even learned to find things for which to be grateful in the midst of all this "white stuff" - which technically ... is quite dirty and not something I would want to melt and drink! 

I can be grateful for a warm, safe home, when so many must sleep in dumpsters and on park benches even in this weather. I can be grateful that (for example, today, when there's a blizzard raging outside) all of my loved ones are accounted for, and most are sleeping late! I am pleased that the power is not out - at least not yet - and that even if it does go out, we live in an area that usually can get it going fairly quickly. I can be glad that we knew that this storm was coming and that we had time to stock up on groceries, batteries, and the like. I can be thankful that hubby did my laundry yesterday, that we are on the city water and sewer systems (so we don't have to use a commode anymore!) and that in the fall of 2011, we paid someone to come in and spray-foam (insulate) our furnace room. And finally, I can be very grateful that storms don't last forever. 

That last point is good to remember when I've been hit with the blizzards of life, too - when body-blow after body-blow happens and I feel overwhelmed. "This too shall pass." Or, "The storm doesn't stay." 

At times in my past, I had a tendency to get storm-stayed and lose my way, refusing to emerge from my hiding place. When events would transpire that were distressing for me, I'd hunker down. And these occurrences would pile up! After a while, I'd expect to get those emotional hay-makers, and would interpret everything that happened, not at face value, but by attributing the motive that "they're out to get me." Even the good things were tainted with bitterness. I'd mistrust any good that anyone did for me, wondering what they wanted in return. I'd deflect any kind words, thinking that those who complimented me or were kind to me didn't really mean it, that it was just the polite thing to do ... or that they felt sorry for me. 

When I started to heal on the inside, I started to realize that for decades, in response to years of physical and emotional abuse, I had created an emotional atmosphere within myself that was conducive to many of the negative things I was experiencing, or that I perceived to be happening. Since I expected bad things to happen, that's all I saw, which only deepened my belief that I was somehow under a curse. 

In a sense, I was under a curse. I was stayed - stuck, detained - in the "What next?" mentality, a real "storm magnet." However, as I became more and more free from the effects of those childhood experiences, my self-esteem became more balanced and I was able to find my own identity, and not the one that was tied up in what others thought about me, or how they might want to hurt me. 

In time, and with a great deal of repetition and reinforcement of the "new Judy," I actually began to believe statements like, "Today is a good day, unless I make other plans." And, "Don't let a bad moment turn into a bad day." As I did, and I started to get to know myself and like myself, I dared to believe that others could like me too. It's a process, of course. Part of it is realizing that there are going to be people who won't like me, no matter how hard I try to impress them... and that I don't need to keep chasing after them. It's okay to let go. It's okay to be me and not feel I have to apologize for it. 

I'm still learning those lessons.

So now, when those kinds of storms happen - and they do occasionally - I remind myself that it's okay to protect myself from them, but that they don't last, and I don't need to be stayed by storms beyond the "all clear." And I can remember that, as George of the Jungle said in the 1997 movie, "Something good always happen after."

Walking through it

I don't know if it is a function of where I live, or the times I live in, or the particular culture of which I'm a part (be it church, or just the "country" attitude that believes everybody else's business is their business - keeping the figurative binoculars by the window), or what it is.  But I've noticed over and over again how incredibly difficult it is to live the lifestyle of letting go, when all around me, there seems to be a silent, yet persistent resistance to the whole concept.  

Some people don't think that it's necessary to do the leg-work that it takes to get to the place of freedom.  They are waiting - as I once did - for God to come in and "zap" them, and suddenly they'll be free.  I don't deny that it happens.  SOMEtimes.  

But more often, He merely provides the strength, like charging the battery if you will, to take the steps that are necessary to walk through it.  Which is why, when people tell me that they're amazed at the changes in me over the last few years, I am quick to say that God gets the credit.  I would never have had the strength to go through what was necessary for me to walk into freedom if He hadn't given me the inner fortitude and strength to do it.  But there were things I had to do - given that strength - to get where I am today (and I am by no means done!)  I had to "walk through it" in much the same way as the children of Israel had to walk into the promised land (in the book of Joshua) and fight to drive out the giants.  

What I find most discouraging (and I know that this is a failing in myself that I even LOOK at what others think or do) is that so very few are willing to take that first step into freedom.  They either acknowledge that the need is there to change, and hesitate to launch into deeper waters because it DOES involve a journey and it IS hard (but worth it, and no, I'd never go back!) - or they don't see the need at all.  

HERE is where I got this photo. Good post, too.

It is that last group that is the most frustrating for me.  I live in a culture of "country living" (as I said earlier) that believes that there are no boundaries between people, that we should all know each other's business and be prepared to jump in and give advice to others or try to manipulate the outcome in someone else's life, just because we "care".  

I hesitate to use the word codependent, because so many think they know what it is, and so few really know what it means - but the idea that I am responsible for my own actions and that so-and-so is responsible for his own actions seems to be lost, swallowed up in the teaching and attitude that is so prevalent in this culture of ... well ... co-dependency (for a definition please follow the link I placed at the first of this paragraph).  In this culture, the vices of the codependent person are lauded as praise-worthy, even adorned in the robes of religious living (e.g., "speaking the truth in love" - often a euphemism or a cloak for being controlling and invasive.  Or "selflessness" - which is usually just self-degradation and doormat-itis wearing a halo).  Why would anyone want to be freed from something that is so socially acceptable?  Isn't it the right thing to do, to look after other people? to try to help them? to tell them what they should be doing? what they should be believing?  Isn't it wrong to think of ourselves first? to say no? to keep others at arm's length?  

Well ... yes and no.  In our results-based society, which looks at the final result of a healthy personality (ie serving others out of a heart of love) as the goal and expects people to behave that way before they've even started to become healthy ... then I would say that our society has the cart before the horse. The end result of expecting people to be selfless when they don't even know what their real self IS - will inevitably be burnout, resentment, bitterness, anger, and depression.  And in a good majority of the cases, not only will that person experience those feelings, but they will also be echoed in the lives of all the people that person tried to "help."  

What I'm saying is that it is necessary to be (or to become) healthy before offering healing to others.  Otherwise, it will most assuredly backfire.  I speak from experience because I lived in that reality for decades before finally reaching the end of my own strength, with my kids and my husband shutting me out. Only then - in desperation - did I wise up.  

And then I had to give it all to God, trust His strength to empower me, and step out.  I had to walk through it.  To use an old King James expression, I had to "possess the land."  And it had nothing to do with any catch phrases or platitudes - for me it involved a lot of unlearning old habits and attitudes which I had tied into my belief structure and called it "my faith" when it was "my preference", and it also meant learning what was healthy for me and for those I cared about, and putting those lessons into practice in the everyday.  

When I had gone through and understood that process, when I had made those lessons a part of my daily living and begun to see some freedom in my own life, that was when I decided to put that process down in an e-book and describe it - not that I expect anyone to be a clone of me, but to provide a template, a guide-book to healing for those who want to be free, an easy-to-follow road-map to be adapted to the individual's own needs.  I've included a link to it on my "About Me" page.  

I know that not everyone wants to go there; I accept it.  A person has to be ready, to really see the futility of such a lifestyle as the one I had embraced and found to be void of any kind of happiness, before he or she is willing to do whatever it takes to be free.  Desperation is required.  And just a tiny spark of faith that God will be there through it all. 

A person cannot give away what he or she doesn't have.  It's only out of a place of fulness that one can be in a position to fill others. And it's only in admitting that one is empty that one can be filled.  If that sounds attractive - if your soul resonates with that and is wistful thinking about it ... then perhaps you're ready. 

Perhaps it's time.

Somebody poisoned the water hole!

One of the greatest Disney-Pixar movies I've ever seen is Toy Story.  It's about friendship, loyalty, honesty, integrity, and so much more.  So many lines from that flick have come to my aid to describe various experiences that I've had.

The character Woody the Cowboy (played by Tom Hanks) has quite a few of them. Woody is an action figure with a pull string that allows him to say certain phrases.  One of those phrases is today's blog post title.  I got to thinking about that particular saying, and how it applies to some situations I've been going through lately.  

HERE is where I found this photo

Start hanging around poison situations and pretty soon the air reeks of it.  It leaves a bad taste in your mouth.  You feel dirty, used. Start hanging around poison people (everybody knows at least one) and their attitudes and speech will rub off on you. You feel "less than" - like something is wrong but you don't know exactly what.  Watch depressing or disturbing TV shows or movies on a regular basis, and eventually you'll be depressed or disturbed.  It's like I used to tell the kids when they were growing up, "GIGO - garbage in, garbage out." 

The fact of the matter is, if I don't want to turn out dirty, used, depressed, angry, if I don't want to be rolling around in the cesspool of life and get the stench of it all over me, I need to make some changes in what I read, what I watch, what I listen to, and who I hang around with.  I need to stop letting people use me, and establish (and enforce) some boundaries in my life.  I need to start believing (instead of just saying) that I can do nothing to change anyone else, to fix anyone else.  Changing people is God's job, NOT MINE.   The only person whose behaviour I must be responsible for ... is me.  Anything more will be self-defeating because I can NEVER do God's job.  Not even in myself.   The only thing I can do is trust Him and let Him fix me.  Me.  Not you, not him, not her, not 'them'.  That said, at the same time, I need to let people know where my boundaries are - and let people know when they've crossed them.  Too long I spent as a doormat, letting people scrape the muck from the barn off on me - if you catch my drift.  

Which brings me to the water hole.  The water hole is a safe place to come and drink, to be replenished, to be refreshed.  If that place is corrupted by dishonesty, betrayal, hypocrisy, and selfishness - mine or others'  - the place that was supposed to be a refuge, a haven in the storm, can become the opposite.  I've seen it happen in families, in friendships, and in church (or other social groups which are supposed to be "safe.")  The water hole is not the place to clean your dirty, manure-covered boots.  If people use it like that - the water is no longer drinkable. It's poisoned.

The only two things that can be done when the water hole is poisoned is to get rid of the poison... or dig a new water hole.  Either option is going to require a great deal of work.  But it's the only way to not get sick.  

And I'm sick of getting sick.  Aren't you?

The right diagnosis

I've been going to physiotherapy sessions for the last few weeks after I "put my back out" one weekend.  

When I first got to physiotherapy, my therapist started treating my most problematic symptoms - in my lumbar area.  She gave me exercises to do. The pain started to become more manageable.  She got me to sleep with a pillow between my knees.  Sometimes the pain would be better, sometimes worse, depending on how I turned in bed or moved at work, getting in and out of the car, going up or down stairs.  The pain - when it came back - settled in one hip or the other and there were days it would radiate down the outside of my thigh.

This diagram I found HERE

About two weeks into treatment, my physiotherapist started talking about my sacro-iliac (SI) joint when I described the pain. 

I thought she was way off base, because for years my chiropractor had been telling me that the problem was in my spine.  Perhaps part of it was.  But this felt a bit different ... and I did the exercises she suggested, and things started to improve, as long as I did them correctly.  But I didn't quite understand what I was supposed to feel, where that "pull" she talked about was supposed to happen. 

I just knew that I hurt, and I wanted it to stop.

Out of curiosity (or was it desperation?) I looked up the SI joint online and found that it is the joint between the sacrum (just below the vertebrae, above the tailbone) and the ilium.  A dysfunction there will pinch the sciatic nerve.  And voilà - pain! A little more searching and I discovered a specialist's site which talked about a way to correct SI dysfunction through targeting that specific joint in a series of similar exercises which one could do one way lying down, another sitting, and another standing. I spent about ten or twenty minutes studying the mechanics of the exercises so I could be sure I knew how to do them.

And then I tried them.  What a difference!  I suddenly knew exactly what I was supposed to feel because I felt it!  Deep inside - I felt the stretch exactly where the pain originated.  It was difficult to get into that position.  But SO needed. SO worth it.  

It's amazing.  But if I had operated on the assumption that this was a lumbar spine problem rather than an SI problem - I might have wasted a lot of time and been in a lot more pain for a lot longer.  It's so important to know what the REAL problem is.  Going on a wrong diagnosis might fix something (more by accident than anything) but knowing what the issue is, goes a long way toward dealing with it. 

True in physical pain... true in emotional pain.  

I've been in emotional pain, a lot, and thought it was because the people in my life wouldn't listen to me, or because I needed to have this or that one need me or thank me or ... whatever.  And I imagine (because I am human and as such, selfish) that I'll experience that kind of pain again.  Hopefully not as often. :)  

I found the information I needed to be able to heal inside.  And it was hard.  But I started to heal.  And that was far better than just doing the same old thing and getting the same old results.

Being able to be honest with myself, and targeting the source of the pain, rather than dealing with just the symptoms and what I THOUGHT it was ... even though it might have been harder ... resulted in healing.  It still does. 

It appalls me sometimes that it took me this long to find what I needed to heal from the inside out, to be able to have the right emotional diagnosis so that I could do what I needed to do to stop the pain.  That's a big part of why I wrote my book: I don't believe that a person should have to wait until he or she is 48 years old (like I did) before starting to get better.  

But regardless of how long it took to start .... I'm so glad I did.  So glad.

Digging Deeper

Last evening at 5:30, the rumbling stopped.

But only for the weekend.  At 6:30 Monday morning, the trucks and backhoes will be back again.  After two full days of working, they've replaced the culverts in two driveways and prepared the ditches in between.  At this rate, they'll go up the other side of the street next week and down our side of the street the week after.  We'll be almost the last ones on our street to "benefit" from the "improvements" - yet we were the first to have two huge piles of soil dumped in front of our property.  

Hm. 

And we've learned that - joy of joys - the culvert we had paid someone to install two years ago will be dug up, taken out and replaced by their (larger) culvert pipes and concrete access wells.  We've been busy taking "before" pictures so that if the company wrecks anything on our property, we'll be billing the city (who is paying the company) for any work we have to get done to bring it back to the way it was before.  Like, for example, if they wreck our hedge and we need to replace it! 

The view "up the street" from just behind the central opening in our
fledgling hedge.  You can see some of the silent machinery in the distance.

That said, the whole idea of having to re-dig and redo a job that has previously been done brings up several intriguing thoughts to the surface.  The accuser that sits on my shoulder has been whispering - sometimes shouting - the insults, fast and furious, voices from my past echoing their agreement. The most common one is this:  "Nothing you ever do is good enough."

It's a bald-faced lie, of course.  But the voices persist.  

And my response is that if I had it to do all over again, given what I knew at the time, I would still have gotten the work done.  

The fact is, it was a safety issue in 2010 and I wanted my hubby to not run the risk of injuring himself on such a deep slope as that ditch when he was mowing the lawn.  Technically it's not even part of our property ... but  .... the city certainly wasn't going to mow it!  No, it was the right and healthy choice to make ... for the ditch, for safety's sake.  

The whole process  has me thinking again.  A dangerous thing, I know.  Yet it has brought something new to my way of thinking.

Sometimes, in the emotional and 'inner healing' realm, after I've dug down inside of me and "made it right" to the best of my ability - then .... I grow some more.  And when I've grown some more, there are more subtle, stubborn things that come to the surface - things that make me realize that it IS necessary to dig deeper and do it again, work a little harder than before, root out even more of the dangerous stuff, and make it easier to access should I ever need to get in there again and dig something out. 

The original internal excavation was necessary. (And I was SO glad I didn't have to face it alone!!)  It made life liveable... functional... better.  But it also opened up new possibilities, and set new standards for my inner life.  This new lifestyle isn't easy, and it isn't comfortable.  And often old, long-standing ideas bubble up from beneath - like sewer gases - and undermine the new thought patterns.  It's easy to slip back into them; I held them for such a long time.  

The fact is, the process is never over. That's why they call it a process.  There's always more to do, deeper to go, more improvements to make. And I can see cracks appearing in what I thought was solid.  I can smell things I thought were gone.  Reactions I have, some good - and some not so good.  The way I handled the hard-hat fellas, pretty good.  The way I handled a recent conversation between a relative and myself - some aspects were good, but there were things I could have done or said better, or not done and not said; these things let me know that there is still work to do inside of me: in my attitudes, by being more honest with myself, more open to God's renovations, and more willing to change.  

And that's okay.  
Sometimes it's good to dig deeper if it means an even better life.

Getting Messy

We met them as we were leaving our neighborhood to go to our various tasks: my daughter and I to work and my husband to his errands for the day. Big trucks, backhoes, rumbling and beeping, roaring past us, coming in as we were going out.  We wondered what was up. 

My husband was soon to find out.  When he returned home, the whole street was filled with heavy machinery and large, heavy, rubber culverts and cement  access wells.  And every time one of those big machines revved up and moved, the ground literally shook.  By 4 p.m. when hubby left to pick me up from work, he had a splitting headache. 

What were they doing there anyway?  Well, they were digging up the ditches to install heavy-duty culverts, tying them into the town sewer system! They will eventually be covered in soil .... and seeded....we hope.

Now for the "back story."  

We had approached someone - a private contractor - a couple of summers ago and gotten the same exact work done ourselves, because our lawn was eroding and there was a lot of run-off in the spring, and mostly because it was dangerous to mow that steep a grade; there'd been some near-misses with our old push-mower, and someone could have lost a toe or something!!  The man dug up our ditch, installed the culvert, covered it with soil, and raked it smooth so we could seed it.  We paid him um, okay, a fair pile of money to have it done.  He was reasonable ... and it was worth it to us, to have it done. Peace of mind, let's call it.

We were the only ones on our street to have this done at the time, even though after it was done, there were the inevitable questions from the neighbors.  

Now this.  Now everyone's having it done (quite probably without their permission!) and GUESS WHERE the workers put all their tools and heavy equipment?  And the extra mud they're digging out of people's ditches?  

The view from the end of our driveway... the hedge is behind the pipe...
somewhere... :s

Yup.  RIGHT HERE.  Already they've broken some solar-powered LED lights, and made this huge mess on the very area we had paid to have fixed two years ago.  Including deep tractor treads on our nice, flat culvert surface.  (Sighhhh). And to top it all off, they had used our front lawn as a handy-dandy lunch area, leaving their lunch boxes and their garbage on it. 

That was IT.  I got out of the vehicle, walked down to the lunchboxes, and wordlessly and firmly put them, one by one, in a straight line and following a direct line with the culvert pipe they'd placed not four feet from our fledgling hedge. I took their garbage - a half-full pop can and the top off a yogurt container - and put it with their lunchboxes.  I did each lunchbox separately so that I could be sure that they were watching by the time I was finished.  And then I threw them a scathing, sarcastic grimace as I put the last item in place and walked into the house, shaking my head in disbelief.

Not a word - no explosion, no verbal tirade - nothing of the sort.  But I was displeased (and I let it be known I was displeased) with the lack of respect for our property.  When I looked out a half-hour later, the lunchboxes were gone, and the crew was winding up their work for the day.  

The whole situation got me to thinking (lots of stuff does that...for some reason.)  When we first got our culvert fixed and filled in, and the grass became firm enough to mow, one of the first things that happened when the next summer came around, was that if the neighbors wanted to have a get-together or a yard sale, the extra cars would use our filled-in ditch area as a great place to park.  Hm.  And now this experience with the heavy machinery. How accommodating ... for them.

I guess that when a person gets their life together, and the inner mess starts to give way to some semblance of order, he or she becomes a convenient place for others to to dump their own messes.  The very time that we started learning about emotional and social boundaries was the time when people started infringing more and more upon them - and we had to draw the line over and over again, instead of letting ourselves get walked on.  Kind of like our culvert workers.  

I understand that excavation of all that inner "stuff" can be messy.  My own process was, that's for sure!  And I can expect that when folks start to deal with their own stuff, I might get some of the spillover.  It's okay; it's all part of the process.  But that doesn't mean that I have to stop setting and enforcing my own boundaries.  It just means that I need to be more vigilant about defining just where the line is, given that others need a little bit of leeway.  

Like with our hard-hat friends today.  (By the way, they'll be here in this neighborhood for at least a week..) I could have thrown their lunchboxes at them, yelled at them for screwing up months of hard work in a few short hours. But I didn't.  Instead, I drew the line at the very spot where our own property line merged with the "common property" technically owned by the city: which is where the old ditch that was there two years ago, started to slope downward.  

It was a measured response - and an object lesson for me, firstly to know that it's okay to get messy when fixing a problem beneath the surface, and secondly, for me to know where to set and police my own personal borders while waiting for folks to clean up their messes when they're done.

Start SOMEwhere

For the last year or so I have been toying around with the idea of reducing the clutter in my life, but have been putting it off because the task seemed (seems) so daunting.  

I'm a packrat.  There.  I've said it.  

I'm the sentimental kind of packrat.  Letters, cards people wrote to me, notebooks I wrote in years ago, articles of clothing I liked when I was um, a few sizes smaller and then couldn't bear to part with after I "grew out of" them, even some of my kids' baby clothes - outfits I remember them wearing ... these accumulate over time.  The result was that the stuff I could use in the now, I couldn't find because it was buried in other stuff I couldn't use.  

I'm also a bit of a slob.  That's no secret to those who know me well.  But combine packrat with slob and you get a borderline hoarder!  And one of the side-effects of that ... is how unhealthy it is - the dust accumulates, and we're all allergic to dust here - and the frustration level at not being able to find something when we want it mounts to colossal proportions.  For everyone.  After a while it all gets to be just too much. 

If the last 3 years has taught me anything, it's that baggage from the past can weigh you down in the present.  The baggage can't be thrown out in one fell swoop.  That would be kind of like throwing out the baby with the bathwater! No, it has to be unpacked, processed, and put where it belongs.  Whether that's in the "keep" pile or in the "trash" pile, the concept is the same in the emotional or spiritual as in the physical realm. It's a LOT of work, and the process can be overwhelming.  

Anyway, this morning, to start off a few days of vacation, I decided to join my husband in a little project he's doing - preparing our bedroom to be re-floored.  (That would involve FINDING the floor...) So the de-cluttering project I've been putting off for "another time" got moved forward.  The whole house needs it - but any time I thought about doing the whole house, I was so discouraged that I didn't do anything at all.  Yet this morning, a new thought came to me.

"Start SOMEwhere."  And the bedroom was just as good a spot as any.  

Here's a before and after photo I got HERE

In the short space of 90 minutes or so, working alongside my husband (who was doing the larger projects involving brute strength), I was able to sort through eight years' worth of papers on a desk we were getting rid of (and which had to be demolished to get it out of the room, hence the presence of "my hero"), and turn my attention to the clothing monster. It was amazing how quickly I was able to see more and more of the floor AND the tops of the dressers. I had thought it would take all day!  It was also pretty impressive to see just how much dust had accumulated on some of the areas we'd not been able to reach because of the desk.  Downright scary in some spots. It reminded me of the little joke I heard where the kid asks the mom if it was true that God made Adam out of the dust of the earth, (yes He did, dear) and that when we die our bodies return to the dust (yes, that's true dear) ... so the kid says, "Well you better come quick Mom, 'cause there's someone either coming or going under the bed!"  ;)  


Doing the de-cluttering project WITH someone really helped me too.  One of the things I have always hated about cleaning is that it's lonely work.  Having someone to share it with makes it not seem like such a drudgery.  And there's the satisfaction of the work going faster, and the back-and-forth banter of shared experience and pooled ideas.  

It was almost fun.  

Mind you, it's a long way from being done.  And there will be a lot more dust before it's over.  But before too long, the room will be a refuge, and not a repository of junk - and it won't take THAT much work to keep it that way.  

It's kind of a metaphor for how my emotional life is being transformed over the last few years.

That's the thing about works in progress.  They're never completely done, and they're a lot of work - but you can tell when you're making progress.

Cornered

She knew she had only seconds to escape.

She'd seen that enraged look before.  She'd followed the quick glance that the woman, twice her height and over twice her weight, aimed toward the hook on the wall where they both knew there was a man's belt hanging for just such a time as this.  Her body suddenly felt flushed, tingling with inner electricity.  

She darted like a frightened deer through the opening between the woman's elbow and her waist.  She didn't think; she reacted.  She could hear heavy footsteps behind her, trying to keep up.  

She ran - no - clambered on all fours up the stairs like a spider monkey running from a jaguar, panic rising in her throat.  The steps followed. She dove into the nearest room - where to hide? - the deepest closet in the house!  She pushed her way past the dresses, trousers and coats inside, her breaths coming in small gasps, her pulse beating loudly in her own ears.  She didn't know it, but she was cornered. 

The footfalls stopped.  The woman's hand snaked inside, fished around relentlessly and grasped her by the arm, wrenching her from her safe refuge.  She could not stop herself from being surprised by the woman's face; it was at close range and contorted with rage, just like it was every time.  Yet she convinced herself she did not recognize it.  Her only recourse was to appease - in the split second before the first blow fell, she filled her lungs with air and screamed at the top of her lungs, "I'msorryI'msorryI'msorry...." over and over, even though she didn't know what she had done wrong to deserve this level of reaction. But she must have done something horrible.

Screams melded with sobbing as she, to no avail, continued to apologize.  Was it for existing? Was it for making the woman angry?  She didn't think of these things - she was only trying to get away - every twist of her body to escape the blows only opened a new angle of attack, fresh skin on which a welt would soon form. 

She didn't know how many times the arm raised and fell - how many stripes the cracked strip of leather would leave. It never crossed her mind to count them, to show them to someone.  She felt too guilty for the bruises the woman would show her on her own hand later - bruises left on the parent by gripping the belt to strike the child.  Eventually - seconds or minutes later - the hitting stopped. The strong hand released the girl's arm and the heavy footsteps receded, leaving the child to continue her sobbing in a heap on the floor, totally broken - irreparably damaged where no one could see: deep inside. Not by welts that would heal, but by the knowledge that she was of no worth.  

She was only eight years old - already a discarded old woman in her heart - her childhood, her personhood ripped from her again and again.

It is forty years later.  Now the woman, the former aggressor, seems so much smaller physically than her daughter - who herself has children of her own.  

Yet in the former daughter's soul, she is still very much afraid: afraid of being attacked, cornered like prey - and devoured.  The scars on her spirit have marked her throughout her life, left her perpetually sobbing inside, calling out soundlessly to everyone who will listen that she is sorry, she is responsible, it's her fault - whatever the problem is or who might be to blame. Her fear, her woundedness, her determination with never being out of control ever again, of controlling and manipulating those she loves in order to protect them, has driven her own husband and children away from being able to connect with her, and likewise alienated people who would have offered their friendship.  

She is unhappy and alone, even though on the outside, all seems to be perfectly fine.  Her external facade has held, perhaps with a few cracks.  But she bears within the burden of all the shame of all those terrible rages, the feeling of being cornered, of that all-too-common breathless, unspeakable terror.

She snaps out of her reverie, and catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror.  She looks into her own face in the glass, and sees the little girl's heart behind those eyes, the one who is hurting, who is abandoned, who is lonely. She takes a deep breath and lets it out, slowly. This is going to take some time. 

She glances down at the trembling page in her hands and reads the words on it, for the first time of many, many times, reads to the frightened little girl inside:

"What happened to you was not your fault.  It was wrong.  And it was her problem, it was never yours."  
"You ARE worth something; you are worth a great deal."  
"You can be yourself - you don't have to change into anyone or anything else." 
"You are precious, you are treasured, you are loved."  "
"Your opinion matters."  
"What you feel is normal for what you have been through."  
"People can like you exactly as you are."  
"You can feel what you feel.  It's okay.  You can cry, you can laugh."  
"You can like yourself.  You can love yourself."
"You CAN heal."

Distance - not speed

I was talking to a buddy of mine just in the last couple of days about his desire to do a bit more walking.  He was berating himself - because he has arthritis - for not being able to hoof along like he used to.  That's when I imparted some of the knowledge I have learned on the subject:  "In walking, it's not how fast you go, it's how far you go."  True.  (Hm, maybe that's the reason people start jogging, to go farther in less time.  But it's hard on the knees!  I think my friend is better off walking...)  

Source: (from Google Images) is
http://www.southwaterfront.com/health_and_wellness/winter-healthy-talk-walk/

For those of us who are unable to jog (heck, I am lucky if I can waddle!) the trick to walking is making the time to go as far as you can comfortably go.  Every step is about three feet (well, for shorter people like me, that's two feet).  So walking a mile, whether it takes ten minutes or thirty, still uses up the same amount of calories.  And as long as the heart gets elevated up to a certain percent above normal (which can be accomplished by swinging the arms when you walk instead of walking faster) then it will do just as much good.  

It's the same with developing and maintaining a relationship with God and with oneself (and eventually with others, as the first two get more healthy).  The magic wand, the divine Zap ... very rarely happens.  Usually it's slow and steady - and if you look at today compared to yesterday, it would be easy to get discouraged simply by virtue of the fact that you haven't covered that much distance since yesterday.  Compare it to a year ago, or two, or three years - and there you have your measuring stick.  

It's a journey of millimeters, day by day, hour by hour, sometimes even minute by minute.  You hardly know a change is happening - but it happens nonetheless. One step at a time.  Sometimes the last thing you want to do is take another step.  But it's the next right thing - and somehow the strength is there because felt or not, God is right there empowering you.  And when you get to a place where you can rest a bit - and THEN look back - the distance from the starting point is absolutely amazing.  

And it leads to the next step, this time with a smidge more confidence. And then the next.  

God is very near.

Enough

How much is enough?

Good question.  I was chatting with someone in a store tonight and we were mentioning how it's really difficult to fit our petite frames when there's a belly involved.  We commiserated about that, and were quick to be grateful for certain lines of clothing that cater to our specific body type needs.  It made me think about wanting to lose weight - a topic that occasionally rears its ugly head.  

One of the first things a person learns when dieting living a new lifestyle is how much is enough.  So accustomed to ignoring the body's signals that it's full - the person keeps on eating and over-fills the stomach.  I can't count the number of times I've gone to bed in agony because I didn't know when to say when - and ended up overeating to the point of pain.  Then promising myself I'll never do it again.  But I do.  I forget the pain and focus on the short-term pleasure of making the other kind of hurting go away: the emotional kind.  It's true that people like me (there are so many of us out there!) really are "FEEDING their feelings."  This is to avoid FEELING them.  

People can be like that about anything.  Some are like that about housekeeping.  Others about fitness.  Still others about social activity - never able to get enough interaction. Some people can't seem to stop trying to rescue other people. I have to constantly guard against that one and if I can't with this or that individual, if I am constantly compelled to try to fix someone ... I need to walk away. 

People can be irresistibly drawn to shopping - to television - to sports - to motor vehicles of any description - to ... anything you can name.  These things provide an escape - a pleasurable escape - to the person that is trapped inside of them.  But even though they're pleasurable prisons, they are still prisons.  Any doubt about that ....?  just try to get out of one.  See how difficult it is.  

In relationship with God, escape from the endless trap of pleasurable diversions ... is possible.  With His help on a moment-by-moment basis, it is possible to get out of those prisons, those chains, those wrappings.  And the route isn't by attacking the wrappings - it's by tackling what's inside.  

Remember what I said about feeling our feelings instead of feeding them?  That's the ticket.  Emotional healing is the way to heal - focusing on relationships with God, the self, and THEN with others will allow all those other escape mechanisms to just drop off like unwanted baggage.  

And then someday, we'll be able to be in a situation and just know that this is "it" - that this is as far as we will go - and have the grace and courage to say, "ENOUGH!"

Real healing happens from the inside out.  If it doesn't, it will only be temporary.  And only God can heal the heart.