om mani peme hung

Today is day 10 of my 28 day medical leave.  My lower back had been hurting on and off for a couple of years – sometimes it would flare up badly and I had difficulty even walking. I was going to a chiropractor and he encouraged me to get another MRI. I had one 2 years ago and had a small bulging disc. The most recent MRI showed 3 fully herniated discs, two with small extrusions. (Basically, the jelly had squished out of the donut and was starting to travel.)

My doctor prescribed physical therapy, restricted sitting/driving, and unofficial orders to focus on losing weight, strengthening my core muscles, and to get myself healthy and strong again.  So that’s what I have been doing. Every day.

I go to physical therapy and get my new exercises for the week. I go to the gym and do the low impact workout classes and have begun using the weight machines on low weight settings. I stretch every day. I try to swim at least 3 days a week – in the high school pool or the lake. I meditate. I attend a tai chi class on Wednesdays.

I still teach, so there is some time spent in a chair in front of a computer – like today. It doesn’t take long for my tailbone to tighten up and my spine to get inflamed again. I have to remember to get up and stretch and walk to loosen everything back up.

So the attitude of gratitude post idea came when I opened up Mindbloom.com after about 2 years of not playing it (it’s a nifty little game to remind you to take care of the important things in your life).  Two of my daily tasks were to keep a gratitude journal & to  journal my thoughts/feelings.

I am trying to recondition my mind during this time away to stay focused on my core values. I had them paired down to two main ones: authenticity and love, but I’m adding gratitude – because it really is important, I believe, to remember to be grateful for everything I have and everything that is coming my direction.

I am grateful for the little park and beach on the lake a couple of miles from our house. There’s a nice sandy swimming area and the weather has been beautiful. I’ve had a lovely time floating and stretching and swimming. I love watching the kids (and sometimes the adults) jumping off the boat dock (despite the signs telling them not to). I love watching the fish swim by in the water. I love the sun and the clouds and the waves. I love the warm water and the weird cold spots that drift by your legs as the current flows.

How many masks do you wear?

Do you wear a mask at work? The Professional…

Do you wear a mask with your friends? The Happy One…

Do you wear a mask with your loved ones? The Reliable One…

But who are you underneath all of these masks? The Authentic You.

I’ve been wondering lately how much of my authentic self shows from beneath the masks I wear. I know some people see it – I can tell by how they respond to me.  Sometimes I think I’m showing my authentic self to someone but I realize later it was just another mask.

I’m not sure I know who the authentic me is without masks…

Sometimes, no news, is better for your mental health. Yours I mean, not necessarily mine. I’ve been losing my mind in stress lately. I got myself caught into a vicious loop of being more focused on the stress than on how to handle the stress.  I highly discourage that particular route – it’s not beneficial and it might quite literally kill you. (I’m sure it could happen.)

As it stands, my fibro went into overdrive – I feel like I’ve been beaten with baseball bats, I have acid reflux like nobody’s business, and I walk around *that* close to tears. Clearly not the kind of place I’d choose to be in emotionally… and yet, that’s exactly what I keep doing by focusing on the stress & what I don’t like in my life.

I’m going with the idea that I needed to experience this – because there’s no real way to learn this lesson without living it. I am an experiential learner – much to my own detriment at times.

So here’s to letting things be. Not getting so caught up in what I don’t want in my life, but putting what I do want out there & letting it happen.

I am at a place in the Universe where I am poised to receive blessings. I have recognized that I haven’t been tapped into the Good Stuff lately and so I’ve taken steps to get back into that Good Place.  In order to plug back in, I have to remember to Think Good Thoughts.

I am also trying to remember to Think Good Thoughts for Others and accept all Good Thoughts from Others. I deserve Good Things, so if you’d like to send me Good Things, I will happily accept them! I hope you will accept Good Things from me as well!

I got the exact messages I needed to hear this morning. So glad I was listening to the Universe this morning. I hope I can remember to do it more often.

I had to find this image today and post it as a reminder to myself.  I’ve been in a very stressful situation lately and unfortunately, stress is one of the key forces that sends me into Unconsciousness.  I’ve not been the person I strive very hard to be lately. I’ve been unkind and said things I can’t take back.   I don’t know the extent of whom I have offended, but it was brought to my attention that I have offended. I’m having a really hard time finding a place of forgiveness for myself.

I have little to no difficulty in forgiving others. I just chalk it up to them being Unconscious and not knowing better. Even if it is only a temporary lapse. The people who matter to me, the ones I would find myself in a place of needing to forgive, I know their hearts. They’re all loving people who have occasional lapses in consciousness. No problem. I can usually forgive them really easily.

So why can’t I do that for myself? (I know this is a rhetorical question, but I do talk to myself…)  I know part of the answer is that I keep worrying about other people’s opinions of me.  I’d love to be like Anthony Hopkins in this aspect, but I know that I’m not quite there yet.

I do care what people think. But I realize that right now, I’m making up stories in my head to fill in those blanks. I’m making Assumptions. Don Miguel Ruiz already taught me this is counter-productive to where I want to be:

But see that #1 rule? Yeah, that’s the one I violated. So I’m not proud of myself. I’m feeling like an ass and beating myself up because the reality is - I knew better. I feel like if I try to say, “I was stressed. I was Unconscious,” it’s like I’m trying to make excuses. Is it true? Yes. Does it still feel like an excuse? Yes. So I don’t like it.

But then I read #4 – Always Do Your Best and I realize that I really was doing the best I could at that moment. I’m still not proud of it and it was not, by far, my Best best …. but it was all I had in the moment. And I’m sorry for it.

So here I am. Trying to figure out how to forgive myself, because I do know, that if I stay in this Wounded Animal place of pain and fear, I am not being my best Me, and my best me is a pretty awesome person most of the time.

My dog has her head propped up against a tv tray. Her cheek is resting on the edge and I can’t imagine a world where that feels comfortable. Her eyes are rolling around in her head and her lids are drooping as she fights sleep. Whenever I stop typing, her eyes open just a bit more, to see what I’m doing. The other dog is snuggled against my leg, her ear twitching against my ankle.

The house is quiet. I finished my grading for the morning, ate some breakfast, and am sipping coffee – waiting for my sweetie to wake up & face the day.

You know that person in your life who has something to say about every opinion you have? You share something you’re thinking – something innocuous in your mind, or maybe something emotional, and it feels like they discount or dismiss that opinion?

I’ve been that person. I’ve been the person that mindlessly shoots down someone else’s opinion because I’m too enmeshed in my own opinion to see theirs, to care about theirs, or to find value in theirs. It wasn’t intentional per se – it was me being in my own unconsciousness. At the time, I had no idea how painful it was to the other person. Actually, I had no idea, even when they told me how badly my actions had made them feel. I didn’t understand it until I was on the receiving end of it.

I find that my reaction to it is that I want to stop sharing my thoughts and opinions with that person. It doesn’t feel safe.

And I realize that I still do this. I’ve done it recently – to people I care about. It sucks and it is painful and I hope I can become more aware of it and stop it.

Sweetie has been getting our money’s worth out of Netflix. Her latest watching endeavor was The Walking Dead. Of course, I watched a few episodes with her and constructed some conspiracy theories about the virus and its impact. But what my brain decided to become preoccupied with is the idea of survival. (Note: should there be a zombie apocalypse, I will not survive. I know this for a fact.)  First my brain tried to figure out how to fortify our house. Solar panels on the roof, tap into the irrigation well for water, convert the back room into storage for MREs, build a wall around the property out of concrete, make the garden bigger, hurricane shutters that can be lowered remotely over all windows and doors…. yeah – my brain was busy.  But then it got worse – then I started trying to figure out how I’d survive if I didn’t have the house.  Of course, that’s where we really get into fantasy land. I had a whole Swiss Family Robinson style tree house system going on in my little brain.  (Did I mention I was trying to go to sleep??)

Luckily, I didn’t dream about actual zombies. I don’t like zombies or monsters in general. I can’t really watch scary movies – my imagination is way too overactive and it can get so bad that I can’t even walk down the hall in my own house to an empty room because something might come after me. If I absolutely have to venture into the dark, I take a flashlight and a dog. In my own house. Yes, I recognize that I am a wuss.

“I must learn to love the fool in me–the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled, masterful tyrant whom I also harbor and who would rob me of my human aliveness, humility, and dignity but for my Fool.”

Theodore Isaac Rubin (born 1923); psychiatrist, author

 

This lesson resurfaced for me again recently, but for a completely different reason than it has in the past. In the past, this quote reminded me to embrace my fool as protection (for myself & others) from the tyrant; but now, it is a reminder to embrace the fool for the fool’s sake and for authenticity.

Today I had a moment of clarity regarding this lesson. I was listening to a presentation on legal issues and the speaker asked the audience to predict whether or not the courts upheld a decision to deprive a parent of their parental rights based upon a significant history of uncontrolled mental health. The parent had not actually harmed the child, but due to the extremely lengthy history of uncontrolled mental health, the issue at hand was the threatened harm to the child. I’m simplifying it drastically here, so forgive me, but in all, most of the room of child welfare professionals voted that the court probably overturned the decision & restored the parent’s rights. We were wrong. The issue I had here was not so much with the decision itself (I recognized that I clearly didn’t have all the information and didn’t know the full extent of the situation) but with the fact that after the information was revealed to us, a woman near the front of the room applauded.

I don’t know why she applauded. My boss was of the opinion that the woman may have applauded the idea that the best decision was made for the child. The woman’s applause disturbed me. On what planet is the deprivation of parental rights ever a topic to be applauded? Even the cruelest of child abusing parents, whose rights I would gladly fight to terminate, in the best interest of the child, is still a parent and the loss of that parent is devastating and life altering for that child. There is no moment that I can envision when I will ever applaud the termination of any parent’s rights or the idea of it. I agree with it as a necessary step to protect children and provide them with the best possible outcome for permanency, but my heart breaks when it is the step we are forced to take.

I strive, every day, to be as loving as I can possibly be. I teach my students that judgment based upon our own values can be detrimental to the professional process. I wonder sometimes if I would be better off keeping my personal thoughts & opinions quiet – instead of expressing them and sometimes violating my own attempts at being non-judgmental. I wonder if I am not, perhaps, the greatest hypocrite at times.

I guess the reality is that I probably am and it is the Fool in me – the one who feels too much, talks too much, loses often, lacks self control, breaks promises, and cries. I am a daughter of Janus. I wear the masks of Comedy and Tragedy in equal measure.