Monthly Archives: June 2017

Raining outside my bubble

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I’ve been living in a comfy bubble for the past 8 months. It was soft and sweet and comforted me. I crafted this bubble out of people and activities that nourish my soul. It’s worked pretty well for me. I’ve been happy. I’ve grown from a compact seed to a blooming flower in there. It’s like a perfect greenhouse…plenty of sunlight and water and full-time gardeners to tend to my flowers and pull my weeds with me. I’ve become empowered and bold inside this nifty garden bubble of mine. I healed inside this bubble.

The thing is, bubbles are fragile. Everyone knows that. As soon as it comes in contact with something sharp, it pops. So, what on Earth made me think I could get away with living in one? My cozy little bubble popped this week. Just like that. It came in contact with something very jagged that I had tried to keep way out in the periphery.  You think I would’ve seen this jagged thing coming, seeing how bubbles are transparent. Was I too busy having a good time with my gardeners? I wonder if maybe I did know it was coming, but just looked the other way…wishing it away.  Pretending it wouldn’t find its way in…

So, my bubble popped and the sunshine went away. Easy as that. And, the sun was replaced with a dark cloud, right over my head. A cloud that rained down on me. All of a sudden, there were weeds growing everywhere. My gardeners tried to keep up with them, but I shooed them away. I hated those weeds and knew no one really wanted to be around them.  I found myself standing there alone, in a pile of weeds, in the rain…missing my garden.

So, I did what any other recently healed woman would do in this situation. I cried. A lot. And I sat under that storm cloud all week and just let it rain all over me. It got to the point where I couldn’t figure out where the rain ended and my tears started. They just blended into one giant flood of emotions… anger, sadness, worthlessness, blame, shame, insecurity…I waded around in that flood and then just floated in it, letting it soak in to my core. This wasn’t my first rodeo in this kind of emotional flood. I think back to my good friend, Mary, telling me last summer, as I was bitter about this same exact subject…”Sometimes, you’ve just got to sit in your shit”. I didn’t really understand what she meant at the time, but I figured it out. Sometimes, life just sucks. Period. You can do all the motivational, inspiring speaking you want on the subject, but it still sucks. And sometimes, you just need to honor your emotions, without blaming or judging yourself for having them. Just sit in your shit for a while. Let the rain soak you to the bone.  Feel your feelings. Eventually, the sun starts shining again, even if just a peek…and you slowly start to dry off…

So now, I just have to figure out life outside the bubble…

 

The Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS June 24/17

This post was written in response to Linda G Hill’s Stream of Social Consciousness Saturday

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Soul Signs

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I believe in the Universe giving signs.  I used to be a skeptic, but after the year I’ve had, there’s just no doubt. I was sort of bombarded with them as I started processing my life and was kind of in awe of them. I wonder if they’ve been here all along and I just never noticed them. You can spend an entire lifetime being asleep and not realizing it. Once you start to wake up, you notice things.

The tricky thing about signs is, you can never be sure if they are a good sign or a bad sign, or what exactly the sign is telling you to do. It’s too bad they aren’t like road signs, with the information clearly stated in legible writing, telling you exactly what you’re supposed to be doing and which direction to turn… but it just doesn’t work that way. My signs come in forms like hawks, deer, synchronicity, “coincidences” …and it’s up to me to figure out which direction they’re pointing me in.  It’s also up to me to figure out if they’re even a sign at all.  Like, what if that really is just a plain old hawk and I made a life decision based on it flying over my car?? Well, really…I don’t make life decisions based on signs. It’s more like they give me clarity by making me pause… and help me step back and take a look at what’s really going on in my life, at what’s going on in my soul. It seems like I always already have the answer within me and just need to see it.  And once I’m able to see the answer I’ve had inside me all this time, I realize I never really needed that sign, after all. The answer becomes a knowing.

I think we all have the answers we seek, right inside our souls. Maybe it’s just that we are resistant to seeing them because seeing the path we need to take is not always the easiest thing to do. Sometimes, the only way out of our pain is by walking directly through our pain, and its human nature to want to avoid walking directly into pain, isn’t it?  If you came across a road sign that said, “Turn left for pain”, would you turn left? Hell no! But, if you noticed a deer in your back yard, or met a sweet old woman who happened to collect hawk feathers on the same day your father met her….or even something more subtle, like finding a lost poem… you might find yourself taking that left turn, after all.

 

 

This post was written in response to Linda G Hill’s Stream of Social Consciousness Saturday

The Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS June 17/17

 

 

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Admitting vulnerability

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Sometimes, admitting something can be the hardest thing you ever have to do.  Like on Dateline NBC, there’s always this regular, normal husband who ends up hiring someone to murder his wife because he’s afraid she’ll find out about him cheating on her or being a gambling addict or he lost his job. The guy actually thinks KILLING someone is easier than admitting to whatever crappy thing he’s done.  Damn, that shows you just how powerful shame can be. Except those guys don’t get it, because really, the way to rid yourself of shame is by doing the opposite…not silencing it, but outing it.

I’ve spent the past year outing all of my shame, and let me tell you…it’s NOT easy! I can’t say I’d rather kill someone instead, but there were definitely plenty of other things I would rather have been doing. I didn’t do them, though. I’m pretty sure sharing my shame was the most difficult, yet most freeing and empowering thing I’ve ever done.  Once you admit something, out loud…something that’s been eating away at your soul even though you’ve been ignoring the shit out of it…it doesn’t own you anymore. No one can shame you for something you OWN, you know? I kept saying, “No one can be harsher than my own inner critic, so BRING IT ON!”

I’ve poured the contents of my soul all over this blog, shared them with family, friends and strangers…and I’m talking HEAVY stuff.  I figured go big or go home.  It’s funny, though…now that I’m moving into new territories in my life, I’m finding I still have things inside me that are hard to admit to. And I’m realizing it’s not because they are shame based. It’s because I feel vulnerable. Being vulnerable is scary. It’s so scary, I don’t even want to admit to the vulnerability. That “pink cloud” effect of last year’s epic sharing has started to wear off. I don’t feel so much like Wonder Woman anymore. I feel like a regular woman, whatever that is…

 

 

This post was written in response to Linda G Hill’s Stream of Social Consciousness Saturday

 

 

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Whether family or strangers

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My stepfather’s memorial service was today. Not many in attendance, as we expected. He kind of kept to himself and never made any friends around here. My mom was enough for him. Hell, even I didn’t really get to know him until he was dying. Once I did, I regretted not getting to know him in that intimate way earlier. I had so much time to do it,  but I just didn’t. I spent the past few weeks getting things together for the service. I collected photos to make a slide show, I gathered stories from his life to include in the obituary, and I went through his military records, hoping to find something to frame and put up in the church. Boy, did I find some things! Letter after letter of recognition from Colonels and Commanders, detailing his outstanding work ethic. Multiple medals and certificates…all kept neatly organized, tucked away in an unassuming black messenger bag in his desk, never to be spoken of. I can’t believe I’ve known this guy for over 20 years and never knew these things about him. I wish I had paid attention. I feel the same way about not recognizing the love he and my mom shared, when it was right in front of my face all these years.

I had a patient the other day….this old guy who’s starting to decline in his health status, basically just due to old age. Such a sweetheart. Last week, he told me the story of how he met his wife, talking about them going to different states to finish school and still stayed in love, got married and he went off to war. I saw him again a few days ago, and as I was leaving, he started to tell me the same story. I didn’t have the heart to tell him he’d already told me, but I did have 5 other patients to see, so I inched towards the door as he spoke. I realized something familiar about his story. It reminded me of my grandmother, and how she used to repeat the same story, over and over and over, as she neared the end of her life. It was of how she met my grandfather and the story of them getting married. This guy was telling me the same thing. He needed someone to hear it, I think, so the story would be remembered. That’s important information, you know. So, I inched back towards him and listened to the rest, smiling at the love in his face as he recalled his sweetheart. It came time go again, and I happened to notice a unique cane by his door. It had an American Bald Eagle carved into the handle, and his name down the shaft, along with the dates of World War Two and his Air Force picture embossed on it. Damn, this guy is a WWII vet and I didn’t even know it. These guys are almost gone. I’m so lucky to be able to come across them at work, because it won’t be long before there are none left to tell us stories. He talked about the different bombers he flew, and where he went. He could have talked all day,  and I could have listened, but I did have to go. I told him my stepfather was a Vietnam Vet in the Air Force and he nodded at me. Sometimes, you don’t need words.

I’ve been thinking about him every day since…especially today. The Air Force Honor Guard folded the flag and played Taps at the service. I sat next to my mom as they presented the flag to her. She cried and trembled the whole time. God, she loved that man so much. Just like my patient loved his wife, and my grandmother loved my grandfather. My mom has been telling us the story of how she fell in love with him a lot lately.  These love stories are everywhere, and I just never noticed them. I didn’t get it. I think it might be because I truly didn’t think love like that was real, because it’s just so foreign to me. I can appreciate them now. I hold them close, whether they are told by family or strangers. I can finally feel them…

 

 

This post was written in response to Linda G Hill’s stream of social consciousness Saturday.

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