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Posts tagged ‘There is hope’

Apr 2

Twirling in My Mind and Heart

Moving into a place where I can say that the work of healing is complete has been a process of reclaiming my heart, my head, and a few pretty new dresses. I feel like I’m on a fantastic journey.

I’ve crushed on an iceberg and fallen headfirst into a delightful new place of being. It only took forever to get here! I’m alive!

What can I say but “Welcome to your new world, Gail.”

If I had known then what I now know, I’d have taken my own therapeutic advice and done all of this sooner. Or would I have?

I think part of getting professional help is all about timing and feeling good about doing it. This process comes from within, and one of the challenges people face is finding the right fit.

Sometimes people get lucky and they connect with the right fit from the first try, and other times it is a series of calls and sessions. Sometimes a person will not understand why the therapist wants to refer—yet again—to another therapist. We’re doing it for you, the client, because whatever the reason, it isn’t a good fit.

In my journey, I went through several therapists before I found the right professional. My process was helped by the fact that I knew and understood what I needed to be looking for from someone who did the work I needed to be guided through. I had more than one “nope, not it” situation. I followed my gut, tapped into my resources, and finally said yes to a gifted mind surgeon. We matched well. I’m glad I had the patience to ride it out.

Things have changed in so many ways, and now as I near the finish line for one portion of the process, I begin to see what needs to happen next.

Soon, it will be mop-up time: the time after the battle when you do the cleaning and are able to see the new area for real.

I don’t feel sad; I feel a sense of peace. I can claim my life in a new way.

Yesterday I was interviewed for a podcast. I put on a pretty dress, did my hair, and sat in a calm state of mind. When it was done, I realized that this would be a two-parter. I spoke about the process I’d been through in the last ten years as it related to my church life. For the first time in a long time, peace ruled the process. I’m finding that, in a happy way, I’m unpeeling the new, yet old, personality of Gail. It is the Gail who enjoyed a pretty dress and always will. It is the Gail who can twirl in delight over happy things. It is also the Gail who now stands as a new adult to say, “This is the real me, stand aside, I need to do new things in my life.”

Healing is about being able to calmly think and reason through the essential things of life. It is about being intact in new ways and allowing for reason to rule where it once failed because you were too busy broadcasting out to the captain on the vessel. We can now look at the stuff we had to send out to the iceberg, discharge it, and celebrate a life built and based on safety and a peaceful heart and mind.

Recently, a friend began a GoFundMe for her disabled son. I heard her words, read the post, and decided what I was willing to give. In the past I would have made a choice to give but I would have jumped through the hoop of being unreasonable in my donation. It felt good to press the button on this, and not vacillate over doing so.

Lately, I’m thinking that I’m liking my personal life much more than I did a year ago. I’m not hiding anymore. It is liberating!

Last week I splurged on myself and allowed myself to buy two fine dresses for my birthday that will arrive in April. Hopefully, the warm weather will come too.

I realized that I’ll need some warm things for the winter, and this time it will be things that I really like because settling is no longer an option. This is all exciting and wonderful, and I’m liking this part of the process.

I couldn’t have done this in any other way, and I celebrate the time it took. Moving towards the real me is a gift. I’ll be twirling in my mind and my heart, and I can’t resist the smile that is breaking out on my face. The end of this portion of the journey is close!

Nov 19

External or Internal?

I sat with someone as they went through a memory of an event. They were in the past, seeing it in the present. My job was to calm them down. It took a while.

Trauma is both internal and external. Surviving a heart attack is internal, and we also witness it externally. We’ll carry the memory with us inside our head forever.

Trauma can also be deceptive. What we experience as being within ourselves is actually outside of the self. A physical reaction to external cues might cause internal reactions. We might come to believe that what we experienced was internal rather than external trauma. And so it goes that we might live years believing and thinking about our experiences in one way rather than another.

When I was six, I was abused by those who used water to traumatize me. I wasn’t able to learn to swim… until one day when I was seven, and I figured out that the water would hold me up, and I’d be able to float on the top of it. Once I figured that out, I was able to take my feet off the bottom of the pool and kick. At first nobody could tell I had my feet off the bottom of the pool, and then I got it and you couldn’t keep me out of the water. Water is an equalizer. The memory of the water stayed in my head as I conquered the physical act of swimming. It was an external thing that lived in my head.

What we fear might be the monsters in our head, and for some people with mental illness the monsters become quite real. For most of us, the monsters we live with are easier to cope with.

Sometimes our liberations come via a comment, something others say and do with us that causes us to rethink the vision of ourselves. Trauma can cause a great deal of self-doubt and second-guessing who we are. We second-guess who we are to ourselves and to the world. What if we need to cut ourselves a great deal of slack? Most of the time we need to offer ourselves kindness.

I’ve witnessed the trauma perfection cycle, and I believe it stems from thinking that “if I just do this right, all will be well.” The problem with this type of thinking is that you can never do it well enough.

When trauma is discharged, and we set our loyal soldiers free, something amazing happens. Our ability to love ourselves increases and, with it, the loss of perfectionism. Along with this loss comes the ability to react differently to what once bothered us. We tend to look at those old rainbows in new ways, and our minds are blown away by our new actions. Now the rainbows are alive with vibrant colors that we may have never been able to see before!

I’ve talked about arriving on new shores after crossing the river Styx, and this is different. Whatever this is, it brings deep peace. It satisfies. This is a different internal that resolves the external stuff. I think it is to be defined for each person in their own way. What I understand isn’t what you will understand. Once again, I thank the loyal soldiers who served. Once again, I stand in amazement for what they did for me. For now, peace has come and made a home in my soul.

Jan 4

The Tram

I’m standing on the inbound platform at the UMC station as the tram pulls in, and I board. The tram isn’t full, and I find a seat facing forward, not too far from the doors. I notice the quietness of the tram, and we pull away. The next stop changes everything.

I’m in what is the medical area, and the science park. The med students board, taking every vacant seat and filling the vacant standing areas. The next stop allows for more students to board, and the tram is filled with the chatter of the students.

I’ve taken this tram ride multiple times, and this time I stop to notice the voices, the animation with which the students are speaking. Then I look at the physical behavior of the passengers. They are alive with excitement, enthusiasm, and hope, and it is catching. For the first time I’m noticing the vibrant nature of the students.

Something tells me to stop my thinking, and to watch carefully. I listen to that suggestion and I quiet my mind to listen and observe what is happening around me. That 20-minute tram ride altered how I think about others in group settings.

Normally, I avoid groups because it is chaotic, and I can’t hear others well enough to converse with them. I wrote about this in “When Sanctuary Is Offered.” As I’ve sat with this experience the past few months, some things have changed.

Could it be that I opened up to some type of new understanding? Did I rethink the present hearing aids I have? Was it a combination of things? I realized that things needed to change and I took steps, and some risks, to change things. It pays to rethink things: it did!!!

With the new gadgets approved and all mine, I will venture into new situations. With an appointment at the UMC this month, it will be interesting to experience the ride on the tram in a new way.

I’m also having a new doorbell installed in my house. It will use light, and not sound, to let me know that someone is at my door. No more missed doorbells for me! Oh, and it’s covered by the insurance!!! As mentioned in a previous post, I went shopping for a better hearing situation!

I hear the noise of the organics being picked up and pause to think about the winter winds that blew all the leaves in the universe into my front yard space. I think about the storms that put it all there, and the storms that have blown unpleasantness into my life due to disability. I recall the time when I asked Jon to answer the question of the one gift he’d give me if he could. I still feel the same way about my body. Why would I want to change my core self? Yes, it would make some things easier. It would mean that I would not need to deal with people who show frustration at the way I do things: slower than they can do the same thing. I am happy with who I am. I’m proud to advocate for those with disabilities. I’m proud to be me. It isn’t my issue; it’s yours if you can’t deal with me as a disabled person.

Once we’ve taken an inner journey and done our soul work, things change. Going inside is liberating!

This time around, the work I had to do to get to new hearing aids wasn’t as intense as other things I’ve done.

How do you know when you’ve done enough work? My experience is that the things that were hard or difficult become easier to deal with. Doing the work wipes out a level of fear that can be present when confronting the nasty and the unknown. In this phase of things, and when dealing with our lives in new ways, it is important to tack a mental reminder up: one byte at a time. I think this isn’t something we all start out doing at first; it is something we learn our way into.

Taking it slowly and not being overwhelmed by things isn’t something that comes easily for some of us. We labor under the misguided notion that we can take it all on at once. Then getting overwhelmed by the task before us hits us with a grand force of wind. POW! Sometimes anxiety builds, and we stop it all, only to discover that we’re not where we want to be with any of what we’ve dealt with.

Going inside myself enabled me to flesh it all out. This time, I’m navigating a new stretch of the river that I’m surprised I’m on. I suspect it has some new places to tie my boat up to, to leave, and to explore the new interiors I’ll engage with. I suspect that this part of the soul journey will bring new things, people, and joy into my life.

I return to the tram, and as I watch and listen, I realize that I’m learning something about myself that I haven’t been able to admit as I’ve needed to: the isolation of my hearing situation must come to an end. I’m not the widow who is sitting alone on the tram. I am the widow who is claiming the life she knows is out there in new ways. I’ll risk large groups. I now have a tool that will enable me to do just that.

This all happened because I became quiet in what I once viewed as chaos. Had I not done that, I wonder what would have happened. Time to muse on this experience some more.  

May 29

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Leaving the Bench for the Second Time

The past few weeks have given me opportunities to reach back and reflect on my own process of grief and arriving at a new waypoint. What happened? The more I live, read, and experience, the more I understand the journey I’m on with building a new life.

I’ve reflected on the many people who post early on in support groups. Their partner is newly deceased and they are asking after one or two weeks, “When will the tears end?” I understand why they’re asking this. This type of pain hurts physically. The people who respond, who have had more time in the grief cycle, usually tell the newbies that things will change, and to give it time, which is not what anyone wants to hear when the physical and emotional pain are so intense. 

Here’s my question for people who jump into these groups so soon: Why are you here so soon? That is the first question I ask as I read. I answer it with a list of reasons they might have: times have changed, and society is no longer connected like it used to be. People have lost communities of support.

I’ll say this until I don’t need to say it any more: the Western world has become a place of instant everything. In the West, we’re losing the skill of self-soothing. The need to sit in silence has never been so needed, and yet the volume levels are turned up so that we fail to hear what our bodies, hearts, and heads are telling us to do: sit in quietness and be still. We’ve also lost community. Community enables us to soothe ourselves, and in time turn to others for what we aren’t able to do for ourselves. This is a huge reason people show up to a Facebook group. Instant community that isn’t community. Some of what is there is helpful, and at times some things on these pages are not helpful. 

This last weekend a friend said goodbye to her mum. It has been some time in coming, and when the end came it was a peaceful ending. I’ve been aware that she and her family are in a “thin place.” I sometimes call it the funeral bubble. It is a place of reflection, where time stops while the rest of the world continues on. For those in the thin place, things are altered. We cry; we touch the spiritual; we reflect; we can think new thoughts, and in some ways, it can be rather mystical. It can be a place of solace. Eventually, we’ll leave the thin place and get back on the conveyor belt. It is when we enter the fast-paced arena of life that we demand the instant stopping of tears. We want the pain gone. We fail to realize that just like physical pain telling us and our bodies to take notice of what is going on, emotional pain is telling us the exact same thing: take notice, sit down, you are hurt.

Sitting here, I reflect on the day of August 29th, when I sat at my dining room table wondering the unthinkable: How will I survive? I wasn’t thinking of tears or the path I’d need to follow. The crazy crying jags appeared on the scene right on schedule: as soon as the emotional numbing thawed out. Looking back on it now, I think I was more scared of the crying than questioning when the tears would stop. This type of crying is physically violent. You feel it well up inside, and like an earthquake you hear the rumble of the approaching event. Ready? Shake. Hold your breath and wait for the thing to go away. And then the aftershock hits just when you think it’s over, and it starts up again. These crazy crying jags happen anywhere, nowhere, and some are triggered by memories while others have no rhyme or reason. They happen, and we who survive become embarrassed by the crazy state that doesn’t make sense to us. We leave a grocery cart in a store as we exit stage at right and bolt for the car in hopes of a safe place to let the tears out. We want them gone. Our minds are sending us a clear signal that we’re in pain. 

At this point we might be well into the grief, and well-meaning friends and family want to help by fixing it, and so they offer up help that might not be helpful. The catch here is that they may not understand, and you may not be able to explain any of what you’re going through. The words may arrive on the scene when the pain has lessened. You don’t fully understand any of this until you are years down the road. Don’t rush it—you’ll miss the essential nuggets and treasures that will be so valuable to you in your new future. 

In that new future the pain dims, and the quality of the tears changes to something else. We cry until we cry rarely. We remember with joy and fondness the good and wonderful things. We can objectively look at the relationship with its strengths and weaknesses. We gain understanding. We question; we contemplate; and we ask questions about the paths we didn’t travel down. In our questioning we become open to new pathways. We act by beginning to move towards something new. 

This movement is healthy and essential to living our lives in a new way. Along this new path we might begin to smell the trees and flowers. We meet those on this path and either engage with them or move on. Maybe we find a lovely place to sit and notice what is going on in our lives. 

We leave that space and move forward. We might make some changes, or we may choose to wait and see what changes come to us. I allowed life to be gentle with me. I realized somewhere along the path that I needed to practice better self-care. I needed to honor myself.

One of the deepest realizations I’ve had to sit with is that grief and its aftermath have allowed me to consider options for my life that I had not thought of ten years ago. How I see myself now isn’t the view I once held. This time, while sitting in a lovely spot on the path, something came along and challenged it all. I returned to the crying. I was able to call up the feelings I experienced as a new widow. I remembered. Now I write this. The difference is that this time I’m not in severe pain, and I realize that what I’m feeling and thinking is “get up off the bench, move—this is not your place now.” The tears are gone, and I stand up and step onto a new path—one I had not seen for myself.