GO IN

Leaning in to others,

Instead of diving down.

Has been a way of life

Since shattered.

What is needed

must come from within.

What you have is there,

If you dare to go.

MORNING

How many are able to take time each day to find a quiet place outside? My luck and joy are right in my own backyard.

No phone, TV, radio. No one knocking at the door or dropping off a package. No one, nothing but the cooing of mourning doves. Mixing with their sweet soothing call the harmonious lullaby of songbirds’ melodies.

It was chilly, but the sun peeked out to warm my bones, as nature bathed me in peace.

WORRYING

There is a juxtaposition between winter and spring, one that sends me hurling into euphoria, the next barreling down into doubt and despair. As the winter dregs are shaken off with sun permeating every cell, the lows after the highs leave me shaky.  

Calling sons gushing out my lack of self-esteem, both stymied because recent growth has allowed me to move past leaning on them so much, seem mildly surprised. But it helped to dispel some of my silly worries.

Samuel says I lean on them too much. One son says Dad never talks, so who is right? Maybe it is what is right for each person which differs between each one.

Worrying seems to be my middle name. My mother, grand-mother, neither related because that grand-mother was my father’s mother, were both worriers. Can worry be cast on through genes?

Second guessing when both guesses make me look bad is a tendency derived from childhood traumas. As it arises say, ‘Oh that,’ and move on, even if it needs to be said many times a day. When feeling torn between ups and downs, do what is loving for self and others.

LOST & FOUND

Lost then found,

so many times.

How many times

going round and round

to feel found and stay found?

DEMONS

There is a place other than my head where living is deeper, wider, fuller, and whole. It is hard to get out of that ‘head’ space and into this foreign land called soul.

As the sun shines brighter and longer, March moving into April, my brain chemicals are mixed up like a hurricane of ups and downs, the downs very low.

Pulling out of winter has its dangers, spring fever making decisions rash not bold. Take care to be in every moment even if the moments are hard to be in.

Go slow, pace myself, keep working at what is beneath the brain’s tendency to put myself down.

Mistakenly, too much of winter has been spent battling others. The real battle is within countering that critical voice which almost completely has taken over.

Time to take my life back.

First winter windflower of the season in my secret garden:

HUNGER

Is it food

or love?

Is it food

or escaping anxiety?

Is it food

or a need to numb?

Pain & Pleasure

When thoughts cause pain there are many ways to numb out. But in the numbing, so too are the joys.

Simple joys such as the feel of water splashing off my hands as suds rinse off, or the feeling of fullness because mind, body, and spirit are whole.

Every second precious, wasted if numb. Yet numbness serves a purpose both in helping to get through, but also in realizing the futility of choosing a path that misses all the wonders of living every moment, pain, and pleasure.

REGRETS

Moving on to the new year, a new start, a beginning? I’m still me, with all the thoughts, memories, and regrets, blackening my interior much more darkly in wintertime.

How to manage the tendency to go back over every mistake in my entire life feeling it scratch like sharpened talons in the deepest recesses of my soul? I’ve made grievous errors in judgement that must be lived with. How do people do it, because I’m not the only one.

Didn’t we go through this already, just about every winter, you the critic, and you the wiser gentler side? Jekyll and Hyde. Light and dark. Breathe fresh air or drown?

Laying in the dark, ready to get up, anxiety erupts reliving mistakes from 40 years ago. The blackness of winter devouring me at the start of a day.

Yet there also is light if choosing to come out of that dark cave of regrets. Forgive yourself yet again, as many times as it takes. While walking yesterday I thought, ‘Haven’t you done this already? Forgiven myself for this?”

Yes. But do it again, and again and again, however many times you need to. Good practice for someone with a tendency to be so harsh on herself. And when remembering all your own mistakes, and forgiving them, it makes it so much easier to forgive others.

Henry David Thoreau

“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.”

KNOW THYSELF

Quote by Socrates: “To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.”

The lantern swaying back and forth, ice glittering with its sparkly glow even in the black before dawn. My ice trekkers keep me from falling and work like a charm, a wonderful Christmas gift for those days when all the path ices over.

Sitting by the water, barely a crack of light beginning to show, the quiet, dark shadows are unnerving, yet also relaxing. A distant train clatters satisfyingly.

More rounds to go before the breeze begins to chill me, round and round, the twinkling lights in the house a beacon one way, with glimmering solar stars glowingly wrapped around a few trees the other way.

While resting again, mother nature does her work on my body, mind, and spirit, curing the restlessness of winter cabin fever, rushing pink health to my cheeks, and the warmth of movement to my body.

But the best cure is calming my rat brain, much worse in the winter, which takes any tiny hardship and magnifies it into disaster. Calm, peace, and sleep-filled nights are blessed to me of late, so when those negative thoughts creep in, chase them far away.

Use a big corn broom and swoosh! That feeling of nostalgia niggling in the background, of loss, memories of old with others long gone, or others still here that closeness is difficult for me to nurture or sustain?

Those are to be felt, because my premise about feelings is, feel them. Trying to squash feelings makes them harden and stay.

So, tears have come each day and I let them, squeezing out not knowing why, nostalgia, loneliness? Then the why comes, (yes to both of those), and with it understanding, acknowledgment, and feeling real and accepted, even if it’s only by me. Because who better to know than me?  

BUILDING

Like building a snowwoman, once complete a piece falls off having to snow-glue it back on again. The shattering’s of confidence each time someone says something thoughtless or ignorant, lesson just a little as self-kindness and acceptance grow inside.  

A solid woman is beginning to form. One to be counted on, internally sound, full as in depth and completeness with wisdom that often is deeper than once thought possible.

As my world shrinks on the outside due to the inability to go far from home, my internal home welcomes more fully, freely, and softly as a place to stay and be.