Life Bound: Day 59

I have been running for a really, really---------------really long time.

I never seem to slow down enough to be here at the times and days I really want to.  It's an old pattern, keeping myself from slowing down.  Then, the moments pass, and pass and pass, like billboards pass as you're speeding down the highway, and I am living in my head instead of here, out in the open, too fast to get a good read of  the message someone so painstakingly crafted to be seen.

I hopped back on the trail, and hit a full sprint as soon as I could function upright, after surgery.  By July 13th I was attending all-day orientation for starting my junior year as a transfer student from a junior college, for the first time ever, at a 4-year institution.   I had somewhere to get, somewhere to be.   I had a definite, determined destination to be, finally, at a 4-year, earning my bachelor's degree in a specific field, with an officially declared major.  I jumped through all the hoops, I signed the papers, dotted every "i" , crossed all the "t's".  

And then I was off!  On the biggest race to.............           nowhere.

Yeah, I made it there.  I got there.  I showed up.  I went through orientation.  I walked to my classes 15 times to be sure I knew where to go.  Made the 45 minute drive to school, almost as many times, just to be sure I had the route down....

Then.  The path suddenly dropped off into          air.

***

An email arrived in my mailbox from a renowned yoga teacher, named Max Strom.  Granted, I'm sure the same email arrived in a million other inboxes of people around the globe.  But, it was only me that opened the email that arrived in my inbox.  

I knew Max.  And by "knew," of course I mean I went to one of his 3 hour workshops about living A Life Worth Breathing he presented in my city back in the year 2012.  But I knew him.  His work had impacted me and left an mark so powerful, I wasn't ready to look at it.

Until....that fateful day, July 21, 2016, when I took the risk to click that bolded line in my inbox, and opened it up.

His message was this: 
 


And so it began.  

Nearly 4 years after Max made touch down in my life for the first time, I was ready to start breathing.  

Isn't it funny how you can be running and running and running, and not breathing at all?

Not laughable, just funny.

Cryable, maybe, more like.

***

July 21, 2016 was just 21 days since I finally found out much of the physical pain in my life had a real, defined, physically diagnosable name.  It was Endometriosis.  Getting this diagnosis, alone, did nothing to change or alter my pain.  Even the laser/ablation surgery I had to remove my last cyst, and reduce my pain, did little to change my condition.  In fact, just 75 days post-surgery, and I am in as bad of shape with this painful disease as ever.  The surgery I need, which best treats endometriosis, is not yet readily available in the United States, so it can be a journey in itself to receive it. (Please learn more about this, here.)

But, what getting a diagnosis of Endometriosis did do was was wake me up to my body. It began to undo the belief that my pain was normal.  That my pain was "in my head."  That my pain meant I was a miserable person at my core, and if only I developed a better character, this pain would go away.  

What surgery in July did for me was open me up in a whole new way, stop me in my tracks, and presented ways of thinking I couldn't really accept, before.

You can see in my last update I wasn't exactly celebrating, and joyous about the occasion.  I didn't know what to do, or how to take it, or what it meant yet.  Initially, all it meant to me was one more incurable disease to my name.  I admit, I felt a bit defeated.  Like...like....say it, a "baby elephant."

So when I opened Max's email, and listened to his story of life and the baby elephant analogy, it hit me in a place that felt vulnerable.  But unlike times in the past, this place was stripped of  protections against vulnerability.  I was ready to feel like I could have some control about my life, and lived existence.

As life would have it, I also learned from that email that Max would be personally visiting my home town in just a little over a month from that date! My buddy was coming to see me! ;)  

So, what do you do when a yoga teacher/trainer/speaker/writer with a message you connect with comes to town?  You zip on over to the local yoga studio where he's going to show up, and sign yourself right in!  I lucked out, and got a Groupon deal for a month of unlimited classes for $30, to top it off.

Clearly, I was approaching a new stride.

Unlike times in the past, when I'd sign up for yoga, go to one class, and never return again to use my "new student special," I fully utilized my month of classes.  It just so happened my intro month ended, just as Max was scheduled for an extended weekend visit.  I enrolled in classes Friday-Sunday, with Max, learning how to Breathe all weekend long.  

A new life was born.


In the process of that month of yoga classes, I realized how much I've been beating myself up.  How much my body needed attention and care and rest.  I experienced how my body held pain, and the release of it, in multi-dimensional ways.  I folded and lay in Restorative classes, held both captive and surrendered, to tears.  Silent, bubbling mountain streams of cool tears, falling out from my face.

And I kind of started to fall in love.

With life, with the process of being cleansed, with not being anywhere, but here, now, facing the pain, feeling the grief, expressing the sadness.  And knowing, through all of it, just how amazing it is to be alive.

I started to experience help.  Help of heavy chains being broken from my body, and beginning to move toward something different.  My soul opened.  All of me, together, coming into light, all because we stopped, and took a deep breath.  

I knew then the path I had been on for so long, in the constant struggle to attain an education, had finally given way to wings.


And there's more to the story.  I've only gotten started.  Oh, so much more...but the night is long, and I am learning how to listen for my need to rest and repair.  It has been many days of intense pain, as the past two weeks, as the band-aid of my last surgery has lost it's stick, I have another cyst, and the symptoms are at least triple what they were before.  

So I am grateful for where I am now, able to sit with myself, in this not perfect, nay, far distances from perfect place! I'm not sitting perfectly, or saying this perfectly, but being here anyway, just as I am.

Unfinished, and fine with that.  I'm life-bound.

 





 

It All Comes When It Wants To: Day 58

Surgery is lonely.  

Recovery from surgery is lonely, even when you're not alone. Even when you're supported.
 We ultimately experience our bodies intimately only within ourselves.  It effects our lives, and turns each path in unique ways, nobody else can know.

I woke up to a diagnosis of Endometriosis.  Waking up and being told you have a disease that at least  1 in 10, or 176 million women worldwide have, is lonely, regardless of the impressive numbers.

Endometriosis does not have a cure, and all available options for treatment comes with its own set of troubles.

I was expecting surgery to remove an overgrown cyst.  I had concerns it could be ovarian cancer, since I was experiencing every symptom of it, so strangely I was braced for that. Deep down, I hoped it would be nothing, and that the surgery would have been much ado about nothing.


After surgery, my doctor came into my room and showed me pictures of severe adhesions he basically had to bushwhack through within my torso.  I was still  groggy from anesthesia when he talked to me, so there are details to catch up on, but one of the things he emphasized through my anesthesia induced bliss was that my abdomen is really tough.  And I thought..."Yeah!  I'm tough! Go me!"  Maybe he could see I wasn't entirely displeased with his statement, because then he said, "No, by tough I mean that it's filled with scar tissue and adhesions, and I really had to cut away a lot."  
And, he wasn't exactly high-fiving me, and smiling about it.

The other thing my doctor said, that I clearly remember, was..."So, this is not all in your head."  

But this recovery is taking a toll everywhere, inside and out.  Including, my head.  

I'm trying to be all soulful and lovely about recovery, but right now I'm just not. 
I don't know yet what this new information means for my body, mind, and soul.

There's more I want to say about it, but I'm embarrassed and ashamed of how I really feel.

I don't feel good. I'm still exhausted and hurting. These are the places I'm so adept at disappearing.  I am mostly silent when it comes to pain.  It's easier to make light of it.  Then, feel deeply abandoned when people don't show up. I don't feel up to company, but long for simple "Facebook care."  It's the silliest things that can bring on a crash in this "civilized" world. 

I'm still figuring a lot of stuff out.  Instead of letting silence run away with me, I'm holding on to what, and who, lends their voice.  Love and care are healers. It's when you're low the darkness tries to take charge of conditions to convince you there is none, and that you're worthless.  

The darkness can make a difficult day draw out long and cold.  
I have to remind myself that 4 days of health are often experienced differently than 4 days of pain and recovery, and that it's only been 4 days since I went under. It's especially important to stop and smell the roses when things hurt. It's important to keep in mind this is my journey, and others are on theirs.  Paths do not always cross, nor are they meant to.  We are still experiencing this kingdom together.

Recovery is a great time to challenge perceptions, test reality, discover the holes in your support system, rest, repair, and dive in to deeper wants and needs.  Transformation can work up a sweat, even on the brightest days.

I'm trying to sort out a new diagnosis, the ongoing pain I've been living with long-term, the surgical pain (is one of my incisions infected?  Maybe...I don't know.), my belly inflated like a half blown up beach ball,  confusing hormones, and taking care of myself and my family in the moment, as we approach new phases of life in the midst of additional unknowns.

My youngest daughter starts Kindergarten in August, and I have approximately 6 weeks until I am slated to carry on with my college education at KU...a dream I've been working for 16 years.

It's hard to keep a grip on the present moment, and not see my life, and dreams, crumbling. They've crumbled so many times before, and I really need all the positive energy I can find, or have laid upon me, to keep my head above water, and my boots on the trail.  

It's easy to feel like a failure at everything in the middle of this process.

I woke up, but I'm still on my way back, running for the hills.

I'm hopeful that in a week to 10 days I can come back with a completely renewed perspective, but it could be longer.    The pressure I put on myself to be in full swing is the worst, and I'm working to let that go.




 


 

Wake Up and Be There : Day 56, about Day 57

Today, I tell of the future.

I have been working double-time to stay in the present  along this journey, but today is a reasonable exception to the rule.  The present moment of tomorrow will likely see me in a temporary state of unconsciousness.   I'm taking advantage of my waking state to tell you about this. 

No, this is not the surprise I was talking about sharing in my last update. (That surprise is on it's way, as well.)

But, first, tomorrow, I am planning to be having surgery to remove a cyst on my ovary, which will likely involve the removal of the ovary itself.  

All the time, things are unfolding.

I'm not used to sharing details here before they happen, so this is a new venture.
I am extending my hand, and bringing you along for this one.

I've been riding some wild hormonal waves, and I don't want to wake up from surgery, and not know how to explain without a fair heads up of why that might be.

My last ovarian surgery was in December of last year, but that time it was an emergency surgery when a cyst burst, which had a blood supply, causing severe internal bleeding.  I sat for hours bleeding internally while I was misdiagnosed in the ER as having a gallbladder attack, before the true source of my pain was discovered, and I was rushed to the OR.  I wasn't sure I'd wake up from surgery. That event, and the process of recovery, was actually the catalyst that pushed me here to The Dirt Trail!

So, actually, I should give this event a little more credit.  It actually is exciting to be going into the depths of my most vulnerable insides, and having them exposed to light.  

Tomorrow, some of my insides might actually even be coming out, permanently.  Perhaps more on how I feel about that later.

I'm trying for that to not sound too awkward.
Is what I'm saying weird?  
I can't really tell right now because I'm pretty exhausted....I just found out I was having surgery on Monday, and tomorrow is Friday.  I've been busy this week getting things at home prepared for my down-time.  It's like going on vacation, without the actual vacation part.  

But anyway, I'm sort of a home-body, so it's not all so bad, right?  

I've been pre-processing surgery, this time, which is so different from my last experience.  I have no idea where I'll be led after I wake up from this one.  I wonder if this is a common experiences for people when they have surgery?  It's like you wake up, and there's something just a bit different about everything.  

You go under, and come back up again.  
It can take some time to figure out where, and how, things have changed.  
I'm convinced that part of surgery is the potential for deep transformation.
Something about being put to sleep, and defying death, or something.
Those first few moments you open your eyes to the world...

It's like that quote by Heraclitus:
"No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river, and he's not the same man." 

***

It's 1:11am, and the pre-registration nurse told me I should get a good night's sleep.  So, I guess i should try it out before it's too late.  

It's 1:39am now.  Thankfully, pretty much all I have to do tomorrow is be there, right?

Wake up, and be there.  And then, wake up and be there.  

The same thing, and always new.














 

 

Applied Patience 101: Day 55

Whoa! What happened?

Has your patience been put to the test!?

If you're wondering where I've been, I did not fall off the trail!
It is just hard to write and run!  
We've covered this before. The running...

But, wait up, this has been no ordinary run!

Around the time of my last post, I had stepped into my advising session at the junior college to make sure I was on track for graduation within the next 6 months, and my advisor asked me if I wanted to participate in the graduation ceremony taking place..in ONE WEEK!

What!?  Um....YEaaHhhh!??

After a review, it was discovered I was qualified to walk.  It took no time to pick up the pace!

Graduates lined up for the ceremony in the college indoor gym track...ready for take-off!


The all-out endurance-sprint i've been on for the past month has taken me from "maybe I'll graduate junior college in 6 months," to blasting full-steam onto the college campus of the University of Kansas.

I entered a maze of applications, name change approval, gathering old vocational school transcripts, financial aid unknowns, advising holds from when I pursued the dream in 2008, and had no idea there would be 8 more years of patience (and many other events) to come...

***

Last month for the first time in my entire life, I donned a cap and gown!  
It's a tad addictive.
I like that get-up.  


I've never heard a door slam so hard...
The door to the hell I've lived through to get here.
I will never be in that hell again.
Sure, I can have hard times, moving forward, but I will never be living in the reality of that past, ever again.

Education comes in all forms, the least of which, most experienced people probably know, is through college classes, but in our culture it can function like a voice.  It says something about dedication, and meaning what you say about a certain thing.  Important as classroom learning is, real world application is what counts.  Still, a degree is a vehicle that can  get you in front of people, to be seen and heard. Or...in front of people  to listen, see, and hear others in a transformative way..  College can get you the basics you need, toward the right letters after your name, to get you started in certain fields, like, say, Counseling, for instance! 


This might be the first time in my life I'm ready for this.
As I practice listening to myself, I have more confidence in this direction.  
I'm ready to listen to, and acknowledge, and love myself, which is actually most important on this trail.
 
This is an entirely new place, I've never been before. (Are new places becoming a habit?)
The world is rapidly changing and shifting from within me, and around me.
And here I am, showing up.
Facing what it means to respond.

***

There's a lot to catch up on.  I feel like a new person.
But, I'm still, or rather, finally, me, again.

I've gathered all parts of my being for this leg.
There might be some stragglers, still on the way,  
but I'm here, now, a work in process, being here, getting there.  

I haven't figured out how to tell it all.  I couldn't, because I don't know it all. 
I just know it all.  I'm busy living it out, right now.
 

There's people and trail angels, magic and light, and, above all, Love, that keeps returning to me these days. I can't wait to spread it around.

So...I'm not waiting.  (More to share about what's coming, soon.  You mean this isn't what's coming soon?)  To speak the obvious, there is, of course, so much more happening now, and coming soon for us in this world, and I am influenced by it, but I can't begin to gather it into an update, when it is part of this trail, itself, in many ways.

There is a lot on the horizon.
Possibly, more than I can imagine. 
New endings.  New beginnings.  All unknown.  All already in the books, it seems.
All the mixed up, challenging certainty of it.
The endless showing up is what it's about.

More has already evolved.
I'm coming in for a landing, and I will be on the ground on the front-lines again.  
Thinking, feeling, and moving on my feet.

You know, when I really settle down into this space, the past month has really been more like a soaring, than a sprint. So, I didn't fall off the trail, I flew off of it! 

So much work has gone into getting where I am now, but the past month, things have been a wild coasting.  A Going-Somwhere-Important coast, but with grace surrounding me.
There has not been near the struggle I am used to.

(No ordinary run, indeed!)

There is still material to be shed, transformed, and picked up.
I have joined with my soul to do this work.
Discovering everything I can be.

 





 

The Power of Patience: Day 54

Waiting is hard.  It might be the hardest.  

I've worn the word "patience" on an engraved silver charm hanging from a chain around my neck, daily, for over four years.  I keep waiting for when I will reach some pinnacle of the word, and be able to release it from my neck.  
But, nothing has come to be a stronger need in me to grow...to tend, cultivate, and simply observe.

The encouragement in this, is that when I first purchased this adornment as a focus piece to have resting at the center of my chest, I was a different person in a different place.  There has been significant progress, despite my need to become even more patient.

Or, maybe my need to be more patient is a sign of progress.  Like a meditation, and the journey of going deeper.

What matters is that the constant reminder of patience has been a force for change in me.  
This change has gone deeper than I could have imagined, and maybe deeper than I would have wished for, at the time, had I known what it would mean for me. 

When patience goes deep, you become present.  

Presence sounds wonderful in the books, but if it was as instantly wonderful an experience as it's sometimes made out to be, more people would be clamoring for it.  The world would be satisfied with seeing clearly, instead of rushing along.

We want to be present, but honestly, do we?
This is a big "We."  It's bigger than you and me.  It's the collective "we".
Everything mainstream, popular society tells us is that we don't want what we intrinsically have.
Our actions say we agree.

Sometimes the only light we let in comes from our cell phones.  

It's bigger than my own experience of presence, but no different from it.  
Capital "P" Presence is hard.
At least, it's hard before it's awesome.
Or maybe, it's standing outside of Presence, so disconnected from all of life, lost on how to get in, that is so hard.

Many basic skills are like this at the beginning.  
I feel like I'm at the end of this beginning, coming into the middle.  
So really, a new beginning, touching the door to a new experience of life.

There's no visible line to mark where I am, and there's no map to purchase at the state line for this.  I sense it from within me.  This sense is my map.


I've been at the entryway of Presence. It's not comfortable, but I sense approaching calmness.
Odd.

 It feels like dissociation, only in reverse!

Maybe that's not really so odd, but it is new in my life.
It was all mixed-up, and presence once felt like danger to me.
 As everything in the society around me expresses, I haven't been alone in this.

We are born into presence as babies, but some of us get hurt there.
Not just the pains of development, but some outside force tearing into our soul bodies, sometimes our physical bodies, in this place of receptiveness.  
It's no wonder when we don't want to return.  
It's easy to see presence as the source of the problem, and the pain. 

We have built our world upon getting as far away from connection as possible.
This world is walking-wounded.
In such a preoccupation to escape, a large part of our common community has formed individual micro-disconnected cosmos around the human spirit so that each person can live in a culturally condoned illusion of togetherness.

What about social anxiety?
I've struggled with it.
I wonder why it's so prevalent?
I can write this all here, but can I look at your face, and say it? 
How many of us could?

Well, I want to.  
Which brings us back to patience.

Sometimes the need to wait is beyond our control.  
We simply have to sit and wait, as quietly as possible.
Red lights, doctor's appointments, grocery store lines, test results.

But patience also moves and talks.  Patience isn't always passive.  
It interacts.  It encourages connection from within, and can bring us closer to the safety of our breath, apart from the illusion of satisfied living amongst all the advertisements for false contentment.

 Being isolated in physical form, or behind a culturally condoned mask, is not the cure because disconnection isolates us from our selves.  

Patience can help us say "hello" while holding the door for a stranger, or to look the cashier in the eyes and say "thank you" on a busy day.   Patience gives us time to think about ourselves, and others, and let them know it.   On a big patience day, maybe we go outside and look around, look up, and touch the earth we're standing upon.  Patience helps us not hate ourselves. Patience can help improve relationships, and overall confidence.

Patience is about genuinely being in the moment.
I've been practicing patience for years, and recently, I've really gotten into it.
It's not fun at all, at first, but I can say I am enjoying life more.  Coming back to the power of my breath is now grounding, instead of a trigger to exhaust myself through the avoidance of it.
To have patience is to live in your own world, governed by your own laws, in the best way.  
Patience bucks the system.  Try driving the actual posted speed limit, and just see how anti-establishment you suddenly feel, and begin to identify as.  Be prepared, your life will change.  

I want to stop making life so hard for myself, and therefore, stop waiting to be patient.

The other word on the chain around my neck is "grace."   Adventures into healing through a focus on patience is a journey, which pairs well with grace.  We need patience with ourselves to not always get it right the first time, and maybe not even the 50th or 5,000th time.  The funny part about this is that to attempt at all is to be engaging, masterfully.  

Patience isn't about right and wrong.  It's more about being where you want to be.
Connected here, now, just as you are.

Will you check out this path with me?   

 







 







  












 

All My (Best) Life : Day 53

I have a very long way to go.
But in the silences, I have been getting somewhere.  

I am coming into my mind, instead of losing it.
Day by day, I show up, though it's not always readily viewable to others.
I see it, and what I see matters.
There is action here.

I can't always be exactly in my body.
There are still wars waged within a day, hour or even a single second.

The choice to keep going is constant.  
Am I going to survive this?

I ask myself questions, and then watch.
Waitfully.

Patience, like a stem. 
My life sometimes resting in other places...
In the root, or other times, the bud.

But growing, growing, growing all the time.

So much coming and going.  

Me, still, always staying.

Staying, and staying, showing up.
Grooming the bloom.

My vision becoming stronger, and more sure.  
Looking up.  Visiting this world, and the worlds of others.

I catch myself in the wanderment.  

I can't let myself be horrified by where I've been.  
What I've lived, or put myself through...
The gains, the losses.

Grief.

I've done some things right.
Some wrong.
Mostly, though, I've just done.  
Meaning, I've gotten here.  
And here is enough.

Here is my best.

It was always my best.
All of it is my best.

I won't hate myself anymore, even if what I did then is not what I would do now.
Now, I know better than to judge, to be my worst critic, to rake myself over coals for things I couldn't have possibly known in advance.

Grace is not a hand-me-down.  It's an adventure to be lived, like Love.

Do not mistake quietness for staleness.  
I am actively concentrated on presence.
To find my soul serene...
 







 
 

Universe of Hope: Day 52

This life makes me cry.  I'm still so happy it's my life, though.  
There is no shortage of things to cry, and be happy, about.

That's how life is.  
I wonder if it's universal.

One of my favorite poems, since I first heard it in my 20's, has been Kahlil Gibran's, "A Tear And a Smile." 
I really can't get enough of it.   Often, when it enters my mind, I  read it over and over and over, in a single setting.  It usually enters my mind when I'm questioning life, often in a numb overwhelm.  As I continue, tears roll down my face, and the world softens.  When I am done, I am closer to believing in the beauty of it all, again.

This poem brings me closer to peace about the failures in my life, and makes me less afraid of living.  

Sometimes it can feel like there's no point to carry on when life seems daunting.  When getting to just the "beginning" has been a lifelong struggle, and there are no guarantees of where you'll be in the end.  

But the end is the beginning.

We have all been here before.
It's never too late.
 
Carry on, loving the journey of your one precious heart, and life as it is today.
We're breathing for eternity, but no tear or smile is ever the same.  
Millions of them multiplied all through the world.

Hope is always transforming.
It never asks you to know how or where.  
Just keep showing up in the exchange, and let it grow. 









 

I Am What I Am! : Day 51

For the fall 2016 semester I am taking Accounting, in order to complete my associates degree, and concurrently enrolling in a ceramics class at the junior college.  

You got it.  I'm 36, and have been working toward graduating from junior college for going on 20 years.  I'm here to say, "NO SHAME."

 I'm me.  I can't be not me.  I'm who I am.
We all have our stories, and part of mine is that I don't have a college degree, as much as I've wanted, and been working toward one, since I took my first class in 2001.  

I started out with promise, and I'm making good on it.  

There are plenty of reasons, excuses, and failings that have caused this part of my  journey to be incomplete, but I'm not dwelling on those now.  

Hardships and grief are real.  I've carried them, I feel them, I'm highly aware and accepting of them now.  And now, it's time to carry on.  

I'm still here, still making that walk into the institution that was my hope for so long.  

I did graduate from an accredited Massage School in the middle of this walk, but that section of the trail was cut short by my health and circumstance.  And, the fact it was never what I was meant to be or do.  

I have completed things from beginning to end.  I have put forth incredible effort, and reached my goals.  I have strong ethics.  I am passionate and compassionate, and work to help myself and others.

When I think about who and what I want to be, and who I already am inside, I can never move beyond "Art Therapist" because it follows me everywhere I go.  Then, jumps in front of me, looks me dead in the eye, and freaking stares!

I know there is a population in the world I can serve.  It's what I feel I have been created for.  

The subject of art + therapy/therapy +art is something running through my veins pretty much all day, every day, regardless of where I am, or how I'm personally feeling.  I'm always trying to get there, but it takes a degree to embody this realization completely.  


I love, and believe in art.  I believe in it's ability to help people connect and see things they otherwise might not.  I believe in its transformative power within and without.  I honor humans connecting through the spirit and medium of art in a "not alone" way.  

I am finding my way forward and through. 
This is no easy road to commit to.
And, may I find, do, and be all I am meant for, along the way.
May the journey grow me into a person who can positively help as many as possible.

Right now, the direction seems to be pointing me toward completing my degree, step by step.  I am a mere 3 required classes away from completing junior college, and then I think the hardest part of completing my undergrad will be complete.  

Part of me longs for a Fine Arts degree foundation, but at this time that route is not in the cards for me.  With the current state of education in America, any kind of art school is financially out of reach.  I am already confined by significant student debt, as it is.  Art school is a serious undertaking I cannot score into.  And, I question if it would be the place for me, anyway?  

Art is one place in my life I keep sane, where I don't have to alter it to meet criteria from any outside force.  It is guided and directed only by the internal limits and boundaries of any given medium/material, itself.  I protect the art within me.  I can't risk it to being crushed.


This safe, protected, pure, unadulterated spirit behind what art is to me is what motivates me to carry on.  This energy is the very "product" I have to offer others in need of this kind of healing.  It is what I've loved, and wanted to share with the world, since I was a little girl.  

So, I'm going there, finally whole enough to identify the courage within me to do so.

Going to that place inside me that still believes, even after 20 years of educational setbacks, struggle and delay, that I must continue on to be complete in my calling...to live and die a satisfied human, at home in mind, body, and soul. 

 










 

Tuesday Tunes Day, "The Beautiful Ones" by The Battle of Land and Sea- Day 50

The last week has been met with so many beautiful, creative people, walking the journey of life with their whole heart, I couldn't pass this song up.  

I like the reference of "chosen ones" in this song because I think we all are chosen ones.  It's so easy to feel inadequate, and like it is only others who are chosen and seen as beautiful.


What if you saw yourself as beautiful and chosen?  
What if I saw myself as beautiful and chosen?  

WE are the beautiful ones, and it's ok to "turn your backs to the cold wind," whatever that cold wind is in your life.  

Everyday, gathering freedom.

It can be so hard to give yourself a chance.  But really, it's ours for the taking...and the giving.
It's not about what you look like, the things you make, or any material success.
Those things are nice, but in the end all anybody cares about is you.  
Imagine that.  Let that sink in.

You are cared about.
Beautiful.  Chosen.
Now.

It's ok to start your life, moving forward, right from where you are, just as you are, with what you have.  And whatever you have to leave behind.

Onward, Beauties!

***

About today's Tuesday Tune Pick: 

This song gave me a beautiful surprise when a quick search brought me to the website of singer/songwriter, Sarah Golden, who is also a mom and talented artist/surface designer! What!?
And...she has a new record to be released this year!!!  A woman not holding back!


Singer/Songwriter: Sarah Golden Website
Sarah's Artist Page on Facebook
The Battle of Land and Sea Band -Facebook
Battle of Land and Sea-Album Review
 



 

Looking Forward: Day 49

What a week!

I feel like I'm making strides in healing, I can't even put words to!  

The only thing I can definitively say about this is that while pain is able to sneak into the tiniest hidden cracks of any landscape or human form, so is Love.  

This week I've taken on a completely different approach to my daily existence.  
But it's one of those things that feels like it's taken 5 years to reach.
These things happen overnight...over the course of an extended (Verrrrry extended, in my case,) but unknown, amount of time.

It is the daily "showing up."  

My showing up doesn't always register here in the trail updates yet.  
I'm not always here, able to tell about it.  


I think this is because the movements and shifts are so subtle.  
Like a person who is almost dead, but when you check, still has a pulse.  
It's not like that alive person is going to jump up and do the Tango.
It can take days and days and days of what looks like nothing.

Then...they move a muscle.  
First, a twitch.
Then, a movement from one joint of a finger.
A flutter across the eyelids.
The wetness of a tear out of the corner of a still-closed eye.

Then, Light!

Still, no Foxtrot.

The process of coming back to life takes time.  
It can't be rushed.  But the needed effort toward goals can't be ignored, either.

There's a fragile, delicate balance amidst hardy resilience.
You should know every day I'm here, I'm REALLY here!

Recovery is a beautiful thing.  
It's like the new "Brutiful" word that's going around. Brutal + Beautiful.  
I don't know who started it, but I've seen it on posts from Glennon Doyle Melton, using it to refer to life.  Urban Dictionary says it was coined by underground Death Metal/Comedy band, Masked Penguin Slaughters.  

Maybe Glennon is in the Death Metal scene?  Or the Death Metal scene is all up into Glennon?

Pick your inspirational preference and go with it.  (Oh, the life of a researcher, at heart!)
I don't know who came up with it first, and it doesn't really matter, but I like it!

And, it fits.  

So now, it's my word.
Which is to say... 
It's OUR word. 
Do not be afraid.

Looking forward to tomorrow.

 











 

Tuesday Tunes Day, "I Belong To Love" by Larkin Poe - Day 48

Be happy today's Tuesday Tune is on Wednesday this week, because if this post would have come through yesterday, there's potential we would be listening to R. Kelly's, "I Believe I Can Fly."  And yes, while I can get behind the lyrics to "I Believe I Can Fly" ...NO.  Just...no.  Then, after a little more research, I realized featuring R. Kelly was going to get complicated, quickly.  
It didn't fly.

I put in a little extra time, and came up with today's Tuesday Tune, Larkin Poe's "I Belong To Love."

I'm typically all ears for a girl-band, and these girls have it made because they're sisters. The first four letters of their last name even spell Love!

What is better than family members singing about love together, and inviting the rest of the world to join in?

Simply nothing, thank you!











 

Coming Down Hard, Lift Up Your Arms- Day 46



I've been coming down pretty hard on myself for not showing up here like I want to.

It hurts so much to have something I'm devoted to, but not doing.  

Another week has been spent being run around by the invisible nothing of pain.

So unappreciative of it.  
But it's also an old friend.  
Pain knows me so well.

I'm starting to think maybe the cure to this relationship is to show dear Pain some love.

My pain is not a person.
We aren't married or indebted to each other.
But we've been through life together.
Almost from the very start.

It's too much to go on ignoring where pain is.

IGNORING MY BODY.
IGNORING THE CORE OF MY SOUL.


"It hurts!" is not an excuse anymore.

Fucking damit....crying.
I don't want to cry.

I don't want to feel this.

It's embarrassing!  I definitely don't want my family to know about it.
Not the people who have nurtured this all along the way.
Feeding pain through a hole in the closet door. 
Just enough goodness to keep making me stick my arm out.
Over and over and over...repetitive use injuries.
I need to protect them.
How could I have survived without them?

I don't want to slow down.  
Running for my life...then jumping in an ice bath.
It's what I do.

Don't touch me.
Don't warm me up.
Don't care.

I'm busy getting through this, don't you see!!???

I can't stop.
Dying.


****

It's time.
She's  crowning.  

Suffocation.  I can't breathe.
Stop being there!

We're going to have to cut you open.

***

I walked into the operating room,
and did it.
Held my arms out,
and let that scalpel shape a hug around me.

***

Never the same.
Getting to know a stranger.
Pain grieves the loss of me.
My arms around her.

I'm still me, you're still you...even with pink hair and a smile.
Look into my eyes.
There, there.

We go on.
Loving.
Healing.
Being.

Transformation.

***

It's going to be ok.  
Even if I don't make it.
Still ok.

We made it.

We made it.  We made it.  We made it.....

On my ceramic memorial stone..."We made it."


Friends, we're always making it.

Together.

Though you might not know, until the end.


(For an insider view of art in process, find me on Facebook at Dirt Trail Studio!)










 

Cure For Pain- Day 45

"Nobody wants to hear about your pain."

It hasn't been spoken to me, but it doesn't mean it isn't the truth.  
Likewise, it doesn't mean it is the truth.

I'm usually so busy running, distracting, and hiding from my own pain, I haven't taken time to explore how lonely experiencing chronic pain makes me feel.

Loneliness hurts the most.  

But it gets tricky because when I'm in pain I'm drawn toward isolation.

Intense, unrelenting pain is messy.  
I rather deny it, myself.  

I don't want to talk about it!

How about let's have it just not be there.

That worked for a while.  
In the sense that it made me exceptionally dysfunctional.
Almost killed me a few times.

Hmm.  Yeah, but it worked.

Oh pain, silly pain.

Eventually, it's its own person.  Or animal.

Nobody likes pain.

So, care can happen without responding to pain's presence.  


It's like when you put the dog outside or in another room when people come to visit.

Or, a pet who has come down with rabies.

On a farm.

In the middle of nowhere.

.....Bang.....    ........



You know, you're gonna get through it.

It turns out it's not rabies.

It's not the end.


Sometimes it's pain, whispering in your ears that no one cares, and tries
to inspire you not to care, yourself.

Pain doesn't like itself.

It wants you to make it go away.

It's been treated so badly.
It doesn't know what to do with itself.

It can find small places you'd think it could never fit into.
Like a spider when it knows you've spotted it, and sees you're holding a shoe.
"Motherfucker!"  
Oh sorry, excuse me.
Sometimes it comes out of nowhere.

Just a lunatic, red-faced, obsessively scanning the room, while holding a shoe in the air.

Waiting.......

But, eventually goes to bed, never finding the 8-legged creature.  Never able to rest.

Jumping when the sheet lightly brushes your arm.  

Pain, crawling all over you.
Into the middle of your soul.

 

Point to it.  Is it here...here...here?

No.  No.  

Nowhere.


(Using this song doesn't mean I'm promoting it.  It just means I understand it.  What I DO promote, is telling about it in whatever safe way you can.)





























 














 

This week's special focus is going to be Relaxing, if I have anything to do with it.

Stress does not do a body good, and I have been carrying on with a lot of it.
Most of us do.

 So why not share the love of letting it go? 


***

It has been a struggle to keep up with the physical pain I've been experiencing.

It is hard to let go of what I want to do and what my body wants from me.  
My body demands rest and sleep, while I want to ramp things up.

So I have to do the best I can.
My best is my best.

My best has never felt good enough.

So, I'm face to face with myself, and deep feelings that have ultimately led to...
Disorder
Struggle
Pain
Face to face with what it's felt like to carry my life around as if it's one big failure.

My life is  not a failure, and neither am I!
Life is a metamorphosis.  

***

What is "good enough" for me?  
Who determines what is best for me?
Is there any absolute definition of "Best" anywhere?

Maybe this week I will explore limits, boundaries and listening to what's best for myself.

Enough with the critics, inside and out. 
Enough with the rules of never being satisfied.
Enough with never being Enough.

My Best is not lacking just because I am not perfect.  
This is what doing the work of life looks like!  
I am here to show you it's not always clean and pretty,  and it doesn't matter!
I can be depended upon to not quit when things are hard, and then show you the messiness of hard.

I'm showing you in real-time it's possible to keep going, and love what you're doing, even when it seems like you have a fatal flaw.

The people I'm looking to connect with will see that I'm doing my best, giving my all, and that I also will not bullshit them with the idea that I'm a proponent of self-care and healing...and then hide that I am in need of it.  

I am a mother, a wife, an artist, a person who cares about the people doing their best every day.

And whether I like it or not, I'm am recovering from a lifetime of trauma.

There might be days I don't write, but you can be certain I am still showing up in those hours you don't see me.  
Those are likely the hours I am showing up the most.

I'm letting you see the process of Not Giving Up.  
 

Figuring out the shape of my life, matters.
Maybe we are butterflies.  Butterflies are potentials.
Butterflies aren't born as butterflies.
When my body asks to be taken better care of, and I respond, that is putting in the work, just as much as staying awake for 20 hours straight to get a daily post up is putting in the work.

Sometimes showing up means not keeping up appearances of something that's trying to change into something else. 

That "something else" I am working to change into is...healthy!
This journey is morphing along with me.

 I will be here to share the journey, every day, to the best of my ability...
And my ability is what I will continue to focus on.

On day 41, or 52 or 76, or 304, I'M HERE.  And you're going to know I was here all along, every time you see me because you're going to see I'm changing and transforming.

We are capable of walking this trail in a way that feeds our souls.
In my heart, I believe it is this moment that gets you from here to there.  
It's not the easy times that grow you, or show what you are made of.

I have to remind myself this is a journey, and allow it to be that.
I am not a product.
But I am making something of myself on this walk.