This little spot we own. The pond was dug about 18 years ago, the trailer arrived there this summer. My husband and kids have been working on fixing up this place for a deer camp. The girls are thinking this is a nice 'retreat' spot, picturing votive candles floating on the pond at night….the boys see the great buck coming by, I guess it will depend on who is staying there.
We camped at our river last night! Each time we put the tent up we marvel at how lucky we are to have access to such a great spot!
A family of industrial beavers helped to clear our spot out, so now it is much larger and we still have the shade of a few larger trees they did not munch down.
On the river, as it lazily flows by, are many little bugs skating along the surface, I was hoping to see fireflies, but fell asleep before it was pitch dark.
Just as I was dozing off, I heard something right close by scramble up a tree. As I was straining my eyes to see what was, a animal on the ground in front of me hurried away, when I gasped in shock, the one in the tree came down….I woke up my husband with my surprise!
My husband says, “if it you see a skunk, don’t holler….”
I think my slightly loud gasping scared the raccoons from playing in the trees nearby, I guess we surprised them being in there usual spot.
I woke a few times in the middle of the night, no fireflies, but wonderful stars, a sliver of the moon, a big splash in the river, not sure what was taking a moonlit swim!
I forget how busy the nightlife is here on our land, you really miss out when you sleep indoors. I think in the night the animals are happy to have the earth to them selves.
We are camping in a campground that has long been shut down or I guess just turned into our own private one. We do ponder from time to time on sharing this wonderful treasure, and maybe we will when we no longer can get out of the tent with ease.
It is a perfect place to rest, a way to recharge and reconnect after a day of work, with access to a long river awesome for kayak or canoe!
We talked that maybe in our retirement, we could be running a special and unique little campground. We would make sure each site was private and had a view of the river, so each one could experience what we did, a retreat campground!
A place to pitch a tent and experience life surrounded by nature in its own special dance, music to sooth the soul, breathing space!
In 2002 I began making memory quilts due to the death of my young nephew. I took his clothes and created quilts for his siblings and mother. Soon after another mother who lost her 2 year old gave me his clothes to make one about her son. This little boy I knew not at all.
As I cut up the little clothes, the small jeans, the t-shirts and as I read the words that I had each write, I felt connected to the little boys. It was like they came to help me, to guide me to comfort the ones they left behind. It was an intriguing and very moving experience that perhaps opened me up to what some call the Creative Genius.
It was my intention at the time of each quilt to capture the boy’s essence, to hold a bit of them here on earth.
The finished quilt seemed to hold magic powers besides having something to hold on to.
Around the same time, I was asked to create coffin drapes. Hard to describe here, but if you can think back to an open coffin, they are really only half open. The closed part then has a drape that conceals the leg or lower half of you as you lay in there.
I made quite a few and had them in two different funeral homes. They displayed them on coffins in the Casket Display Room. When I seen the room with colorful quilts adorning those boxes, it seemed I was on the right path.
However, after a few months, one funeral home had me come and collect them, saying they were for the Ego not for Spirit. I was puzzled to say the least, but left with them in my arms.
The second funeral home did sell one. One I had made with fabric of birds. A woman who passed loved birds and her family thought it a perfect way to personalize her coffin.
As I worked on these both in the creation and then with the funeral homes, I was learning more about how we say good -bye and how we celebrate or mourn the loss.
The Coffin Drapes then led me to make teeny tiny quilts that would fit into small coffins that a baby would be buried in. It was then that I was asked to go to a Baby Grief Group and present this idea.
This group of grieving parents was working on projects to help the next set of parents who suffered the loss of child, have access to things that can help at this sad time. A basket that holds many things you would never even think about, but need to.
I began to see how we seldom think of the process of death until we are right in the middle of it and then make decisions in a high emotional state, and most often are a bobble-head just nodding as the funeral director gives us options.
As I look back on that time in my life, I now see it as the first lessons in Body and Spirit, to see and work with those who deal with bodies and with the grieving who are holding on to Spirit.
Imagine now the many ways we deal with death? The many different religions and traditions that are used to dispose of the body, how there are rules even in this, and not to mention the expense, the guilt and the shame if you don’t put your loved one in a perfect box.
Today as I sit here all that seems so foreign to me, that we are so concerned of a body after the Spirit has left it. It seems to me an empty container. My first close encounter with the funeral business left me feeling cold.
At first I saw it as a wonderful service to help those who lost their loved ones, to help them through this transition. A deeper look had me reeling.
It almost seems that we as a society have been hoodwinked.
There are businesses that make a living on empty bodies.
If we separate ourselves and can see that the body is the vehicle we use while alive, it does beg to ask why we spend so much time and effort yet again on the container?
The body while alive is a truly amazing thing, it is a finely tuned instrument that we use to experience life on earth, to gain awareness and consciousness and it houses the soul. But once the breath leaves, once the soul exits, then what? It seems in nature it is cycled back into the system effortlessly, yet we struggle to maintain it, and preserve it. Why?
Why do we try to hold on, to keep it unchanging, to not allow it to cycle back, to return to the ash of its beginning.
Is this even possible to stop the decay the natural process?
Who is resisting?
Who fears the ending?
Who wants to preserve a dead body?
Who suffers the most when it dies?
Death is a great teacher of living.
Live like you were dying, isn’t it impossible not to?
If we look at life as fleeting, as precious with the ending unknown, perhaps we would live differently. Some how we feel that we have time at our disposal always, another day, another year, another hour, but do we?
Would it not be better to speak of death, to anticipate it, to face it fearlessly. And perhaps when we find peace in dying we can really live.
Nickleback sings a song “If today was your last day” and a few words caught my attention. No rewind button.
Resilience has been in the news alot lately. Resilience seems like a nice word, but to me it stands next to resistance. So I guess it depends on how you use the word. How are you resilient? What is it that you resist?
It seems to me that Elizabeth Edwards book "Resilience" is not a good use of the word. What I have gotten from her TV interviews is that she is resilient to hearing the failure of fidelity. Now many of you may say, she is seeing the lack of fidelity, and even feeling the lack of fidelity, but what I am seeing is her lack of Acting like there is fidelity.
Her actions are to try and get Trust back. How do you do that? Are you not trying hard to trust that which can't be trusted? Trying to find certainty in a land of uncertainty? She says that she is a changed woman. And she is, but her actions are not changed. She is still standing by the man she married, not acting like a woman who is now sharing a man. She wants to be his one and only, and he is showing her he loves more than just her.
She is working hard to keep the family together, while he is going out the backdoor to visit another woman. So can she work hard enough? Who is doing the most damage, her or him or both?
It seems to me that both are failing. He failed to uphold his vow of fidelity, and she failed to leave when the vow was broken.
You can stay, but you stay knowing you are now sharing, and for some that is fine. If you share, you no longer are the one and only.
Is she resilient or resisting the sharing? Resilient to keep coming back for Fidelity when it is no longer possible. Can you get back to the start once the backdoor has closed?
What her message seems to be to me, is that you can, with work, overcome the infidelity. You can un-ring the bell and get back to square one. To overlook that part of him. The part that pains you, the part where he looked beyond you and found a place to love. How do you do that? How do you convince yourself and get to a place of fidelity, again?
Resilient and resistant are tough words, for when something happens that you vowed you would not tolerate, you are then asked to walk. Walk in what you know inside is the way that preserves your self- love, self -esteem, self period.
The most damage is done inside if you stay. And what do you really gain? What have you sold yourself for?
It seems to me that she has picked him up and is carrying him, trying to make him into something that he isn't. What a load to carry.
In the Presence Process Book by Michael Brown he says, "If we pick up anyone and carry them, when the moment comes for us to put them down, their feet will land in the exact spot from which we picked them up."
She will carry him, perhaps die while carrying him along, but she can't change what is inside of him. But the carrying of him will change her inside. She will be overburden, stressed and feel love is responsibility, not free.
Love isn't responsibilty! It isn't working hard to make the other person something he isn't. Love of self is wild and free and allows others to do what they do.
Allow them to be themselves, no matter what that appears as. It will also give you freedom. Stay and share or walk away alone. Your love walks with you, always.
Mind Story verses Reality.
What is a mind story and what is its main purpose? Who gets to create this and why? Can you manipulate mind stories? What happens to reality or to you in reality with a mind story?
An Abused mind has a story and I call it a Mind Story. A story about what is happening instead of what is happening.
It can literally eclipse reality and contradict feelings your body carries.
I believe the Mind Story begins for one reason and continues for another. I also believe that parents or adults begin this process.
We tell stories sometimes instead of the truth to protect someone, their feelings and their shortcomings, and begin a process that gets way out of hand. We tell a story to keep our story going!
In the case of Abuse, this gets so twisted that reality gets pushed so far back we can't see the forest for the trees!
My mother had a Mind Story, my father had a Mind Story, and in the end I had combination of both, and neither story was in reality, so of course there was no way that I could be.
As a child if you are not shown reality you will not see it. That seems profound, but true. Reality it seems is an option, but the Mind Stories are not.
Children play follow-the-leader, period.
Children will do as you do, and can be taught to believe as you believe. Sometimes it takes threats or conditions, fear, but you can bend and twist a child's mind, or help them build a Mind Story.
It seems to benefit the adult.
In my world, I followed leaders, I was a good girl, I listened and obeyed, I worked hard to keep their worlds working, I never knew that I was working to keep a deep dark secret.
I believed their words and allowed reality to slip from my grasp. I wanted to believe their words for all my love depended upon it. To not believe their words would be to lose it all.
Whether my body carried emotions that seemed to juxtaposition with reality, it never mattered. Their word was God.
Word was God, not reality. Reality was the Devil incarnated.
That line "do as I say and not as I do….." Sure has a new meaning for me today.
When you are young, and depending upon them to feed and clothe you, you need to believe what they say, or become homeless, parentless, an orphan.
Maya Angelou said, "Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives." And another, "….surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance especially if one had no choice." Both are profound when you put them up against a child living in an abusive home.
I had a Mind Story for 46 years. A story about me, my childhood, my parent's reality, yet on the day I found out that I had a Monster for a Father and an Ostrich for a mother, I felt normal for the first time ever.
It all made sense, my Mind Story and reality clashed, and I made sense. No wonder my mind never seemed in sync with reality, IT wasn't. So upside down and mental was my normal. I was normal, just not normal like others. I was a normal dysfunctional person!
Now I could sort this out. I had a Mind Story that I had to unravel and I had a reality to compare it to. No words this time. None!
Words seemed to delete reality on a whim. Words tried to change a monster into a dad, a husband for her, but words did not work for me. Words could not erase abuse in my body or my mind!
Words. Words abuse after the abuse! Words that pretend it never happened, words that you are all right! Words. Words. What a screen that abuse hides behind, false truths, fakeness, pretend status, words, the power of words!
Words and silence both are deadly to the Abused and freedom to the abuser!
No wonder I want to speak out, to use my words to clash with their reality, to use my words to shout to the Heavens what is really going on.
Mind Stories, they hide the Devil inside of us. The mind so fickle and controlling, so weak and yet so powerful, it rules and tears down, the greatest tool that can render you useless as well as reality.
I have the greatest reverence for the Mind. I have experienced its reign within me its control over me, the brain washing, the blind following, lost behind the words of a mental mind!
Reality a hard won place to be. Reality holds the key to peace, love and joy. Reality holds the answer to the Mind Story.
Reality verses the Mind Story an epic battle of all time. Who wins, who loses, only 100% of the time.
Pick a side. Only one. I tried two and got mixed up. Tangled in the web. "Oh the tangled webs we weave…." I didn't know they were talking about Mind Stories! Lies is that what makes up a Mind Story?
I was built on lies. A foundation without substance, a hollow form, a willow that can bend in either direction, swaying this way and that way!
A reed, flexible, pliable….the perfect tool to be used.
I will allow myself to be used again. This time I will allow the Universe to use me. Use this life, this body and my life experience.
We can be used in Darkness or used to spread the Light. I want my Light to shine forth, to dispel the darkness that others may be caught up in. I want to use my words, my walk into reality to be for the good of many. Use me! Shine your Light through me so that others can see!
Without your Light, I am just a reed, hollow, empty, useless. I will be a channel for your Light to pass.
Use me!
The clarity between the Mask-less and those with Masks begs me to define the two. What is a person with a mask, and how do they know, or do they? Who are the ones mask-less and how do they get that way.
I will take this from my point of view. In my first 46 years I lived as one person, you could say a Mask. The Mask I was was a woman lost in dysfunction. I would say “authentically dysfunctional”, meaning I was so dysfunctional it became my authentic way to be. I did not have a normal way tucked into myself.
If you are authentically dysfunctional, you don’t know that your life is not normal, not real, not good, or not right. Sure sometimes there are moments that you seem out of control, like more dysfunctional then others, but for the most part you live from the view of the dysfunction.
It is only when something happens that sets you ‘outside’ of the state you had been residing in.
A song on the radio today, by Mat Kearny “Closer to Love” says …we are one phone call that brings us to our knees. Boy ain’t that the truth!
One phone call tore my mask off, and left me mask-less. One call shattered the mask of dysfunction. It is only when you lose your mask that you realize others may not know it. For I would have sworn on a stack of bibles, “I have no mask”. Yet I did!
So the stubbornness, or the blindness you encounter of another, is not them lying to you, but rather they are unaware, unknowing and we can say lost in the sea of dysfunction. You really can’t blame them or shame them, for they do not know how to get out. And for whatever reason, this may not be the time.
My brother is known to say, “It is not their Lucky Lifetime.”
Lucky isn’t a word I would use to describe the walk out of a sea of dysfunction, but one I would use to sit on the shore.
I am lucky, it is my lucky lifetime, I am grateful beyond measure to have swam free. How or why me and not them, I have no idea?
The truth will set you free, yet when you only know yourself as a Mask, it seems that you will lose yourself, your life, your love, all.
Yet how ironic you have to let go of who you are to become who you want to be. Einstein’s quote.
What isn’t as clear is how to dance your solo dance while in the presence of those still lost behind their masks.
It may be that the Mask-less lead the way out. What we don’t know is who will follow, if and when, or if we walk out alone. Either way, for me, not walking was not a choice.
Being Mask-less requires a new step, a new dance and it is awkward at best most of the time. We are literally designing a new legacy while exiting one.
Wayne Dyer talks about a trapeze artist, how they have to be letting go and reaching, to hold on to both sides will pull you apart.
We are being asked to be a mask-less trapeze artist, learning to trust the bar in front, and letting go of all we have ever known.
Standing on the platform of Dysfunction we step off towards a new way. What will you do? Will you be able to let go? Do you trust what you’re reaching towards? Who supports each side? You and only you decide when to let go.
Leap!
I realized that I was left alone in my mind twice. The second time was when I was empty. Left alone in my mind without Love’s supervision.
My old version of love supervised my life. I had a mental supervisor.
I also remember saying, I have a mental lady in my mind.
I was always writing out what the mental lady would do and what I would do. Me, the new and empty of love me.
If any situation arose, and I became confused, if my body was struggling with fear and wanting to flee, and my mind was challenging, taunting, wanting to push the guilt agenda forward, I would literally write out the questions, and dialogue it back and forth, and do so, until finally by the last few sentences a new way would emerge.
It seemed the paper was a wise old woman, and listened to the ramblings of a confused little girl in a big body and in a very grownup world. With all kinds of pressures either pulling forward or yanking me back. In my mind I did not have clear view, I literally was a jumble of mixed up wires and emotions and my body too, seem confused. I could not even find a pinhead of clarity to stand upon in the sea of mental. And a puff of breath could send me toppling in either direction. I had one weak string to hold onto, a flimsy strand, that would grow larger and larger with each new step.
The strand, that I now call truth, reality, God, Intelligence, Clarity, a shining beacon forward, glimmer called hope. That single strand, was stronger than all the mental, all the confusion, and all the unconsciousness I felt.
And that is the strand that seemed to find a new answer, when my mind failed. It would find a way out, a new voice, the strength of a NO, to holding my hand as I searched for a new meaning of love.
I held on and I didn’t know really really what I was holding on to, but to leave it go, meant to fall back into an ocean of dysfunction.
I didn’t know where I was going, if I would like it there when I arrived, if I would have people, or love, or anything, but I knew that I would literally die if I had to go back.
So forward you march, fearlessly heading to who knows where.
We used to say as children “you believahead”, meaning we would hook our little red wagons up to anything that came down the road. And mostly buying into a dream, a pipe dream, a fantasy that would never come to fruition, what an idiot we thought them to be.
At times my walking would have even me believe I was totally certifiably mental. Yet what I came to find out is was going out of my mind. I was literally challenging being in reality while being in reality only not knowing so in my mind.
In my mind, I had a wonderful loving Gi GI like mother a father similar to my husband, and so leaving such wonderfulness behind caused me mountains of grief, only to find I was grieving for what I couldn’t be.
I couldn’t even be like the picture in my mind that I wanted my mother to become.
Mental sounding, well try living inside that body and mind! I remember saying to others, ‘at least you can walk away from me, I live here’….
This struggle of mental verses clarity was a daily, minute by minute dual and we really didn’t know who would ultimately win the fight. Would it be mental on the Left or reality on the Right!
Oh I had my little red wagon securely hooked up to the right side in fact I sat on the right damn well hoping I was in the wagon on the right path leading to the right destination, to the right field. A believahead.
Yep I was wholeheartedly putting all my efforts to being right in heading right in going right all the while my left side, mental lady hollered.
She was mad, she was angry she was resentful, she literally wanted me back, the old me.
And I was just as determined to not let the first 46 years define who I was, I was going to use it to make a new me.
Imperfectly, but determinedly, bullheadedly, single focused I went forward.
For I pulled my whole family in my wagon, I did not travel alone.
I carried many, not only my own children, but their children, not only in this house, but other houses, my sisters, their children. I felt the weight of the world to get this right.
Why? I don’t know. I knew if I could make my wagon go to the field of peace, love and joy, if I could do what I always wanted others to do for me, then perhaps, just perhaps, I could share this and help other little confused in their minds girls.
Perhaps, just perhaps help one, just one.
And in the end I did.
I helped me.
I saved me, well me and that little strand of string, we DID IT!.
The Island of Misfit Toys was the place in Rudy the Red Nosed Reindeer story. The place toys went that had been created wrong. I can’t recall each misfit, but their action didn’t do as the fit ones did.
Yet on the Island, if you had a problem you fit right in, perfect.
Hey, you could have called it the Island of Imperfection.
The natives on the island expected, loved, understood, you, and your quirky nature.
It is unclear in my mind why this Island appears in the story…but I know we are taken there and shown around.
Maybe it was to show we all belong somewhere. I felt sad for those left on the island of misfit toys, like no way could then fit in on the Island of Normal.
How this appeared to me today, was that I was thinking of how my husband has the knack for fixing things that are broken, missing a part, in long neglect disrepair, a car or lawnmower that most would put in the junk yard, my husband takes home.
He has the patience of a saint, can see the potential and works little by little to bring it back into its original state. We have seen many transformations that his hands have made. And we have seen him milk along vehicles that truly are tired, worn down and ready to rest.
Just when you think, he can’t possible make it run again, he does.
We are forever sentenced to a life with a car for he won’t let it go, until he is certain it has lived its full life.
I know this may sound beautiful, but try riding around in a car that has more overused parts than new. We have cars where, you have to remember to not put down the window…..that is right. Don’t push the power button, or when you do, the window will fall quickly down into the door and disappear and it will take him many hours to get it back up. So you have a window that goes down, but not up. You don’t know how instinctual it is to just hit the button, mindlessly.
We once had one of these kinds of cars stolen, yes stolen. The most expensive part on the car, was the full tank of Gas, oh and my stamps on the visor. We cheered and laughed and were so gleeful, it is gone, but lo and behold by the end of the day, it was back in our yard. It was found just a few miles away, undamaged, or so we think. We couldn’t really tell what damage was new, for who remembered all it’s bumps and bruises.
You almost feel sad that one so damaged has so much damage that you can’t even see the new bruise. And does the car get used to being so precariously balanced, or does it too feel….I will move today if I can and if not I will just stop. It is not up to me.
Does the car remember being young, shining, new all things working, where it could breeze along the road happily! Does it remember no dents and dings no overused parts? Does it wish to go backwards, does it dream of a fixer-upper man? Does it wait to die in the junkyard? Is there a heaven for cars? Just so you know my husband shops in the junkyards, seeking that one part that still is good.
Now as I look back at my life, I can see why I married this man.
I was the perfect wife for him.
One man’s junk is another man’s treasure.
They say we marry the person who can heal your childhood wounds I for one know that is true. He brought out in me the things that needed correcting. You may recognize the ‘buttons’ that we seem to be able to push in each other, those are buttons of dysfunction.
A place where we have lost our power, a place where we have a wrong connection, a button that doesn’t do what it is supposed to do.
For some of us, we have been broken for sooo long we don’t even know what the normal function looks like, feels like or would recognize it. Our normal is dysfunction. We have lived so long on the Island of Misfits, that that is normal.
It isn’t until you leave the island that you look down and see. See the damage, the brokenness, uselessness abounds. And is it possible for one misfit to fix another misfit, or do we need a fixer man.
But always remember, “One Man’s Junk, Is Another Man’s Treasure”
I should know.
I have been both.
Beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.
Last week while raking the leaves, or more like ripping up the grass, I noticed….I seemed very angry or resentful to all dead leaves. And I was being mean to the grass, raking it like a head full of snarls.
I then took a deep breath, relaxed my shoulders and really really looked at what I was doing, the grass, the leaves and even the whole body of the earth. I was humbled and ashamed.
First of all can a tree not shed dead leaves? Does it have control where they land when they fly away? Is it the tree's fault that part of its nature is to grow leaves and then surrender them when the cycle is over? And the grass, the poor grass just lying there, like it can stop the leaves from landing or run out of the way.
And then I come along and punish both, well all of us. Once I relaxed my grip, with my shoulders soft, my hand lightly holding, I combed or exfoliated the grass. What a difference it made…to me, and I am sure the grass sighed. I actually felt like I was doing an act of love. I was letting the grass breathe, allowing the sun to warm it, and for it to see the sky.
While out there that day, I recalled being a little girl with long blonde hair, too little to style it myself, and feeling responsible for making my mother angry for having to fix my hair. My head hurt as she hurriedly got the hair in somewhat of a style. The bus was arriving and I am sure I was desperate to look presentable as I began my day at school. A incident that neither of us controlled….my hair would tangle as I slept fitfully…..and she was the only one available to make it right. It wasn’t my fault she had morning sickness again, and she would tell you it wasn’t hers……I just always wished I could be less of a bother or that I could fix myself all things. On the bus that day, with one braid up and the other down, I erased her struggles and wore my hair down and free.
After my insights, I looked differently at the leaves, their deadness, the perfectly dead condition, helpless but not on purpose. The wind would come and toss it, and I would chuckle….I think they should all be in a pile, I will rearrange what nature is creating. I did try and succeeded somewhat….
That is Until I had to get my 14 year old's help to haul them all away. Another struggle against nature, he just gets to be a boy. Boys don’t care about leaves and where they lay, it seemed a task not worth doing. And just maybe he is right.
We now are waiting for the new birth all around, Spring is here….well almost for today the grass and leaves are wearing a coat of white, but right beneath the surface is a new life waiting to be born….
May I birth new acceptance and allow things to be themselves, since they can’t help it anyway!
Now, that is an odd question to ask a child. Here is a little version of a human, learning to be in this experience, and we want to know how it will all turn out. We will breeze past your childhood, and all its fun, zoom way out into the future and have you decide now, with little experience what it is you want to do. We have no idea what experiences, wonderful people and places he will happen upon as he moves forward that will pave the way. We have no idea and they have even less of the way of it.
Maybe it is the expectation of the question, that the child is a seer of the future. Maybe for ourselves the question is layed out…we want to be assured of their future, because we are unsure of our own.
I would challenge you instead to just go along for the ride in your own life. To get rid of the itinerary and let life flow as it does. To be excited in the state of unknowing, to be like an explorer and not know what is around the bend.
And isn't that what life is anyway? Do you really know what will happen today? Tomorrow? Can you really map out our future so we will always be happy and content, well taken care of without any unpleasant surprises? Is that possible? Wouldn't it be more honest to just simply say…"It will be fun to see where you go and what you become? "
Throw out your map of what you want them to become and sit back in the passenger seat of their lives and see where they take you! This opens them up to living in the now without expectations of doing their lives wrong. It is impossible to live it wrong.
Ok, I know you have expectations of them, and it they don't match you may be disappointed, but that is your problem, not theirs. Guess you planned wrong!
I love that each of us has our own lives to live and that each set is a surprise, a course we can't know what is around the bend. If we are certain of ourselves, we can be certain we will know what to do as each bend unfolds!
It isn't what we will be when we grow up, but Who!
I M Perfect lady 