Tag: be

  • Keep Play Alive!

    I discovered a great truth about myself and my feelings, that I want to own what I feel and it feels worse to have someone try and get me out before my time, I want feel as long as I want to feel.

    My mail route has been a five day a week job, and I found out on Thursday, that it was switching to a six day a week one week and then a five day the next, rotating every other Saturday off.

    I sulked, and I pouted, and felt deep disappointment in losing a day off, and when my boss tried to placate me with false hopes, it made me feel worse not better.

    It then came to me, it is much better to let a person sit in her pity puddle for as long as she likes and when she comes out on her own, she will be ready to face the life change that put her there.

    I felt cheated and manipulated and cajoled to be feeling a false emotion for her sake, but not mine. Me, I wanted to sit and grieve over my loss of a day off.

    And she felt responsible for my sadness and then tried to feed me false hopes of it being an error that perhaps it will change, etc.

    I told her, please just let me get accustomed to my loss, let me be here, I will adjust and acclimate myself in time. I am okay being sad.

    It began to bother me more that they couldn’t accept me being upset. I can now see it is best to honor the feelings and emotions and not try changing them with words.

    Just let them be.

    I can now see how I have mishandled or perhaps over-handled my daughter’s emotions messing around in them and confusing or mixing them up for my ease.

    I love that we have a right to our emotions and we can express them at our own pace.

    Losing a Saturday every other week does make me sad, it is like losing a play date, a recess or free time…I will have to manipulate the rest of my week to make up this time, perhaps giving up cleaning or washing clothes or cooking…sometimes it takes time to find the silver lining.

    Instead of giving up playtime, I will give up more domestic chores…every other week.

    Whatever it takes to keep Play alive!!!

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  • Find Their Own Way…

    The battle of the wills end when you allow the other to have free will, it is pretty hard to fight with freedom.

    The tighter you hold and the more you force, the less the other person can feel and find their own sense of what it is they want to do.

    When I was in the beginning stages of my mental breakdown, my husband and I found a place to stand that left us both in total freedom, a place called “I love you today.”

    In this spot, it allowed each of us to change our minds and to gauge our own feelings about whether we wanted to stay together. This free space to be yourself, to feel that which you feel and to express it daily allowed us the time to re-configure a new normal in our relationship.

    We fell into this spot after weeks and months of feeling the instability each of us had during the most stressful event in our marriage, Me not knowing who I was.

    Pretty hard to promise tomorrow, when today is unknown.

    It felt so much easier to breathe when we embraced the unknown and lived presently with each day and even each moment.

    “I love you today” is an honest and alive relationship and we both promised the other that if and when we didn’t want to be here we would tell the other.

    It isn’t a piece of paper, the ‘happiness’ of our children, or a million other reasons that folks stay together, but instead we individually get to choose if we fit together, if we are happy here, if we enjoy this place, if we are at peace here, if it is a spot for us to grow and change….

    It is like a free-range relationship, where each has the freedom to be who we are, and when who we are no longer works together, we will be brave enough and honest enough to let the other know.

    I just don’t feel then, that we can blame the other; we will always hold the power within us.

    I love you today, and if it changes I will let you know.

    I am thinking this same idea can be used upon our children. Instead of raising children who must remain in our pen (religion, mind set, pathway, etc), where we tell them how to be and grow, that we instead open the gate and let them roam free.

    Let their will be done.

    Let them decide which way to go and how to be.

    It releases both of us to be who it is we were meant to be.

    This reminds me of the paragraph from one of Bryon Katie’s books,

    “I don’t know what is best for me, or you, or the world. I don’t try to impose my will on you or anyone else. I don’t want to change you or improve you of convert you or help you or heal you. I just welcome things as they come and go. That’s true love. The best way of leading people is to let them find their own way.”

  • Let the Pain Out

    “Real difficulties can be overcome, it is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable.” ~Theodore N. Vail

    When you face what you actually are compared to what you desire to be, you will find much peace, it is trying to be someone else that’s impossible.

    Letting go of the potential, the prize of someday, the if only of yesterday, and the idealized version of self that is the hardest to do.

    To sit down fully in imperfection and disappointing the mind, by facing all the evidence contrary to many beliefs.

    What I felt most for the men on stage with Oprah was that they were unable to claim their lost innocence and how abuse changed them.

    They wanted what is impossible to attain, and in doing so sit in denial of whom they are.

    They are the combination of innocence lost and the affects of abuse, and when they can see the imperfections of their lives, they will see how perfectly it is.

    How abuse does steal innocence, how if you don’t address abuse, abuse lives its life for you.

    It seems that you are a victim when you repeatedly succumb to the wishes of if only, or I can’t be different, and you become a victor when you stand and state the obvious.

    I was abused.
    I am confused because of the abuse.
    I lived an upside down life due to being abused.

    Until we can recognize how upside down we are, we can’t seek to right ourselves.

    By holding on to the picture of innocence, we miss who we now are.

    I will never not know the feelings of terror of a father.
    I will never not know who I would be without the abuse, but I can know who I can be in spite of it.

    There is a life after abuse, a way to reclaim your life today, but not undo yesterday.

    Life after abuse starts when you out yourself.
    Until then, you are locked in the dark with the secret.

    Once you step out, your life after abuse can begin…Abuse and its shame lives in the dark quiet silence.

    You don’t have to tell the whole world, but speak to someone, open the wound and let the pain out.

  • The Land of Pretend.

    “Notice When Your Thoughts Argue With Reality”

                Byron Katie

     

    I know as I approach working full time, my head has to be on board; my thoughts have to agree with where I am.

     

    If I am riding around in the mail car, ‘wishing’ I were at home, it will be hellish working. My attitude at work will be affected by how I am thinking, and my demeanor will reflect my thoughts.

     

    Tossing mail will not make me suffer, but the thought that I should not be tossing mail while I am tossing mail, will.

     

    It is amazing it is never where you are that makes you suffer, but ‘thinking’ you shouldn’t be there that does.

     

    Accepting where you are at all times seems like a no brainer, but Notice When Your Thoughts Argue With Reality.

     

    Notice how many times a day you say, ‘I should be…, this shouldn’t be, I wish it didn’t, I don’t want….

     

    Those little phrases are the doorway to hell or illusion.

     

    Each time something happens and your first thought is, ‘it shouldn’t be, you are attaching to a thought that is arguing with reality.

     

    It shouldn’t be is a thought…it is a ticket out of what is.  It is hailing you to come on board, to leave the scene of what is, to walk away, to escape into the land of pretend.