I M Perfect lady

Tag: New

  • Bring into the New Year.

    As I sit here on New Years Day, I am not filled with wishful expectations, nor am I hoping for a better year…and then sitting back to see what happens.  

    I have learned that Life is a game where you get what you give….and the more you put into it, the more you get back.  I know that karma works.  I know that the Universe doesn't just randomly give out bumps in the road for no reason, that each hurdle comes with a gift of freedom, IF I face it squarely and be completely honest with myself.

    So, there is no point in wishing. However,  I remember Oprah saying she wanted to have a year of Love and Peace….and all she got that year were challenges for her to find peace and love in the worst of situations.  A challege if you will, in loving the unlovable.

    With that in mind, be careful what you wish for.

    For your wishes are God's command.  

    I don't really have wishes, but it does feel like I have just begun to live…or perhaps grasp what living is about.

    In Elie Wiesel's book "Open Heart" he writes,

    "Yes, I have written much, and yet, at this stage of my life, at the very threshold of the great portal, I feel that I have not yet begun."  

    "Too Late?"

    "Similarly, I question my many other activities. For example, in my combat against hatred, which I wished to be unrelenting, did I in fact invest enough time, enough energy, in denouncing fanaticism in its various guises? Evidently not, since all of us who have fought the battle must now admit defeat."

    "At the time of the liberation of the camps, I remember, we were convinced that after Auschwitz there would be no more wars, no more racism, no more hatred, no more anti-Semitism. We were wrong. This produced a feeling close to despair.  For if Auschwitz could not cure mankind of racism, was there a chance of success ever? The fact is, the world has learned nothing.  Otherwise, how is one to comprehend the atrocities committed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia…?"

    "I have initiated many actions, in countless locations, with many companions. And fought so many battles. Was it all in vain?"

    "What shall I say to God?  That I was also counting on His help?  Shall I have the nerve to reproach Him for His incomprehensible silence while Satan was winning his victories? While my father, Shlomo son of Eliezer and Nissel, lay dying on his cot?"

    Later on he writes,

    "A credo that defines my path: "I belong to the generation that has often felt abandoned by God and betrayed by mankind. And yet, I believe we must not give up on either."

    "Was it yesterday – or long ago- that we learned how human beings have been able to attain perfection in cruelty?  That for the killers, the torturers, it is normal, thus human, to act inhumanely?  Should one therefore turn away from humanity?"

    "The answer, of course, is up to each of us.  We must choose between the violence of adults and the smiles of children, between the ugliness of hate and the will to oppose it. Between inflicting suffering and humiliation on our fellow man and offering him the solidarity and hope he deserves.  Or not."

    "I know – I speak from experience – that even in darkness it is possible to create light and encourage compassion.  That it is possible to feel free inside a prision. That even in exile, friendship exists and can become an anchor.  That one instant before dying, man is still immortal."

    " There it is: I still believe in man in spite of man.  I believe in language even though it has been wounded, deformed and preverted by the enemies of mankind.  And I continue to cling to words because it is up to us to transform them into instruments of comprehension rather than contempt. It is up to us to choose whether we wish to use them to curse or to heal, to wound or to console."  

    "As a Jew, I believe in the coming of the Messiah. But of course this does not mean that the world will become Jewish; just that it will become more welcoming, more human.  I belong, after all, to a generation that has learned that whatever the question, indifference and resignation are not the answer."

    "Illness may diminish me, but it will not destroy me. The body is not eternal, but the idea of the soul is. The brain will be buried, but the memory will survive it."

    "Such is the miracle: The tale about despair becomes the tale against despair."  

    He also writes in chapter 15,

    "Such are the thoughts that the patient, a prisoner of his condemned body, confronting his fate, is experiencing the ferocious intensity. As I face the gravity of this moment, I feel the need to search my soul."

    "I am eighty-two years old.  As it has often before, and now more so than ever, the fact that I am who I am leads me to look back: What have I done, and what have I toiled to do, during this long journey filled with dreams and challenges."

    "Strange, I suddenly remember Baudelaire's outcry in his Mon coeur mis a nu  (My Heart Laid Bare): There exists in every man, at every hour, two simultaneous impulses; one leading toward God, the other toward Satan."  Have I distinquished the path to Good from the one leading to Evil?"

    "My life unfolds before me like a film: landscapes from my childhood; adventures in faraway, sometimes exotic places; my first masters, followed by my first moments of adolescent religious ecstasy as I and my friends at the yeshiva recieved from our old masters the keys that open the secret doors of mystical truths."

    "Have I performed my duty as a survivor? Have I transmitted all I was able to? Too much, perhaps? Were some of the mystics not punished for having penetrated the secret of forbidden knowledge?"

    "To begin, I attempted to describe the time of darkness. Birkenau, Auschwitz, Buchenwald.  A slight volume; Night.  First in Yiddish, "and the world remained silent," in which every sentence, every word, reflects an experience that defies all comprehension.  Even had every single survivor consecrated a year of his life to testifying, the results would probably still have been unsatisfactory.  I rarely reread myself, but when I do, I come away with a bitter taste in my mouth:  I feel the words are not right and that I could have said it better.  In my writings about the Event, did I commita sin by saying too much, while fully knowing that no person who did not experience the proximity of death there can ever understand what we, the survivors, were subjected to from moring till night, under a silent sky."'

    "I have written some fifty works – most dealing with topics far removed from the one I continue to consider essential: the victims' memory.  I believe that I have done all I could to prevent it from being cheapened or altogether stifled, but was it enough? And if I often publish works – articles, novels on other themes, I did so in order not to remain its prisoner.  My battle against the trivialization and banalization of Auschwitz in film and on television resulted in my gaining not a few enemies.  To my thinking, it was my duty to show that the sum of all suffering and deaths is an integral part of the texts we revere."  Elie Wiezel

    He continues to ask great questions of himself at 82 years of age….and his reflection will be ours someday.

    I wonder if we ask his questions of ourselves today, will we at 82 still be living with questions…and perhaps the questions are how we move into a deeper life…to fully live, aware.

    I do understand how knowing the evil of mankind, he yet believes in mankind.

    How the silence of God doesn't have him no longer believing there is a God.

    And, when or can you write enough about the subject of victims?

    He and I are not on the same scale on the specturm, but even at my lower end, it matters.

    Have I too, distinquished the path to evil?  

    I still am a faithful believer in mankind…that is the energy I bring into the New Year.


  • Who are You Bringing to This New Year?

    I made no resolutions for this upcoming year; I promised it nothing, hoped on even less, and expect zero from the year…for I now realize it isn't up to a year, an event, a somebody or something to deliver to me that which I desire…it is up to me.

    Expecting things from a new year is pretty much hopeless, for the year is waiting on you.

    You and only you will make 2012 a year to be remembered.

    However you spent last year, you will spend this year, Unless and Until you change that which you are doing, saying and being.

    Last year for me was one of great learning, yet on the outside the average person wouldn't have been able to see the inner changes that went on inside.

    My letting go on the inside was big.  Letting go of things having to be a certain way or expecting things flowing and following a certain trail…disappeared.  

    I had been slowly loosening my grip on controlling things, and last year I was shown clearly how it isn't up to me. 

    While it is discerning to stand in a place of No Hope, No Expectations, No Control….it is very freeing. It isn't that I am hopeless, but that I am no longer hoping for things to be different than they are, nor are my expectations exceeding that which the Universe delivers.

    I feel that I am closer than ever to being on the thin line of Now…and singing the same words of the Universe; One verse.

    Just as I can't expect my body to lose weight without me participating, I can't expect the New Year to improve without me being an active partner.

    The year is just a pile of days and how we live each day builds up the flavor of the New Year…and really each moment of every day.

    Somehow we overlook this moment in time.

    Yet yesterday was the first day we added to the Pile called New Year, what was it full of???  Today is the second helping we are adding, what are you doing today?

    The year is of your making…this year is one in your life…Your life is being drawn as you walk through your days.  What you do each day is you.  

    Each day you live your authentic truthful self is singing with the Universe…each day you put aside your feelings, and not say what you need to say, is another day given to denial.

    We keep thinking denial is a big thing, but it is actually many little moments that go by where we are not ourselves.

    We keep expecting the year to deliver to us authenticity, realness, truth, and strength, when it is our choice in each moment of each new year, that decides if our year will actually make a new us.

    We somehow see the new year as a clean slate, when actually it is a year of new moments awaiting a new you.  A you that will arrive that will make a new choice.

    The only way you will get a new year, is if the you who arrives at each new day is willing to act and speak differently.  

    The year follows you…not you it.

    We somehow have this all backwards, that you can leap upon the back of a white new year and be totally different, that the year will save you, create a newness that hasn't been part of you prior.

    When in fact, just as we wake up to each day and greet each moment of time, we too step into the new year.

    It isn't about the year….it is about the You in the year.

    You bring all of you to this new year.  All your actions of past sit with you as you sit staring at the new year.

    Who did you bring to this new year?

    What does she look like and act like?

    Is she someone you would want as a friend and trust as a partner?  

    We keep looking for the year to change us into someone we may like or even love better, when the year has zero power.

    Each of us brings to the year a self…and each of us is the designer and creator of that self.

    A successful year to me is one that has required more and more of me and challenged me to be more of myself, not less.  It has shown me places where I didn't arrive, where I denied myself and ducked in order to be 'liked/approved of/or loved.

    What I bring to this year, is a me that wants to uncover more aspects of me that are not authentic. I want to live at peace with who I am and love being me…and finding joy along the way.  

    Who are you bringing to this New Year?  

     

     

     

  • Wish For Your Self.

    What a great year of learning, again.  

    Lessons seemed to continually line up to serve to me… more of me; more freedom, more letting go, surrendering and allowing, more ways to be expressive, a deeper understanding, followed by affirmations of what doing the opposite would look like.

    I think I thought, that when I said I was going forth with love, peace and joy, like magic, that was what would follow.  Wrong.  

    Instead I was served up all of my relationships were no love, peace or joy existed, and asked to redo myself there.

    I was given opportunity after opportunity, sometimes many at a time, all clamoring for my attention…insatiable energies of need and control, that had kept me from peace or feelings of love or experiencing joy.

    What I believe lots of folks believe, is that they stay in the same place, but instead of feeling anxious, controlled, resentful, rage, anger, tight restraint…they will just work harder to feel different.

    To stay with same relationships, BUT feel differently about them.

    Feel more loving…will bring up love.  And to become peaceful where rebellious feelings explode…to dial down or to a different frequency.

    That isn't what real love, peace and joy is.

    That is denying what is there and forcing feelings.  Which is to have false feelings of love, peace and joy.

    Many believe you can simply just 'think' differently about an individual etc and like magic, feelings will change.   That your feelings are the problem within the relationship…not that the relationship itself is where the troubles lie.

    Seeing life differently is where the key lies.

    I am reading, "The Body Never Lies" by Alice Miller.  This is one of the first authors who addresses the child, instead of the parent…she sees abuse from the child's perspective and how the body feels and then how the child is made to 'feel different' in order to honor and love thy parents.

    She writes, "The parenting approach know as "Poisonous Pedogogy" breeds overly well adjusted individuals who can only trust the mask they have been Forced to wear because as children they lived in constant fear of punishment. "I am bringing you up in the way that is best for you" is the supreme principle behind this approach. "If I beat you or use words to torment and humiliate you, it is for all for your own good."

    "In this famous novel Fateless, the Hungarian writer and Nobel laureate Imre Kertesz describes his arrival at the Auschwitz concentration camp.  He was fifteen years old at the time, and he tells us in great detail how he attempted to interpet the many grotesque and appalling things he encountered on his arrival there as something positive and favorable for him.  Otherwise he would not have survived his own mortal fear."

    "Probably every child who has suffered abuse must assume an attitude like this in order to survive. These children reinterpret their perceptions in a desperate attempt to see as good and beneficial things that outside observers would immediately classify as crimes. Children have no choice.  They must repress their true feelings if they have no "helping witness" to turn to and are helplessly exposed to their persecutors. Later as adults lucky enough to encounter "enlightened witnesses," they do have a choice. Then they can admit the truth, their truth; they can stop pitying and "understanding" their persecutors, stop trying to feel their unsustainable, disassociated emotions, and roundly denounce the things that have been done to them.  This step bring immense relief for the body.  It no longer has to forcibly remind the adult self of the tragic history it went through as a child. Once the adult self has decided to find out the whole truth about itself, the body feels understood, respected, and protected."

    "I call the violent kind of "upbringing" abuse, not only because children are thus refused the right to dignity and respect as human beings but also because such an approach to parenting establishes a kind of totalitarian regime in which it is impossible for children to perceive the humilations, indignities, and disrespect they have been subjected to, let alone defend themselves against them. These patterns of childhood will inevitably then be adopted by their victims and used on their partners and their own children, at work, in politics, wherever fear and anxiety of the profoundly insecure child can be fended off with the aid of external power. It is in this way that dictators are born; these are people with a deep-seated contempt for everyone else, people who were never respected as children and thus do their utmost to earn that respect at a later stage with the assistance of the gigantic power apparatus they have built around them."

    "The sphere of politics is an excellent example of the way in which the hunger for power and recognition is never stilled.  It is insatiable, it can never be entirely satisfied. The more power these people have, the more they are spurred on to actions of compulsory repetition, restore the initial feelings of impotence they were trying to escape; Hitler is his bunker, Stalin in his paranoid fears, Mao in the final rejection by his people, Napoleon in exile, Milosevic in prison, Saddam Hussein in his mortifying fall from power. What impelled these men to abuse the power they had achieved to such a pitch that it ultimately plunged them into impotence and powerlessness?  I believe it was their bodies.  Their bodies sustained the knowledge of the impotence they felt in childhood; they stored such knowledge in their cells, and they set out to force their "owners" to face up to that knowledge. But the reality of their childhood instilled such fear in the hearts of these dictators that they preferred to wipe out whole peoples, to exterminate millions of human beings, rather than confront the truth – their truth."  Alice Miller

    I am reading this book for the second time, and it once again has a much broader meaning to me, than the first time around.  I am now able to see more potently the actual ways a child has to disregard its own body in order to survive, to look for 'positive' so not to drown in its own mortal fears…and how quickly an outsider can spot the crimes, while those within are unable to see.

    I have experienced the view of being an outsider and the quick slamming of the door behind me as I stood on the sidewalk, for the 'family unit' couldn't withstand the truth…mine and theirs.

    Their impotency against truth is what causes such insane behavior. Their lack of self power and worth has them snubbing outside…like that is where their truth lives…within us.

    You can berate me and kick me out of your life, but your truth, just as in the Dictators of the past did…but you are kicking us so as to NOT feel and own your own truth.

    I know that I have been kicked aside.  And it has nothing to do with me, but it has much more to do with the individual's fear of their own truths.  By keeping me out of their worlds, they like the 15 year old Hungarian Boy, keep their concentration camp a place of positive living…of love, peace and joy.

    I am so grateful that I was able to have the courage to see my own truth…

    What I didn't know, is that the most violent among us are those who are in mortal fear of seeing their childhoods in Reality's Light.

    That their violent behavior is to keep themselves from feeling the truth about their parents.

    So, as you go forth on this New Year's day, be careful what you seek for your self in 2012.

    If you seek, like I did, a life filled with love, peace and joy; you will first have to find all the places you have it wrong.  It has been 7 years of learning what isn't…in order for me to then set forth again.

    My wish for you is your own wish for your self.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Our Dress Up Closet!

    I have been a good solid sensible shoe for so many years, I now have to work at being a frivolous, nonsensical, whimsy, fun little shoe made for say dancing or a relaxing evening with a loved one. 

     

    I was built to carry heavy loads, to work hard and be solid support. My whole frame screams Sensible, with a strap of reliable and a heel of responsible.

     

    This sensible built nature I brought to every event, like wearing work boots to a formal ball.

     

    I didn’t have another side of me, just this one size fits all boot.  When I arrived the scent of no nonsense arrived with me.

     

    As the years have passed, as my age is showing, as I work with the Artist Way, I am learning that there are sides of me I have not explored.

     

    In the past I never took off my boots of being responsible for others…and lately I barely wear them.

     

    I am now learning how to walk in shoes that fit just me.  They don’t have to have meaning or make someone else happy; they are shoes that fit my soul.

     

    Some of these shoes take awhile for me to get used to, for them to be comfortable on me, but I like that they are fit just for me, custom made shoes.

     

    My life went from having only sensible in my closet to now adding flare and charm, whimsy and frivolous…

    It is no wonder I wasn’t drawn towards these types of things, for my inner nature couldn’t relax and be free…and my outerwear showed this.

     

    I think I am heading toward the nonsensical section yet it makes sense for me.

     

    I am adding fun shoes to my sensible ones, I can see my future closet filled with wonderful different shoes…I am on the lookout for new additions that will spice up my life, that will enhance my personality, bring out my inner child…it is like playing dress up in the real world!

    What do I want to play with today? 

    What do I want to try on? 

    How will it make me feel? 

    I love that we have the whole world as our dress up closet. 

     

     

  • To be me…perfectly.

    There seems to be a time in life, where you get off the karmic wheel of your childhood, where you finally come to the end of the road where old beliefs, thoughts and ideas run dry, where you have uncovered, discovered, and recovered all parts of your self.

     

    And you have decided what stays, what goes, what has value or no value, what is something I will use in my future and what is best left in the past.

     

    As each old thought and belief came to surface, I had to replace it with a new one, one more suited for my self and was often less comfortable for the ‘other’.

     

    Most of my replacement ideas, thoughts and beliefs are much more flexible and fit my spirit. They are filled with potential growth and expansion, unlimited space for creation.

     

    The purging of my old self was difficult and painful at times and extremely liberating as well, the dying and rebuilding co-existing, the undoing and the re-doing.  Each loss I mourned came with a new birth.

     

    Just as they flip houses, I flipped myself, changing me from a worn out pattern into a more creative one.

     

    I can’t imagine getting left in the old mind patterns and beliefs, stuck and unable to step out line, locked by fear and unable to shake off the chains of conditioning.

     

    I feel at times I have forgotten from whence I came, and have a hard time remembering the darkness with so much Light, forgetting what it is like to live under the shadows of others, never finding your own spot in the sun…

     

    My thanks all go to the Universe whose wisdom I seen in every lesson, gift and miracle, and who synchronized it all.

     

    As I continue forth with my awareness my artist’s prayer is;

    to remain faithful to the wisdom of my body,

    to always pay attention to the gut feelings,

    to stand with the truth no matter the cost,

    to have faith and follow my own feelings,

    to reach towards new experiences fearlessly,

    to be a student of the Universe,

    to accept all lessons with grace,

    to never lose sight of what is,

    to find my purpose,

    to know who I am,

    to be me…perfectly! 

  • Live in life.

    When I sort mail, I stand in a U shaped area (Case) with six rows of little slots, one slot for each mailbox all in order of my route.

    An apartment complex of 10 was added to the beginning of my route and I had to make room for it by moving every slot about 10 or so inches to the right, starting with the last one.

    It is surprising how small of a shift there was and how it threw my whole memorizing off, all my instincts of knowing are no more, I have to relearn it all again.

    I wonder how long it will take for my mind to become comfortable with this new routine? What an incredible mind that it can relearn and toss out the old obsolete info that it will follow if you are determined.

    My head actually hurt again from having to concentrate and do the hunt and search routine, and by the end of two and half hours it was already catching on.

    The name would appear and I would know which way to turn, it remembered to remember there was a new place to go to.

    The flexibility of the mind is similar to the body, it will follow your lead, and it is much more your desire to learn than its ability.

    You can become comfortable in a new routine, all it take is time and the willingness to try.

    In a week or so, I will be able to almost mindlessly toss mail, and it leads me to wonder, if you are not putting new things into your life, are you almost on Autopilot?

    What keeps you repeating the same things, being comfortable in the rote like life? How is it that we feel most at ease when we are mindlessly following our normal routine?

    It seems so counterintuitive to living to be on remote, just repeating and repeating, it is like we are stuck in a grove in an old Record Album, ‘same life, same life, same life.’

    Isn’t it odd that we call this living feeling the most comfortable with ‘No Change’.

    And can you actually call it living if there is no growth or change?

    Just as my mind was brought to the present with the slight changes in my case, I am sure that by doing new things in other areas of my life, my mind will awaken in the present and engage in a new way.

    Just as I do yoga for my body, I will have to bring my mind to new places to give it exercise too…I am open to the new possibilities.

    I guess it is up to us whether we coast along or look for new ways to live in life.

  • A new you emerges…

    “When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge.” ~Tuli Kupferberg

    Somehow this quote paints a scene of great Art, of stepping out of the box and being presented with a wondrous new world.

    In my experience breaking an old pattern requires stamina, fearlessness, standing out and being different, walking away from familiar and entering into the unknown, which I guess is where the new world emerges.

    Even if the new world is much healthier, happier and more peaceful, there is sorrow as the old pattern dies.

    It is a piece of your personality or a fragment of you that is being disposed of.

    If I were to pile up all the old patterns that I broke, you would see a whole person standing there.

    Her pattern had shades and tones of abuse and dysfunction, faint colors of washed out places of low self-esteem, heavy dark corridors of unawareness and brainwashing along with righteously wrong values.

    She was an enigma, a very confusing mystery to unravel, a body of truth and a head of fiction.

    The breaking of the pattern was all headwork, my patterns of thoughts and beliefs that didn’t match reality and I had to work to reconfigure them in my head.

    It was going backwards in time and reworking or removing the patterns I had set in my head.

    Patterns of me that were formed by childhood, patterns that reflect those who raised me, those who cared for me, doing the best they knew how.

    It was their pattern that I was living by, not mine.

    I was a designed for their use not mine.

    When patterns are broken, a new you emerges….

  • Who has Control?

    My expectations of the New Year aren’t about the New Year but rather about me.

    The New Year is neutral, a pile of days linked together, and many hours in which we live our lives.

    What we do within those hours is how our year will unfold, or more importantly how we will emerge on the other end.

    I went back on my blog and read some of my entries in January 2010, the beginning of my first 60-day Yoga challenge.

    It was incredible to read about the beginnings of my year doing yoga.

    Below is a section I quoted from Bikram’s book, and it shows the reality of what we are up against when we strive to make changes in our lives, what we are battling is gaining control over the mind.

    “Without control of mind, you can do nothing. You have something, but you don’t know how to use it. The greatest challenge we face as human beings is controlling and properly using our own minds.

    The mind is the communications system between the physical body and the Soul or Spirit; its primary responsibilities are to control the body and supply the Spirit with immediate and exact information. When the mind instead gives distracted and wrong information, the Spirit cannot govern properly – in fact, it cannot assume control at all. The ego-driven mind has had to rule for itself, and now it does not want to give up its ultimate authority over your life. This is a bitter, perverse fact about human beings, but it is the truth.

    Without proper training, the mind will continue to give you the wrong information and divert your focus from your Spiritual goals. The way it does that so successfully is with fear and desire – its primary weapons. Like a drug dealer, the mind gets addicted to these two opposite but conjoined emotions, and when we are constantly reacting to our attractions and aversions to people, things and situations, we can’t see what really is and reopen the channels of our true Self, the Spirit. That’s why I say that the mind has become our worst enemy.

    To overcome this will not be easy. The weak mind is ever growing, constantly feeding on your fears and negative habits. And as my Guru taught me, the natural human attraction to something negative is NINE TIMES more powerful than our gravitational pull to toward the positive- another inconvenient fact.”
    Bikram

    So if you are endeavoring to make changes in your life this upcoming year, please take note, that what you will be going against is a very powerful pull, 9 times stronger than your thought of change.

    Say your desire is to stop eating sweets; you will have the power to eat sweets 9 times stronger.

    And if your desire is to exercise or do yoga each day, you will be fighting a powerful pull 9 times stronger to stay in bed, lay on the couch, and do nothing.

    What I am most impressed with as I look back upon my year of doing yoga (332 out of the 365) is the sheer effort was exerted in getting to the mat.
    Even though the actual 90 minutes of yoga is rough, it is nothing compared to the struggle to begin.

    The real battle is not in the actual doing; it is in the seconds or minutes prior to the event.

    The fight ensues in the actual debate about whether you are going to abstain or succumb.

    To do or not to do is the where the war is fought.

    It isn’t about the sweets, the beer or the exercise; it is about the seconds of power right before, the space before doing or not doing.

    It is on that edge of time, that second where your life is determined, who has control?

  • Resolve who I am.

    It is New Year’s Eve, the day we all sit down and look at the balance sheets of life, pour over our faults and choose one or two that we feel must go, and then declare to everyone we will no longer do those things.

    How many of us take the time to really sit with the affect, the trouble spot and see where it came from, why it was formed?

    What we call bad habits are usually coverings over some pain.

    They are the lids that keep us from feeling the feelings too severe to feel.

    Usually what happens is we just exchange habits, we seldom delve deeply into what lays beneath, to dive below and feel the pain.

    As I approach this New Year, instead of making resolutions to get rid of bad habits, I want to explore beneath the habits.

    The definition of resolution is the process of resolving something.

    The act of answering, solving…

    Perhaps if we looked at the coming year as the year of the answers, we will look at each day differently; we look to be enlightened about our behaviors, instead of running from them.

    Vowing that we will sit down in the middle of our habit and sort through it looking for answers.

    It is my belief that beneath the habit lays our true self.

    My resolution is to resolve who I am.

  • Hand and Hand.

    All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. ~Anatole France

    Somehow I missed the melancholy of change, the loss, the death of one life, in order to be in a new life.

    And felt that I was doing change wrong, for I was sad as I changed.

    Leaving behind myself I had known for 46 years, I grieved losing that part of me, as I embraced a change that would become the new me.

    In the case of divorcing my parents, I had to the let the daughter in me die. There now stands a hole where daughter use to be.

    My daughter role is no more.

    You forget to remember the old you is gone, like a phantom limb it takes awhile to feel the new normal, and there is a grieving period, where sorrow can arise in odd places, unannounced sadness pours out.

    That view of self is unrecognizable for a while, you feel strange to yourself inside, and your movements are awkward for you don’t really know what it is the new you will do.

    Even when change is for the better, for a healthier you, you still have to let go and let die the old you.
    For some reason I kept forcing my thoughts to look towards the good things, and felt like I was a failure when I looked back and grieved.

    Now I know that grieving is a natural part of change.

    And with the overwhelming amount of change I have experienced in the last 5, well almost 6 years, it is no wonder that there has been lots to grieve.

    Who knew change and grieving go hand and hand…