Take up Space my Darling

 

“Take up Space My Darling”

 

“You were wild once.  Don’t let them tame you.”― Isadora Duncan

 

 

 

 

I run a Women’s group at work.  It’s one of my favorite hours each week.  It is a lovely group of women all struggling with various mental illnesses, traumas and syndromes.  They are all working on themselves and have banded together to try and support and uplift one another.  My job is to provide a platform, a space and a structure.  I moderate at times and referee but for the most part I sit back and let them interact with one another.  It started out as a process group that I inherited, but it has slowly become an empowerment group and as they allow me to help them with their struggles and create a safe space for their stories I feel more and more honored to watch them gain in self-confidence.

As a girl growing up, I was taught so many things that were designed to make me smaller.  By that I mean, I was supposed to follow rules more than the boys who were my age because “boys will be boys” you know.  But girls, well girls are supposed to be polite, sit with their legs crossed and look pretty.  My brother played soccer and my dad was the coach of his team.  I longed to play soccer, mostly because I wanted to be closer to my dad.  But I wasn’t allowed to play soccer because “girls do ballet Fiona”.  I hated ballet…  I am not that coordinated and I don’t like pink and frills and glitter and I could never get it right.  Soccer looked like so much more fun, AND they had orange wedges at half-time.  You can make silly smiles with orange rinds when you are a kid…

I don’t remember when it was that I stopped skipping, but I know there was a time I just knew it was no longer appropriate.  I remember knowing that I was supposed to hug relatives because that was the “nice girl” thing to do and I was supposed to answer questions but not really ask them.  I inherently seemed to know that it was better to smile and nod and seem to agree when things got tense just to placate because it was better to diffuse a situation than to incite someone and I noticed pretty quickly that my opinions seemed to make some people mad – mostly they were male.

As I got older and more trauma became baked into me, more mental illness manifested and addiction emerged from a hollow inside my soul.  Alcohol became a friend, a comfort and an escape before it turned into an insidious lover with whom I had the most toxic and abusive relationship.  What had at first been a haven and provided fun became a master of the worst kind and one from whom I could not run.  Addiction overtook my thoughts and my decisions and the core of me, the “Fiona” of me, became so quiet, I forgot to listen for her voice and soon I forgot what she even sounded like.

The decisions I made while in active addiction will always haunt me on some level.  Spectacular mistakes were made and extraordinary pain was dealt out to all the people who surrounded and tried to love me.  I can never wipe that away from their memories or my story.  But I am grateful that I can hear the “Fiona” voice once again and better decisions get made today because she listens to a much kinder and wiser master.

I was teaching karate yesterday morning as I do most Saturday mornings now.  I help with the classes for 6-12 year olds and the 3-5 year olds.  I have a penchant for getting very little children really excited to do things like jumping jacks and mountain climbers by counting wrong or making silly mistakes so they have to correct me.  Kids that little haven’t stopped skipping and it’s a joy to be around them and their unfiltered reactions.  They don’t know not to be exactly who they are and that is a precious commodity.

During each class there is something called the “Lesson of the week”, where the kids will gather around one of the instructors in a circle on the floor and the instructor will explain the lesson the week.  The lesson of the week is tied to concept of the week and is usually told in the form of a story.  This week’s concept was self-confidence and the story was about a speaker who stood in front of a room of 200 people and asked who among them would like a $20 bill.  They all raised their hands (as did the kids).  The speaker then took the bill and crumpled it up and asked the audience, “now that I have crumpled it up – who among you still wants the $20 bill”?  The audience all raised their hands (as did the kids).  The speaker then took the bill, dropped it on the ground and stomped on it with his foot.  He then took the money and asked, “now that I have ground it into the ground, who among you still wants to $20 bill”?  The audience all raised their hands (as did the kids).  The speaker then told the audience that the lesson had proved that no matter how battered or dirty the $20 had gotten, it had not lost any of its value.

No matter how many decisions I have made that have been bad ones, decisions that have hurt others, that have caused pain…  I still have value – in fact I still have the same value.  The decisions were bad, I wasn’t bad.  I have the same value as a human being now as I did when I was born.  I still have the same value now as I did before I learned to stop skipping, to be a “nice girl”, to placate, to not argue, to be polite, to acquiesce.  There is a lot of stigma around addiction and mental illness, around gender and age.  But I can remind myself that it is alright to take up space and be joyously me and glory in all my value.

           

 

SIGNS

 

“Signs”

 

“All you have to do is to pay attention; lessons always arrive when you are ready, and if you can read the signs, you will learn everything you need to know in order to take the next step”― Paulo Coelho

 

 

 

 

The past few weeks have been difficult for me.  I have struggled with the anniversary of Liam’s birthday which always seems to knock me off-kilter.  Then one of Dermot’s karate coaches died suddenly and it hit our little karate community pretty hard.  I also had a situation at work that had me feeling under-appreciated and unheard, which had not been the case at this place of employment up until now and I also became somewhat overwhelmed by the scope of work required for the grant I am now involved with.  Finally, I have had a few conversations that have been difficult to navigate in my relationship.  All of this has taken place over the past two weeks or so.  Basically, I am tired and a little down.

            We cooked dinner for Liam’s birthday at the Ronald McDonald House in West Philadelphia on his birthday the other week.  This is the first time in two years we have been allowed back in to do so since the beginning of the pandemic.  We worked in an industrial kitchen and made enough food to feed and serve the families staying there and packaged up fifty more meals for another house that hasn’t opened up their kitchen yet.  We were there from 3:00 PM to 8:00 PM and it was the right combination of hard-work and distraction.  Frank, Dermot and Wren and I were there early and we had Frank’s sister and her husband join us as well as Aunt Gail and then Tony.  Pitching in and making food and feeding others on his birthday is always a good way to keep busy and give back as well as honor him but it is also exhausting.  The next day, we found out that Dermot’s coach had died and we went to watch the kids do a demo team performance and met back at the karate studio so they could hear the news.  Dermot asked me to be there and talk to the kids about grief and see if anyone needed to talk, including the parents.  I left from there with Tony to go to an AA retreat for the weekend and, though that was a good experience, I felt I was not as present as I would have liked simply because I was still in a state of profound grief.

            The funeral for Dermot’s coach was later that next week.  It was held at the same funeral home as the one where we held Liam’s funeral nineteen years before and sitting with Dermot in that room for the services was somewhat surreal.  After the services, and before going to the family’s house, the team was trying to figure out what to do for an hour and talking about meeting up for a bite to eat.  Dermot declined the invitation and instead told the team he was taking me to see his brother in the cemetery (he didn’t talk to me about this first) and he would catch up.  We went to see Liam’s grave before he left to join the family at their house and I went back to work.  It was an emotional experience to have one son take me to see the other.

            Work, well, all I will say about that is that I went from an independent contractor to a full-time employee and the transition has been less than smooth.  My immediate supervisors have done what they can to make it work, but matters out of their control have made it uncomfortable and some things have happened that should not.  I have come away not feeling safe and not knowing who I can trust and that does not make for a healthy work environment.  When I am working with clients I am all-in.  I don’t have a lot of time during the day to worry about the admin side of things and so when that doesn’t go smoothly or I can’t trust that side of my job I come away with a bad taste in my mouth and it makes me unable to concentrate as much on the clients as I would like.  It is something I find unfortunate and unsettling.

            And the relationship stuff is simply learning to communicate with someone in a way that makes sense to us both.  Tony and I have never fought but we have had some uncomfortable conversations lately.  He talks about how we can’t both be a 100% all the time and that sometimes one will be giving 70% and the other 30% or something similar.  Well at the moment we are both struggling so the percentages are somewhat off because we are both somewhat off.  The important part in that though is that we have the uncomfortable conversations and keep on going.

            So the point of all of this is to tell you that the other morning, I went outside to have my conversation with Joe.  Instead of starting it with gratitude like I always do, I began to just rail at him.  I complained and moaned and bitched.  I had a one-sided conversation with someone from work as though she were standing right there in front of me and my voice began to rise the angrier I got.  In mid-sentence as I was getting more and more heated I looked up and saw a shooting star fall from the sky and I stopped speaking.  I stood staring, slack-jawed at where the star had disappeared.  I have been going outside and talking to Joe in the early morning hours for about 15 months now and I haven’t ever seen one, but while railing at life and how unfairly I feel I am being treated, I get a shooting star from Joe.  I stood there in silence for a long time before I started talking to Joe for real.  I returned to gratitude and started seeing life from the perspective that helps me not hurts me. 

            This happened to me again this morning.  I woke earlier than normal.  I had another busy week last week and yesterday was also stressful.  I felt overwhelmed by work, the grant, a speaking engagement, just life getting lifey again…  I started down that same path, this time about how stressed out I feel and forgetting to start with gratitude.  Mid-bitch, I see a stag come out of the bushes on the hill outside my house.  It came out slowly and looked me in the eye and stopped.  He stared and waited.  When I didn’t move or speak, he completely emerged.  He was a young stag with smaller antlers.  He was limping.  He limped slowly into my yard and past me and then down my stone steps and down the street and out of sight.  A shooting star, full of the beauty and awe of the universe and a limping stag showing me the fragility of nature…  Ok Joe. I see, I’m listening.

            I returned to gratitude once again.  I need reminders at the moment and Joe knows this.  I get overwhelmed and stressed out and forget to look at my life from a lens of gratitude and benevolence for myself and others.  If I am honest, I am stressed out because I perhaps have taken on too much and that is on me.  I can also manage it if I stop looking at the whole and eat the elephant one bite at a time and stop saying “yes” to everything and everyone.  Dermot is doing alright and I just need to be there if he wants to talk.  He is handling this loss better than expected, probably because he was raised with the concept of death from an early age and because difficult topics are talked about in both the houses he lives in and by both his parents.  Liam’s birthday is hard every year and I have to be kinder to myself around that, realizing that there is no time-frame or limit to grief and no right or wrong way to “do” it.  Work will sort itself out and I know I do right by my clients and that is the most important part of it in the end.  And the relationship conversations are going to be hard from time-to-time.  If they weren’t we wouldn’t be real people and it wouldn’t be a real relationship. 

            Mostly I need to remember that my life is gloriously mine.  It is full of beauty and grace and with beauty and grace come bumps and shadows.  I just need to remain teachable and open to Joe’s signs.

Nineteen

      “Nineteen”

 

“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love.  It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot.  All of that unspent love gathers in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in the hollow part of your chest.  Grief is just love with no place to go.” ― Jamie Anderson

 

 

 

 

    I have been asking myself all week why I am not doing better with this.  Why I am not farther along and why I still fall apart during this week each year.  I seem to put pressure on myself as the years go by to be more put together and to handle Liam’s birthday more gracefully than I am capable.  I don’t know why I do that to myself.  I know that if I were talking to a patient or a friend I would be much kinder and much more understanding than I am to myself.  So when I read the quote above it resonated.  I have all this love and it has nowhere to go so it makes sense for me to be off-kilter.

    The fact that I am not as kind to myself as I should be is something I am working on in therapy.  Yes I am a therapist in therapy.  It is a case of I can’t see the forest for the trees…  I am good at helping other people but not at helping myself so I manage to take my own advice on this one and I get help from someone myself.  My therapy sessions are intense and enlightening and I am all the better at my job because I work to understand how I cope or don’t cope and how I can move through life with more ease and comfort than I have in the past.

    Back to yesterday…  Our first-born son, Liam, would have been, should have been, nineteen.  He was born with a complex combination of Transposition of the Greater Arteries (a heart condition) and Pulmonary Hypertension (a lung condition) that proved fatal and he died when he was 68 days old.  He had open-heart surgery when he was four days old and lived with oxygen and a broviac line in his chest and a complex regimen of medications.  His short life was not easy and I think he was in pain and struggled to breath.  There is a part of me that was relieved when he died, partly because he was suffering, but when I allow myself to be completely honest, I was also relieved for myself.  I was living in a constant state of adrenalin because I was to be his primary caregiver and with him 24-7 and responsible for his needs and all those complicated medications and after being trained by a pharmacist to administer the medications, I was not entirely sure I was up to the task.  Mothers are not supposed to be relieved when their children die you see.  They are supposed to walk through fire for their children and I would have, did do, but I was terrified. I struggle with those feelings because, as a mother, I have guilt over having them.

    Mostly though, I miss him.  Mostly I want to hold him again and touch his sweet face.  I long to know what he would be like today.  I have strong and fascinating relationships with his younger brother and sister and I would give just about anything to talk to him and know him as he would be today.  I would love to have a conversation with him and find out who he would have been.  I do have all this love inside that has nowhere to go.

    There is nowhere to put the years of stored up packed lunches, birthday party themes, favorite meals and Christmas mornings.  There are years-worth of boo-boos and scrapes gone un-kissed and tears gone un-wiped, laughter gone un-heard.  So many secret worries and after-school stories I have heard from his siblings that I haven’t listened to from him.  School plays, art-shows, cringe-worthy music concerts, sporting events and parent-teacher conferences, tantrums and fights. 

    Last night we went back to the Ronald McDonald House to cook dinner for the families because they have opened that option up again since COVID.  We could take eight people and Frank and I went down to start the process off with Dermot and Wren.  We were met by his sister Erin and her husband Mark and joined thereafter by Aunt Gail and my partner Tony.  They have an industrial kitchen now and serve upwards of 200 meals each night.  It’s quite an undertaking now – a far cry from the smaller operation it was when we started doing this years ago in Liam’s honor.  I was outside on the walkway at one point looking for Liam’s memorial brick and ran into a father and his toddler who were staying at the house.  She had Down’s Syndrome but they were staying there because her little sister had been born six weeks ago with an insulin problem and needed to be flown in from Michigan.  I showed him Liam’s brick and he asked me how old Liam would have been.  We talked for a few minutes and he thanked me for volunteering.  I said it was a pleasure to be able to do something in his honor, and it is.  It is something I think I can do each year with all that unspent love. 

    Grief is not linear.  In the beginning it is blinding and there is no way to see around it.  Slowly I felt as though I was able to see a little better with grief on the periphery.  Eventually, over time, the grief shifted to the side and began to walk beside me.  I allowed it to become a part of me rather than trying to reject it.  I made peace with it and treated it with kindness, most of the time.  It’s like a sad, calm sea – vast in its expanse.  Its tide always coming in, and, at times the tide is high and I feel it coming up dangerously close and threatening to overwhelm me, but the tide always goes back out again.

    Nineteen years of unspent love makes for some achingly empty arms which is why I think I love those I do have here on earth so deeply and so hard

Purple Belt

 

 

     “Purple Belt”

 

“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
― Michael Jordan

 

 

 

On the wall at the karate studio where I train there is a poster of the levels of belts and their corresponding meanings.  White: Optimism, Yellow: Integrity, Orange: Action, Purple: Loyalty, Blue: Respect, Green: Grit, Brown: Leadership, Red: Vision and Black: Health. 

Karate is part of my life.  Karate is part of my balance.  I go twice a week and I tend not to miss it if I can help it.  If I have to miss a class I generally make it up, missing something else to right the ship.  I have taken a certification training to teach karate to ninja sharks (the littlest of kids who train with us – think 3-to-5- year-olds wiggling around on the mats and making me melt with their level of cuteness) and am working my way to certified instructor.

Now I have never been athletic.  The closest I got to athleticism was high school field hockey and that was only at the JV level.  I think I liked whacking the ball and the opposing teams legs more than anything (we didn’t have half the amount of safety equipment as they do these days).  I don’t like physical exercise as a general rule, but there is something about karate that hits the right note for me.  I love the katas and the fact that I am learning self-defense.  I feel as though I at least have a fighting chance of defending myself now and at the very least can shock an attacker into thinking “Well I wasn’t expecting that from her”.  I love pounding away at the punching bags and the fact that I have triceps muscles for the first time in my life.

I can tell you that I hate belt-testing though.  The belt-tests are hard.  The work-out is intense and does not let up at all for the entire time we are at the studio.  We are constantly on the move and are being tested on self-defenses and the katas in-between push-ups, mountain climbers, sit-ups, squats and whatever else the instructor’s sadistic mind can come up with.

I just recently achieved the level of purple belt.  I have been studying karate now for a while.  There was a break there in the middle when I relapsed and I missed a belt-test or two because I wasn’t prepared or I was too busy to have taken it as seriously as I am now.  I can tell you that I have failed at it along the way and I likely will again just like I have failed at other things in life – like sobriety.

By failed, I mean I made mistakes.  I didn’t get the right combination of moves in a self-defense, or forgot a self-defense entirely.  I might have remembered the self-defense, but forgotten its name, or forgotten to bow when I should have.  In the kata I may have gotten the combination of moves correctly but not called it out how I was meant to or the moves were not as sharp as they could have been.  It is taking me longer than I would like for me to earn my instructorship and the simple fact behind that and that above mistakes or failures is that I need to practice more.  I need to dedicate more time and energy to the moves and the intention behind them.  In other words it takes more than just showing up at class.

And isn’t that the same as recovery?  It takes more than just showing up at meetings for me.  It takes going through the steps and then working them.  It takes practicing them in real life situations.  It takes understanding the intention behind them and passing on that information to others, or teaching them in a sense.  It also means that just like in karate, when I make a mistake or fail in some way, I can no longer afford a mind-set that tells me to give up.  I need to lean into a mind-set of failing forward.  I must learn from past missteps, use them as stepping stones to a stronger, brighter future.

So on I go working toward a blue belt in respect - sober.  Asah!

 

 

 

 

 

I Have a Problem with Cheese

 

“I Have a Problem with Cheese”

 

“There are those people who can eat one piece of chocolate, one piece of cake, drink one glass of wine. There are even people who smoke one or two cigarettes a week. And then there are people for whom one of anything is not even an option.”
― Abigail Thomas, Thinking About Memoir

 

 

 

People who are not alcoholics and addicts will often assume that we just have to stop drinking and using and we will then be somehow “cured”.  I believe they believe that once we take away the substance that all will be well in our worlds again and life will return to “normal”.  This is so far from the truth it is laughable.  Our problem is not the substance (well technically it is – we obviously can’t drink or use) our problem is our thinking.

I have, since I was a small child, always done things “big”.  I laugh big, I cry big, I love big, I study big, I get depressed big, I read big (though not as much as I used to and I miss it) I binge-watch TV, I take on more things at once than I can possibly accomplish and it gets me into trouble every single time… and I have a problem with cheese.

I love cheese.  A lot.  I buy excessive amounts of cheese every week in all forms because I love cheese in all forms.  I have shredded cheese, sliced cheese, chunk cheese, wedge cheese, soft cheese…  Tony was over the other weekend and was making me dinner (have I mentioned that he used to be an executive chef?  Sigh…) and he opened the cheese drawer in my fridge.  After recovering from the strain of the weight of the drawer he turned and gave me a quizzical look as if to say, “What in the dairy section is going on here?”  I immediately started trying to explain myself, which wasn’t easy given the fact that the kids were away for two weeks so it was only me at the house and only me there to eat all the varieties of cheese in my fridge.  It’s not easy to explain away a Red Leicester, two types of Double Gloucester, a Kerry Gold Cheddar, a wheel of Laughing Cow and a sampler of Spanish cheeses (I love me some Manchego). 

He seemed to take it in stride knowing I think like he does and moved on to use some of the shredded cheddar to make some indescribably delicious cheesy polenta as part of dinner – I could have licked the bowl.  Later in the week Tony and I caught up at a meeting and grinning like a knight just returning from the crusades he presented me with a wedge of Smoked Gouda.  I practically swooned and my thoughts were “My God I love this man” and also “Enabler!”  I have never felt so seen and heard…

Now as I mentioned I have a tendency to do things to excess.  I always have and to some extent I always will. I will go out on a limb and say most alcoholics and addicts are the same.  This is why those of us in twelve-step recovery will try and stay in steps 10, 11 and 12 once we have done the previous 9.  We have to constantly be alert to our motives and the fact that our thinking can get us into trouble even when we have the best of intentions.  This is why we should have sponsors to check in with and other people in the program to bounce our thoughts off of who can hear what we say and gently re-direct us.  This is why I pray and meditate and talk to Joe as well.

Now I don’t intend to change all the things I used to do in excess.  I will still madly love my children, I will just have to make sure I do so in a healthy way.  I don’t intend to stop studying the things that will help to further my effectiveness as a therapist, but I don’t have to stay up half the night to do so, I can pace myself.  I can still help people in the program, but I once again must pace myself and not take on too much at a time so I don’t overload myself completely.  I have learned that balance in my life is key.

Now will I do something about my cheese problem… Probably not.  The only cheese I have any control over is Brie and that is because I have learned I have no control over it whatsoever if that makes any sense.  This is why I never buy it unless people are coming over for dinner and I am feeding it to them as an appetizer.  If I buy it for myself it might make it to the fridge and it might not.  What is more likely to happen is that I will come to in front of some true crime show in a lactose induced stupor on the couch amid cracker crumbs and an empty Brie wrapper and not know what has hit me.  So, no I won’t likely do much more about my cheese problem than limiting my Brie intake.  In fact I may go out later today because I am out of Red Leicester which is just a wax-paper wrapped crime in the making!  Listen don’t even get me started on chocolate…

 

 

 

"And the Universe Smiles"

 

“And the Universe Smiles”

 

“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorns have roses”.

-Alphonse Karr, A Tour Round My Garden

 

 

 

A number of months ago I was having a Tuesday.  I had gotten up and done all the things I normally do to start my day.  I talked to Joe, did my daily readings, journaled, made coffee etc.…  I had a list of things to do before I saw clients and it wasn’t going smoothly.  My car was giving me trouble, my prescription wasn’t ready, there wasn’t anywhere to park, and I was in a mood all before 9:00 am.  As I walked up to my back door all but muttering under my breath, I noticed a small vase of flowers set on the shelf by my back door.  They had been placed there for me by my sweet neighbor, Nancy. 

She has a little dog named Scooter and when I walk past her house in the mornings I will often leave him a dog treat to find when they come out for a walk.  So she sometimes leaves me little gifts from her garden, like tomatoes or flowers.  When I saw this little vase of flowers I snapped back into gratitude and all the things that had been bothering me that morning became like tiny mosquito bites hardly worth the energy it takes to scratch.  I thought in that moment, “The universe is smiling on me”.

I have a year of sobriety again and it feels good.  I must say I’m wearing it well and the appreciation I have for it is oceanic.  This time last year I was in rehab trying to figure out if I had any hope of ever digging my way out of the hole I was in.  Over the course of the past year my life has turned 180 degrees on its axis.  I came out of rehab and I went to PHP, then IOP, then OP.  I then got a therapist whom I continue to see and a psychiatrist and I adhere to the medication prescribed.  I make sure I don’t forget the things I learned from the relapse prevention unit I was on in rehab.  I have a routine I keep to and I try not to take too much on because that is one of the things I do to myself which causes me problems if I am not careful.  I meditate, journal and I talk to my higher power every day.

I was blessed enough to embark on my second career as a therapist at an agency I really like.  I work as an independently contracted therapist for a community behavioral health agency so I have some flexibility on how I set up my hours and my week which suits me just fine.  I love my clients and working with them is hard but fulfilling.  My children are doing so well and they so deserve that.  They have had to worry about me too much over their short lives and I hope that now they can just enjoy growing up and being teenagers.  Dermot is working at a karate studio and has his first level junior black belt.  He convinced me to join karate and now has me working toward being an instructor like him.  The fact that he wants me to do this with him touches my heart in ways I cannot describe.  Wren is a confident and incredible young woman who continues to amaze me with her artistic abilities and academic prowess, not to mention her withering sarcasm and humorous take on life.  She comes to my house for one-on-one time often and we have so much fun.  They both came to a meeting with me the other night to see me get my one-year coin and it was a special moment.  It was a much nicer moment than when they came with Frank to drop me off at rehab the year before.

I started dating a wonderful man in March.  He’s also in the program and has many more years of sobriety than I do.  He’s full of wisdom and kindness and treats me better than I thought was possible and if I’m honest, better than I sometimes think I deserve.  That is something I continue to work on though.  He and I are navigating our way through what seems to be the healthiest relationship either one of us has ever had and it is pretty magical.  The best thing is neither one of us saw it coming and it just feels natural and oh so right.  His name is Tony and I think I will keep him.

So when I start to wander off course in my head and start believing that mosquito bites are really chicken pox, I have to picture Nancy’s flowers waiting for me at my back door.   Because the fact is the universe never stopped smiling on me, I just tend to get in my own way and forget to look.

 

The Lost Art of Shrinky Dinks

 

                         “The Lost Art of Shrinky Dinks”

 

“So much of being sane and happy begins with the doing of things that are sane and happy.”

Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way Every Day P. 166

 

 

 

There are times when I am struggling with some problem or question and find myself turning it over and over in my head and feel like I am spinning my wheels.  I, like many fellow addicts (and just fellow humans), tend to overthink.  I can complicate to most simple of tasks or concepts.  I can get myself so twisted up that I can’t find my way out of a paper bag!

This is when my daily conversations with Joe are most critical.  I go outside on my deck and look upward speaking aloud the issues that plaque me.  In the ritualistic querying I somehow unkink the issue and untangle my thoughts.  The road ahead becomes clearer and it’s as though a map appears.  If the path forward is not immediately evident then I am reminded that I must seek the advice and counsel of others.  Which people I should reach out to becomes obvious to me in the early morning supplication.  More often than not I find myself laughing at how obvious the answer is and how blind I have been.  I sometimes will be so excited or relieved that I will rush back inside with my plan only to rush back out with an apology because I haven’t finished my prayer and ended my conversation.

I find this over-complication with clients as well.  When a client is having an issue with a significant other and expressing frustration that their partner didn’t do what they needed, my first prompt is, “well, did you tell them what you need?”  Invariably the answer is “no”.  Our partners can’t read minds so if we don’t express to them what our wants or needs are, they are going to fail these secret love tests every time.  The simple answer is to communicate.

When I mention meditation to clients some of them balk at the idea.  Traditional meditation is what most people imagine, sitting in a quiet place and focusing your mind so it does not wander.  You can do so in silence or you can use guided meditation.  But meditation is about developing intentional focus and minimizing your random thoughts, focusing attention and having an open attitude.  I encourage clients to think of how that might look for them.  Listening to music might be meditation for them, if you lose yourself in the music and you are no longer thinking about yesterday, or tomorrow and are fully present then isn’t that a form of meditation?  What about doing a jigsaw puzzle and getting lost in that task?  Meditation takes many forms and you just have to find what best works for you – we make it more complicated than it needs to be.

Then there is the concept of self-care.  I always encourage clients to think about self-care, generally ending sessions with questions about what they will do for themselves in terms os self-care over the next week.  This tends to trip people up.  Most people are terrible at self-care, believing that it will take too much time, or money.  I hear clients mention spa days and massages. Both of which are great, but those are not the only things we can do.  You can take yourself out on a date for example, whatever that might look like for you.  Self-care can be much simpler.  Self-care can be a series of small changes and gestures that you do for yourself.  You can light candles, brew your favorite tea and read a new book.  You can cook a nice meal and sit down to eat it with intention.  You can go for a mindful walk on a beautiful day.  You can simply say “uncle” at the end of a long day and go to bed early.  All of this and more is self-care.  Don’t over-complicate it and see it for what it is.

Depressed clients think that they have to have some major, overnight shift in perspective that will have them magically wake up feeling better and happy overnight.  It doesn’t work that way unfortunately, but you can gradually emerge from depression over time.  One way to help this process along is to do things that make you happy (or used to).  If you do things that used to make you happy then at some point the mind’s muscle memory will kick is and you will start to enjoy them again.  But does this mean that you have to book a trip to Disney?  I mean you can certainly…  But think simple.  I have two groups that I facilitate.  One is a women’s support group and one is a chronic pain group.  The chronic pain group, as you may imagine, has members who deal with pain daily and often suffer depression because of their bodily situations.  We often cover heavy topics in that group and we decided as a group that we would like a “fun day”.  I asked them what they might like to do so I would have time to put it onto place as it isn’t easy to organize such things over zoom.  The answer was some sort of arts and crafts day.  Thus I sent out packets to them each and we had a session where we all sat on zoom and made shrinky dinks together.  Shrinky dink art is a throw-back to my childhood and it did the trick.  I had never heard this group of people laugh before.  This simple arts and craft project was a joyful example of self-care at its finest!

Rule #62 in AA is “Don’t take yourself too seriously”.  We could all be better served by listening to that advice more often. 

Broken Vases

 

 

     “Broken Vases”

 

“A fine glass vase goes from treasure to trash, the moment it is broken.  Fortunately, something else happens to you and me.  Pick up your pieces.  Then, help me gather mine.”

Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

 

 

 

The kids and I are going on a road trip in July.  This is something that pre-pandemic we had done annually but we haven’t been able to since and we can’t wait.  Each year always saw the main focus of the trip landing us in Indiana at my best friend Liz’s house.  She and her family are our second family and it is always like a second homecoming.  This year is especially exciting because we are to attend her step-daughter’s wedding. 

Liz and I face-time over coffee most mornings, because who wouldn’t do that with their best friend if they could?  The other week she let me know that Kristi had requested Wren and I come with Liz on the morning of the wedding to help her get ready.  I mean, what an honor?  Liz then let me know that Kristi mentioned one of the reasons was that she said, “I feel like I need Fiona there to keep me calm.”  When I heard that I did an internal double-take.

I hear that a lot lately – that I am a calming influence.   I hear it from clients, from friends, from acquaintances and from my boyfriend.  Yes as a side-note I have a boyfriend… there will be more on him in later posts I’m sure.  When asked, he let me know that I could write about him as he trusts me but I feel like I want to keep him to myself for just a little bit longer.  Know I am incredibly happy and I never saw this relationship coming but I am choosing to follow the energy of it in the healthiest and most passionate way I know how.

To hear that people find me to be a calming influence is both an honor and immensely baffling at the same time.  I will just say that I have not traditionally been known for being even-keeled.  I would say that in the past my emotions have been all over the map and my actions followed suit.  A few weeks ago I wrote about what it is like for me to live in “the calm” and how it is both a blessing and a curse.  Mostly though it is a blessing and how it affects others in a positive way is one of those blessings.

The fact that I can now give a sense of peace to others brings me joy.  I could never have imagined that before.  I know that I can’t take credit for it though.  I know that credit is entirely due to my relationship with my higher power and my work with the steps.  I have rituals that I perform every morning without fail.  If I don’t perform these rituals I am of no use to myself of others. 

I start my day off by heading out my door and standing out on my deck – rain or shine.  I start my conversation out with Joe by a simple “Good morning” followed by a heart-felt expression of gratitude.  I recite a quote from Cervantes that has great meaning to me and then a quote of my own.  Then I talk to him.  I talk to him about the previous day and about the day to come.  I ask him every day to guide me.  I ask for patience and focus and ask that he allow me to help others in whatever way he sees fit.  Some days I talk about a client of two and what I struggle to understand about them and what is blocking me from being the best therapist to them that I can be.  Some days the answer to how I can best approach them comes in those moments on the deck.  The ritual ends with me reciting the Third Step Prayer.  Then I end the show I am sure my neighbors have seen a few times and questioned my sanity over, and I head inside.

This has now set me up to walk through the day in a measured and intention-filled way.  This is why I seem calm now to others… because I am.  I must radiate or broadcast this without realizing it.  The fact that it helps others is up to Joe but I am so pleased that it does and that he has chosen to use me in this fashion. 

So in July I will be heading to my second home to transmit some calm to a bride-to-be and I can’t think of a better way to spend a summer day.

 

The Tournament

 

 

     “The Tournament”

 

“Whatever you think you can do, or believe you can do, begin it, because action has magic, grace and power in it.”

Goethe

 

 

 

A few years ago Dermot asked us if he could join karate.  His buddy was taking it and he really wanted to try.  Now Dermot has always been a joiner.  Frank has a garage and basement full of discarded sports equipment to prove his enthusiasm for different things.  He gets excited about everything he lays his eyes on and REALLY wants to get involved.  Some of them stick, but not all (not most if we are honest).  We were hesitant until he created a PowerPoint presentation with said buddy and persuaded us he was serious - at least in the moment.  Karate stuck.  Boy did it stick.  Fast forward a few years and he has earned his junior black belt, is going on to work toward his first level senior black belt, has a job working at the studio instructing and just got offered another job at a new studio opening up to work as the director of admissions.  We could not be more proud of him and what karate has provided him in terms of self-confidence, discipline and structure.

During one of the promotional months, parents could train for free and Dermot really wanted Frank and I to take advantage of that so we did.  Frank trains for half-marathons and gets his exercise else-where and it wasn’t really a fit for him so he didn’t keep going but I have.  I should say I did it for a while and dropped off while my life was in the upheaval of relapse but now I am back.  There is something about karate that speaks to me.  The camaraderie, the poetry of the motion of the katas, the confidence I gain from knowing the self-defense moves and the fact that I get to beat the shit out of wave masters when I have things to work through and get really sweaty makes all the difference in my life.  Me and exercise have never been friends but for some reason this works for me.  I wouldn’t say I am the most graceful, but I am determined and I am loud. 

Recently I entered my first tournament.  I never imagined that at the age of 49 I would be working toward getting a black belt and I would be sign myself up to compete in such a fashion.  I can’t tell you how nervous I was going into it.  I’d seen Dermot do it before, but competing myself was a whole different ball game.  I had to perform a kata for one category and in another I had to demonstrate two different self-defenses.  I froze on my first self-defense and nailed the second.  I earned a third place medal for the kata.      

Me being me, I immediately started listening to that evil little voice in my head that tells me I could have done better and that I should have practiced harder and that third is not as good as first.  I have abhorrent negative self-talk.  I managed to listen to the others around me and take in the congratulations and quiet the voice that always tells me that I am not good enough.  But that has taken me years of practice.  I will tell you that I could have practiced harder but now that I know what to expect I will and I will shoot for first place not so much to compete against others, but to aim for my own personal best.  When I started this process I could barely do a sit up, but now I can keep up with the class on those and I can plank for a full minute, though I feel like throwing up afterwards!

The thing with negative self-talk is that it is an ingrained voice.  It’s learned from old, but that also means that it can be unlearned.  I can laugh now at how insistent it is and how ridiculous it sounds.  I was talking to one of the groups I lead at work about this same topic the other day and we decided we would try to name our negative self-talk voices.  I decided to name mine “Moriarty” after Sherlock Holmes’s nemesis.  I can do battle against Moriarty when he rears his ugly head and that makes it somehow easier.

When self-doubt arises and makes me want to quit before I start I try to remember how far I have come in life.  I have to tell it that I can do a spinning side kick now and that makes me an official bad ass really.  When Moriarty starts to drone on I just have to remember who the fuck I am.