Roni and Kree's Story

I had to admit to myself and to my sponsor yesterday that I am grieving again. I just didn't want to accept that these waves of emotions I have been having is grief. Really? I thought I was done at least long enough to catch my breath.

I watched American Idol last night and bawled at Kree's story. Losing both parents at different times and leaving her and her sister to manage their own lives. As the tears rolled down my face I thought "this happened to you." I know first hand that this is tragic and leaves be gaping holes and then scars if you manage to close those holes.

You learn not to get attached to much because you know young that nothing really last forever. Then one day you find someone that manages to break through the wall and you latch on to them like a life raft in a sea of numbed feelings. People can't survive as life rafts in a relationship it drains them and they run away. Then you go deeper and seal those emotions up one last time.

Kree has her sister and it was clear that they have a tight bond that has sustained them.

I didn't lose my father to death like I did my mother but for me he died when she died. He closed off his original family for his new family. When he did die, decades later, I didn't shed a tear all those tears had already been shed.

I have a sister too but she left when my dad remarried. She didn't want to leave me with the new family but I convinced her that I would be alright. My emotions were already closed off by then and I thought it wasn't possible to inflict any more damage to me at that point but I was wrong.

My sister and I have never really had that sister bond since she left that day. I don't know if it is because we are four years a part or just because we are too different.

When you lose someone young you avoid getting too attached to anyone. When you occasionally get attached and they leave you feel that childhood pain of loss over and over. You feel guilty like it is your fault. It is the guilt of a child that feels that they were somehow responsible for their parents leaving them.

The friendship that ended a few months back resurfaced this week with some pretty nasty emails. It hurts just like it always does when someone I trusted with my feelings turns against me. I didn't want more grief.

I am better today after yesterday's on and off tears. I went home last night and made macaroni and cheese from scratch something I have done since I could stand in a chair at the stove. I just let the sorrow wash over me and tried to appreciate actually having feelings.

It is all just a part of life.

Finding Your Own North Star - Feeling Light

new.discovery.com

I took the the day off yesterday. It was raining cats and dogs and no one was really looking for me so I made and executive decision to just stay home. I felt like a kid pretending to be sick and getting away with it.

I think my situation with work has put me into temporary grieving mode. The death of a dream. I had imagined that my partner and I were going to build something together like sisters and the work would be fun. Two creative people doing what we love and getting paid for it. But that was only my dream.

I realized that this situation along with the death of a close friendship around Christmas was the beginning of yet another grieving period. I couldn't really see that it made me not want to do this any more. I thought it was the design work and not the circumstance that was making me so unhappy.

From the time I was big enough to move furniture I rearranged my room at least once a month. All 60 lbs of me would sit on the floor against the wall and push my furniture around with my feet. Thankfully my mother didn't mind my reoccurring decorating sessions from black light posters to beads in the doorway. It kept me out of trouble just as it does today.

The problems I have been having made me doubt my love for design and my ability to be a entrepreneur. I have always been a entrepreneur even as a child when other kids played house I played restaurant or store. I always had a money making enterprise on the side that made real money. I loved the whole process of coming up with something someone wanted and would be willing to pay for.

I have also been doing a lot of reading this week which has helped me find my way. First a Martha Beck book Finding Your Own North Star and then The Power of Now. Martha's book is about finding something you love and the money will follow after a lot of work.  She says if you listen to your essential self instead of your social self you will be led in the right direction.

It is really about aptitude but she has methods in her book for first identifying what it is you don't like about what you are doing now and then how to find what you do like. I have read this book about four times it is way more than a book about careers it is about seeing how we cave to what is expected and become depressed because we are doing things we don't want to do. This book is also about the grief process and actually has a chart of the stages and what you might be feeling. It also help to show you the difference between grief and depression.

I went to bed night before last and ask God to help me find joy in my life again. To restore me to sanity once again and show me which way to go. I can no longer live the way I have been living in fear all the time. I decided to surrender and let the chips fall where they may. My sponsor says ask God to either " lock it or block it."

I woke up yesterday morning feeling light. I decided to stay home and my heart was singing. I watched design shows and just did whatever I felt like doing. After watching a few shows I thought "who are you kidding you are already doing exactly what you love." It hasn't been fun lately but that doesn't have anything to do with design itself. It has to do with the people I have been working with.

This is a creative business with a lot of technical stuff on top of that. Then there is the emotions of the customers and meeting every one's expectations. Having problems with fellow designers and contractors has added and extra layer that pushed me over the edge.

I have decided that I just need a little time off to find some inspiration. Even just not being here yesterday made me feel great. I actually worked on my new business plan. Just realizing that I do still love design made me feel like I am no longer on the fence. I can move forward and put my energy where I need it

Why am I always surprised by grief? If it doesn't come in the usual package I don't always see it. Losing a friendship and realizing my business partner and I don't want the same thing is a big loss. Even if I know I am better off it still hurts. I am no longer emotionally dead like I was before the program so I have to feel my feelings. What a bummer. It is why I have done all this work to be human.

Making decisions - Jumping ship

Here is my latest drawing of Eckhart Tolle. I was listening to one of his lectures on YouTube and decided to draw him.  We are suppose to use live models but this is the closest I could get. He wasn't moving too much so it worked.

His eyes are a bit smaller but I think I captured the perpetual glazed look he has on his face. Peace I guess.

Drawing seems to be all that perks my interested these days. I was considering ditching the life I have but thought maybe first I should just take a vacation. I haven't had more than two days off in a row since October so maybe it isn't my whole life that needs to change maybe just parts of it.

My friend and have been talking and texting about following your heart instead of your head through life. Making every decision based on whether your heart says weeee or ugh. This goes totally against the grain of what we have been taught. Safety first.

When I think about when I was my happiest I have to go back to my eight year old self again. The summers where my mother relaxed all rules really and turned us out in the morning and said not to come back until we got hungry. Hey back then if it was between adventure or food I always chose adventure. This could be a new diet.

I was expected to entertain myself and I was good at it. There was so much I wanted to do and never enough time to do it. I had a million ideas. These days my life seems to be just about money. Do I have enough? Making decision based on how to make more instead of  " is this working for me anymore?"

I know can't be eight years old again, with my parents footing the bills and I doubt I will ever say weee about doing my taxes but surely there is something in between.

I have been lucky that all the jobs I have had I did feel inspired for a time or maybe I had less expectations about work. Until my last spiritual awakening I considered myself task oriented and was generally satisfy just gettin things accomplished. I think I want my life to be more joyful.

When my enthusiasm did finally end for the corporate job the job also ended. Just like my relationships I had already left the building.  I just didn't have the heart to abandon the comfort of what was for the potentially discomfort of the unknown. So fate did it for me.

Can I be braver this time and make the first move even if I have no idea where I should move to or will I wait until I am forced to jump ship. Maybe I will just start with a vacation.

Step Three - Help - Let Go

I am at another cross roads in my life and I would like for someone to tell me exactly what I should do to have things turn out exactly the way I want them to even if I am not sure what it is that I want. 

That pretty much sums it up for me. On my best days I am happy and not fearful of the future and on my worst days I want to crawl into bed an pull the covers over my head. I sometimes tell myself you are a powerful person and you can do anything you want with the help of your higher power.

Other times my mind reviews all of the mistakes I have made and I think about how crazy I have been these past years and what if I will never be the person I used to be. Maybe I am all washed up and now what am I suppose to do?

Do I really want to be the person I use to be?

The pendulum swings from one extreme to another and I keep regurgitating my insecurity to other people hoping they will somehow sooth this never ending fear I have that this won't work out. The this I a referring to is my life. 

Step Three - Made a decision to turn our will and our life over to the care as we understand him. 

I never really do this on the big stuff until I have driven myself nuts. I have to exhaust my mortal options before I consider that I am not in this alone and that maybe someone out there loves me. I have been taken care of before I can't name one situation where the ultimate result wasn't better than I could have imagined. 

Does this fact calm me or make me feel better when I am about to take a big leap into the unknown. Absolutely not. I get stuck in "I need more information" or worst trying to get the opinion of my friends (which are totally sick of hearing me stuck) I know this because they have told me. 

Why must I torture myself with indecision forever before making a decision? I don't know. Actually I do know it is because I might make a mistake and end up worse off than I am now. 

The only decision I need to make is the one in Step Three. I think I am ready now to let go again. 

Step Two - Hope

spiritvoyage.com

Step Two - Came to believe a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Step Two seems easy enough on the surface but it can really trip you up to relinquish the idea that you have all the answers. When I got to the program I was pretty delusional. Even though inside I was really insecure I still acted like I had everything under control.

If I admit that maybe I needed help that would let other people see that I was a fraud. I was human and besides I had trust issues. My situation at the time was pretty bleak no husband, no money, no friends and no family. I was all I had and if I admitted I needed help where would that leave me.

The co-dependent isolated relationship I had with my husband had left me alone by choice. He was all I wanted or needed. He filled every moment of my life with drama some really great highs and really bad lows. It was a full time job and I became lost in it. I was addicted to the drama and got my self-worth from being the hero of his life and ultimate the victim of my own life.

That sounds harsh but it is so true. My entire life, up until I came to Al-Anon, was the life of a victim. I had been rejected by my family and have repeated this rejection in just about every relationship and job I have had since. I am more comfortable being in the victim role. I would rather be hurt than hurt someone else. This is my choice so I can't really blame anyone else for choosing their own happiness over mine. It is probably healthier.

I think I have strayed from Step Two at this point but this is all part of the fabric of what the program has taught me. I have been a victim of other peoples choices many time since I started the program but the difference is that I am no longer comfortable playing the victim. It no longer feels good to blame someone else for my own unhappiness.

When my last relationship ended with infidelity it completely devastated me and I am just starting to feel good again. Even when I tried I couldn't muster the venom I had when my husband left me and believe me I wanted to.

I always knew in my heart it wasn't about me. Even if in the darkest of times, when I believed it was, it really wasn't. My spirit knew I wasn't happy and told me with a number of illnesses and 30 extra pounds. I chose to ignore those things because I couldn't face what it really meant. If I had known it would take me five years to feel good again I definitely wouldn't have been as willing as I was to leave.

During my recent growth spurt or time in the meat grinder I went back to my roots and trusted that something greater than my mortal self could restore me to sanity. I have come to believe that my spirit was made in the image of God and my spirit ultimate knows the what is best for me. If I keep my mind from getting involved I always end up where I am happiest.

I am for the first time consciously following my spirit and my mind is protesting every minute.  My spirit has been running the show all along but in a passive aggressive way. This time I am trying to get out of my own way and listen with my heart and not my head. I believe that this is the only way to sanity for me.

It is scary but the more I trust the easier it gets. Giving up the idea that I am in this alone helps me to remain peaceful some of the time.

The need to belong - A life with a purpose - kindness

I have been thinking a lot about the events that took place this past week. It made me sad to think that this is what someone chose to do with there life and convince another person to go along with it.

We are all the same whether we like to admit or not. We want to be loved by someone and feel like we belong some where and we want our life to have a purpose. I think that groups especially religious groups fill this need for a lot of people. Once we feel we belong then the group has a a greater influence and we work hard fit in and not be rejected.

Luckily most groups have a positive influence on their followers but some use the need to belong as a tool to manipulate people into doing unthinkable things. Planting a seed of hate and separation instead of the idea that we are all one in our need to be love and belong.

We are also taught that the just living and enjoying life is not enough. We need to contribute to the greater good make our mark before we leave this earth.  We don't want to be forgotten even if that leads some people to the extreme.

When your happy and life is going great it is hard to understand anyone else not valuing life the way you do. I recently read a therapy blog referencing suicide and was sad to see anonymous comments from people about taking their own lives.

People are hurting and you can't really tell that from the outside. When something like this happens there is always someone that says they seemed perfectly normal.

I am not sure what can be done except convince people to question what their minds are telling them. We aren't born with any of the ideas we have in our head now. We collected them from the people in our lives and sometimes those lives and people are small, limited and angry.

We accept what we know as the truth and never question it. Maybe because we fear that if we do our own family or group will reject us and we will end up alone.

I say this from personal experience. I had to take the road less traveled and it has been a lonely one at times. I have questioned everything I thought was true especially what my family taught me. My spirit wouldn't allow me to just shut my eyes the way my sister has. I don't blame her sometime I wish I had done that but it is too late for me now and there is no turning back.

I feel sad for everyone affected personally by the bombing and I feel sad for the rest of us because the fear will eventually trickle down to all of us in some shape or form.

We can make a difference by treating everyone we meet with kindness instead of just the people we know. We never know when a kind word or a little more patience might make a difference in someone's day.  

Rain - Memories - Dafodil

It is raining cats and dogs here and the temperature has dropped 30 degrees from yesterday. I woke up with the song below from my childhood playing in my head.

I sang this sound in the third grade in front of the entire school during a school play.  It was the one and only time I have ever sang in front of an audience. Since then I secretly have always wanted to be a singer who knows maybe in the next life.

The play was about the holidays and the seasons. I can remember sitting in Mrs. Wilds class room and everyone had been ask to sing something. I totally loved Mrs.Wild she looked liked Cher and she wore the grooviest clothes you could image.  I wanted to be her when I grew up.

I was shocked when I got picked and then shocked turned into terrified but I made through. I got the feeling that the play director and some of the other teachers weren't so happy with her choice. Maybe because I was so terrified. There were other stronger singers but she knew I could use the boost and she was right.

It was my moment in the spotlight and I often remember standing on the stage in my white go go boots, white stockings and cullotte skirt.  It was a proud moment for me and my family. My mother was already sick by then but we it was moments like these that made us seem normal even if only for a moment.


Though April showers 
May come your way, 
They bring the flowers 
That bloom in May; 
And if it's raining, 
Have no regrets; 
Because, it isn't raining rain, you know, 
It's raining violets. 
And when you see clouds 
Upon the hill, 
You soon will see crowds 
Of daffodils; 
So keep on looking for the bluebird, 
And listening for his song, 
Whenever April showers come along. 

Though April showers 
May come your way, 
They bring the flowers 
That bloom in May; 
And if it's raining, 
Have no regrets; 
Because, it isn't raining rain, you know, 
It's raining violets. 
And when you see clouds 
Upon the hill, 
You soon will see crowds 
Of daffodils; 
So keep on looking for the bluebird, 
And listening for his song, 
Whenever April showers come along 


source: http://www.lyricsondemand.com/a/aljolsonlyrics/aprilshowerslyrics.html