Tag: supermom

But I like my head in the sand…what???

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Have you ever found yourself wanting to just drop away from reality for awhile?  Things get complicated or overwhelming or even downright frightening and you just want to disappear from that part of life while finding a tiny season of blissful forgetfulness and enjoyment?  Oh, brother, I have.

I love my children and, overall, my life, with wild abandon.  We deal with trying times (after all, I have a teen and preteen now) and difficult days  but, through it all, they are mine, this life is mine, and I will never cease seeking the answers to why it didn’t go a certain way or how it is “supposed to go” from this point forward.  I know there are times that I have done it all wrong.  Am I doing it right, now?  This is not purposed by self-denigration but, rather, by a yearning for self-discovery.  I think that, overall in my life, I have typically been in such a rush to be happy that I have taken enjoyable moments and made lifelong decisions based on temporary enchantment.  At some point, I look back at said resolutions (and revolutions) and think….”why didn’t I just slow down and try a little objectivity before that one?”  I can actually often look back and remember hearing a little voice inside my head saying “This is probably not the best decision but, well, you’re happy right now; feels good, right?…You can figure out how to be happy again after this happy wears off…”  Ughhhh.  I’m disgusted with the asinine absurdity of that whole idea and yet, yep, that’s been me.  Most euphoria is temporary but it’s circumstances can take much longer to be relinquished than originally embarked upon.

Take marriage for example.  A happy “honeymoon” period is like the teasing and tantalizing effect of a drug.  Exhilaration, euphoria, optimism, mirth and enchantment are your companion emotions at the start.  At some point after that, however, the desire to run away will surface.  Somewhere along the path to longevity, I think we all find ourselves in a spot saying…”what did I get myself into and how can I get out?”  Now, I’m not saying that everyone should get out at that point.  This is just the moment of truth at which you make a decision to stand and fight for it and for a better understanding of how it should work, sit and cower under the feelings of self-pity and self-loathing, or jump ship and run like hell to the nearest exit sign as the fire licks at your heels.  The “drug” wears off and the low kicks in.  Or the hangover, if that’s easier to understand.  And this doesn’t have to be about marriage.  Pick your own analogy and insert here: ________.  Chase high, escape low, ad nauseum with no completion.

I think I often want to spend too much of my time with my head in the sand.  I mean, ostriches are kind of cool birds.  Granted, they have the mental capability of a toddler in a peek-a-boo routine (if I can’t see you, you can’t see me) but they are still regal in their own way.  Or if I take a deep breath once in awhile and plunge my head beneath the water, it is quieter there.  The sunlight glitters across the bottom of the cerulean pool, chaotic noise is dramatically muffled and the weightless feel of the gentle rock, to and fro, of the water is calming.  If I didn’t need to breathe, I could live there…well, except that divas don’t actually like to get all pruny.  But we can choose to take a break from reality sometimes.  The “I need to run!” urge can be settled a little as long as the break is temporary and is not a way to avoid truths.

So, how does one decide whether the current longitude and latitude of life is the vacation spot or the permanent homestead?  I need to learn a long-sought ability to step back from a situation and to veritably see some kind of truth in it.  Is the run-and-hide instinct just a product of my miserable failings prior to this intersection of life or is it a visceral instinct, animalistic and primal in nature but necessary for survival?

(((sigh))) Just new…well, maybe not so new but resurfaced…points to ponder for the day…and night, as it would seem.  Somehow it feels as if a fairy princess dress and tiara with some rockin’ high kicks (sparkly ones, of course) should just fix things.  Diva dreams…

Journeying to Self-Discovery: Being happy even if others try to prevent it…

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Oh, to understand the purpose of some of the trappings of this life. This entire year, thus far, has been a whirlwind of chaotic interruptions to what I only want to become a peaceful existence. One thing I have begun to realize, through all of the disaster-overthrown days that seem to be plaguing me is this cliche’-type platitude that is suddenly making the sense of an unexpected epiphany: You can please some of the people some of the time, all of the people, some of the time, some of the people all of the time BUT you cannot please all of the people all of the time. Right now, I want to be pleased with me, whether everyone else is or not.  Period.

I have always been a “people pleaser”. When I was married (the first time), I didn’t like to make waves. I wanted peace, even if that peace was at my expense all of the time. If it meant that, in order to keep harmony, I had to ignore things that hurt me and pretend I was happy, that is exactly what I did. I didn’t want my children to live through unhappiness and strife. I didn’t want them to have to survive a divorce. I didn’t want to have to survive a divorce. I kept the peace by backing down. One day, I learned that my kids were surviving a terrible marriage and that two peaceful homes, albeit separate, rather than one home with quiet tension that could be cut with a cheese knife might be less stressful for them.

As I went through my divorce, I wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible so that the kids didn’t have to deal with the fighting. I didn’t want to fight. I hate confrontation. So I did not fight. I gave into everything except the custody of my children and he could have anything else in the world that he wanted. That included the fact that he paid no child support and got the land we owned that was already bought and paid for while I received the mortgaged house. I decided that I could raise my children myself and that one day they’ll know I worked hard to be able to provide for them. I know there are those of you who will feel like this was the cowardly thing to do and that I should have fought more my to “make him pay, “ monetarily. I still believe that the kids would have suffered more if during the onslaught. He’s happy, they’re happy and I am capable of being what they need when they’re with me (or even when they aren’t), even if it doesn’t mean that we’re rich or affluent. I still do not regret that decision because I truly feel that they would have been hurt even more for my pushing these issues, no matter how much I tried to shield them from harm.

Today, I am realizing that I no longer want to please everyone. I mean, don’t get me wrong…it does bother me when people don’t like me. That being said, I have learned to look at WHY they don’t like me and ask myself “Is that something that I am willing to change about myself? Do I like that part of who I am or is that a fault I need to work on?” When my answer is that I am perfectly happy with whatever behavior or attitude or verbal exchange that seems to have made the person in question unhappy with me, I can say…”This is who I am and I’m content with that. What they don’t like is their problem; it is not mine.” This is not something that I have ever found myself able to do before. It actually surprises me to have this thought process. What surprises me even more is that being able to do this is not out of bitterness. I don’t have an attitude that says “Whatever. I’m sick of trying to please people. Screw ’em.” Rather, I have a disposition that says “I am going to learn to be happy with who I am. If I am proud of who I am and how I react to circumstances, I am going to be happy with me and others, if they are worthy of my time, will be happy with me as well.” Do you know why this is so? Because there are people who will be jealous or have different opinions or will have been raised differently with converse morals to those in which I was raised. Those people may not agree with me all of the time. They may not even like me. I am okay with that. I am going to strive to be happy with me.

Now, I still regularly make mistakes with which I am NOT happy. I react too quickly to a stressful situation, with my children, for example, and allow anger to overcome good judgement. With my current outlook, however, I find myself quickly assessing my behavior and, when I decide I do not like my own response to the situation, I am able to expediently stop, take a deep breath, and then readdress with a more calm and worthy approach. Being able to redirect appropriately may mean walking away from the scene, rethinking my plan of action for a few minutes before returning and THEN starting over, but I am able to find the person I meant to be in the first place and the one I hope I am the next time something similar occurs. I am also quick to apologize to my children or others involved and let them know that I am not pleased with how I handled the event as well as that I will attempt to learn from it.

Okay, so, in deciding not to please everyone (some of them not even some of the time), I am seriously analyzing who it is that I want to be and how I want others to see me. When I say that latter piece, I actually do not mean that I want them to see me as someone they like. I mean that I am trying to be objective about how I appear on the outside (not physically but just as a human being, in general) and whether I’m happy with that. When someone else looks at me, am I able to be “proud” of the person that they see (whether they like what they see or not…this may be sounding confusing…)? What kind of legacy am I leaving, if you will. I am someone who loves her children with every fiber of her being. However, when I’m in the grocery store and they are all three grating on my nerves, for whatever reason or whichever antics they are displaying, I am likely to address them by saying “HEY! I’M GONNA BEAT YOU IF YOU DON’T STOP ACTING LIKE A BUNCH OF HOOLIGANS! CHILL OUT!!!” Now, some people may hear that and (self-righteously) think, “Man, she’s a mean mom.” or “Oh, my! Listen to how she just yelled at those poor little dears.” Anyone who actually has children, loves them and occasionally loses it (I believe that’s most of us.) will hear it, perhaps giggle, think to themselves, “Yep, been there, done that. She’s having a rough day.” and maybe even think “Way to get them back in line, lady.” If they DON’T feel that way, I still know this: my children know they are not going to actually be beaten, they know that this means I am nearing the end of my rope with them, however, and they also know, based on all of my OTHER motherhood behavior which strangers or friends may not always see, that I LOVE THEM and would do CATEGORICALLY ANYTHING for them. They know I have sat up all night for weeks at a time by a hospital bed, never leaving except to pee (briefly and with significant stress and bladder pressure to ensure it remained brief), as one or another of them was sick. They know that I have hostessed slumber parties with a houseful of ten children and made pounds of pancakes, created and played tons of games, allowed silly messes just because it was fun and found ways to make sure every kid had a good time. They know I have let them sleep in my bed and have picked them up in the middle of the night from someone else’s house, even after I had been asleep, because they were afraid or upset and wanted to come home. My children know the sacrifices I make for them and the things that I do just because I love them more than my own life, itself. If they know this, why on earth would I care what anyone else thinks about this?

At work, I am good at what I do. Occasionally someone does not like the way I handle a situation because it is not the way THEY would maneuver given the same occurrence. I think about how I dealt with it, whether there is a reason that it is not the “right” way to go about it or if a difference of opinion is the real problem. I am using that methodology to decide how to go on from there. Most of the time I am happy with the way I perform my career objectives and have no desire to worry another minute about what that other person’s “problem is”.  I am happy just feeling like I am doing the right thing.   If I decide that they have a point and I have to agree with their viewpoint, I am not reluctant to change tack.

Are you at this point yet? People have told me before to worry about me, be happy with who I am and let others worry about whether they’re happy or not. I am responsible only for my happiness and not that of anyone else (except my children, of course). Until I reached this latest, slow-dawning epiphany, however, I was not ready to understand what I had been advised. If you’re not here, you will be saying “easier said than done…you’re not like me”, in your head. I’m here to tell you that, be it age or wisdom, you will get here one day. If you are here, you understand what I am saying. Pipe up and let me know where you are in your own journey.

Where Am I & Who Took My Life?

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Now, where is it?Today I am struggling with the everyday living thing.  You know the thing.  It’s the part where you look around you and, although seeing beautiful areas of tremendous value (children, house to live in, car, ability to earn an income, extended family, fantastic friends) you still wonder how you ended up in this place, this particular reality.  And now, after listing all of my wonderful things above ^, I realized that there is one specific area that I must be pondering and wrestling with.  Funny how writing pulls the truth out from behind the curtain.

I remember being 22 years old and thinking, “This is ridiculous.  I want to have babies and I’m not even married.  I am running out of time.  I have got to get the ball rolling here.”  Now what’s ridiculous?  I’ll tell you what.  Ridiculous thing number one is that I thought I was running out of time when I was 22.  I had a plan.  I wanted to have all of my children (2-3) by the time I was 30 and be a young, fun mom.  Notice that no mention of career is made.  I do enjoy the work I have chosen and I believe God led me to my profession for a reason but I also know that, given the choice, I would have remained a stay-at-home-mom and been on every PTA, coached soccer every year, volunteered at every school and read stories in classrooms all while baking fresh cookies and fun, kid-oriented dinners.  The only job I ever remember growing up wanting to have was being a mommy.  Now, there are those of you who will understand this and, most definitely, those of you who think they would go crazy with that.  I respect both.

Ridiculous thing number two is that I am now pushing 40 (oh, how it hurts to type that), still want another baby and still feel my time slipping away.  And am unmarried again.  Another baby may never be an option for me and I come to terms with that (and then lose perspective again) on a regular basis.  I do struggle with what raising a child in your 40’s-60’s would mean versus what it has meant in my 20’s to 40’s.  I do not mean any disrespect to anyone reading this who is or has had their children at this time of their lives; it’s just a different concept for me and I’m sure would change my parenting to some degree.  Please do not take offense.

So this all leads to the realization that, although my heart still wants to carry another child underneath and my arms still want to hold another sweet, nursing baby, that may not be in the “cards” for me.  It may just be a yearning I carry forever.  Oddly enough, even as difficult as my pregnancies were (a 7 week hospital stay with one for placenta previa, a premature rupture of membranes with one at only 34 weeks and an emergency C-Section for a cord emergency with the last), I loved being pregnant, loved nursing my babies and loved every minute raising them up to even this moment.  There have been hard times and frustrations, sure.  I joke about how “boys are gross” or how they’re driving me crazy, like I think many people do, but I wouldn’t trade one second of any time I’ve ever had with them for all the money in the world.  They own my heart and carry it around with them wherever they go.  And I would do it all over again with a new one…crazy as some may think that would seem at my age.

All of that being said, I will not rush into the fray of scouting out relationship possibilities, in all of it’s danger, pitfalls, vicious weaponry, dragon-filled moats and flaming arrows and warning flares, to scurry irresponsibly and headlong into the possibly misleading comfort of a newfound castle.  I am a spontaneous girl and love the fun of an unplanned adventure but have also learned to be a wary one as it comes to potential love relationships.  I have three incredible boys to whom I owe my responsibility and my ultimate level of caution and protection.  I won’t thrust them into something that I, myself, am not doubly sure of…well, as sure as one can be of anything at all in this life.  And I also won’t commit myself, in front of God and everyone, to a relationship that I don’t feel like I know has an abiding, perpetual capability to succeed.  I did truly think that my first marriage had that quality and tried for a long time to turn it around but there are some life cycles that just don’t turn at the same speed of rotation, thus allowing two to be in the same stratum for a time but then cycling in such a way that they never reach the same point at the same time again.  You also cannot change other people.  They have to find that themselves, no matter how hard you pray or how much you want to make it happen.  If it ever happens, it will be on their terms and in their time, not in your own.

So where am I?  At 22, I envisioned where my life should go and what I would do with it.  I have my three beautiful boys, although I was 31 when the last came along. 🙂 Where did this new longing come from that was not in the original plan?  Who replaced my first intentions with this new proposal?  If I was born to be a Mommy and being a nurse is just my secondary assignment as an answer to the need for income, what will I be when these babies are gone?  Who will be with me or will I then walk this path alone, still searching for some unreachable solitary “goal”?  I have friends and family who love me.  I have people who would give the roof over their head to cover the heads of myself and my boys.  I have people to turn to when I am sad, lonely, lost or broken.  And I am still an absurd distinction of broken, giving yet another reason that a male-female relationship would only flounder and fail until I figure myself out.  So, why do I feel the need to have that?  I have my people.  What is this level of altered reality in which I live that assumes I must have someone else in order to be a whole me?  Why must I feel like half when there is no missing piece to fill in the other side?

And so I struggle.  A very close friend, whom I dearly love, said to me, ” A sense of purpose is a big deal for us humans. But I wonder if sometimes we put too much pressure on ourselves to ‘figure that out’. Maybe it isn’t actually that clear. Or even something tangible that you will be able to know about.  Maybe we just have to have faith. Faith that we are here for a reason, even if we never know it for ourselves. Having too rigid a purpose (i.e. I’m here to be a mom, I’m here to help people) doesn’t allow for a whole lot of flexibility or for you to have different sides to yourself.”  Oh, my dear T, you are a wise woman.  Maybe we’re not supposed to “fix” ourselves but wait for the days of our lives to fix us…and, of course, I don’t mean the soap opera.  Clearly, if one is standing on a pinpoint of a flat map, our overall position in the grand cartograph is invisible to ourselves, and even those standing close to us, due to it’s magnitude.  The “big picture” is an elusive Dumbo’s feather being whisked away by the wind each time we think we are just about to grab hold of it’s confidence-infusing magic.

Oh, to be an eye in the sky so I would know…where am I?

Ever-Changing Chameleon

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Chameleon...I am a chameleon.  I’ve been called that in the past but only recently accepted the title and it’s banner.  I change to suit different situations, different people, different locations.  What I’m finding is that it seems to have a negative connotation and I want to respectfully disagree.

Being ever changing is not necessarily a bad thing.  I can understand the concept that one may think of a human “chameleon” as someone who pretends to be something they’re not.  Again, I wholeheartedly disagree.  A chameleon does not pretend to be purple when it’s purple or green when it’s green; it changes.  It morphs into a different version of itself in order to be protected from the dangers of a vicious world; but that, in itself, is the explanation that tells me it’s not wrong.  It changes to a different version of itself.  It is still being true to it’s character, a character that few other species have.  It’s character just has varying faces of the same prism.  And a prism reflects light beautifully.

I am adaptable.  I admit to not wanting anyone not to like me.  Someone recently told me that I need to get over that because you have to turn your back on half of the world to survive.  I respectfully disagree.  I don’t want to turn my back until they force me to.  And even if I have to turn, in the interest of self-preservation, I will still be wishing they had been able to see the better side of me…a different color of the chameleon’s camouflage.  I will still wonder what it was that made our encounter in life one feasting on a bone of contention.  I do realize that people come into and go out of our lives for a reason but I would like to leave each one on good terms yet that is often impossible.

Why?  Because I am human, as are they.  I make mistakes.  I screw up.  I was born missing the critical filter between brain and mouth and I often say dumb things before I stop to realize they are hurtful.  I get angry.  I get hurt.  I say more dumb things.  I am human…hear me cry.  I am the first to admit to how imperfect I am and, trust me, I point said imperfections out to myself on a daily basis.  I often try to talk myself out of them…but some of them seem to be innate.  So, trying to go through life without hurting anyone, making someone angry or resentful or without losing someone who was only meant to stay for a brief while, well, that’s a losing battle.  But I digress…

As a chameleon, I am a different person as a mom, a nurse, a friend, a coworker…and so on.  We all have various hats that we must or choose to wear and we adjust our behavior and affect accordingly.  I’m not saying my character is different, just that I rely on differing aspects of the same character.  And I am a character.   Pretty sure none would deny me that little jewel of a title.

Likewise, in love or around different friends with different interests, I shine alternating sparkles of my complex personality.  With a friend who likes superheroes and “gets” my inner dork, I open up the part that lets my geek flag fly. I will talk about wanting to go to MegaCon and having a (not so) secret fascination with Wonder Woman or Mrs. Incredible.  With a friend who shares my enthusiasm for good wine, I will express my likes and dislikes of a plethora of varieties of libation and ask for opinions about what they enjoy consuming.  These things I do not see as character flaws.  Different people bring out contradistinctive  personality traits in each of us.  Each brings joy or wisdom or even sadness to our lives that individually serve to sculpt the clay of who we are.  And you see, I recall being the same chameleon in high school.

In high school, I attended an international school in which one could decipher no less than 8 different languages in conversations being carried on during one trek down the hallway.  I learned a little bit of Hebrew, conversational German, a good Brit accent (much to my children’s chagrin) and very basic Arabic, French and Spanish.  I would try to incorporate my weak language skills into conversations with varicolored friends in order to sharpen my intellect and, I confess, to cause the random burst of laughter when I brutally murdered phraseology from another tongue.  There was nothing wrong with my trying to blend in with them and incorporate myself into their lives in a meaningful way.  In fact, I daresay I think it was right.  If I change how I react and behave around you, because of your interests or likes vs. dislikes, then you know that you are important enough to me that I want to understand more about who you are.  I want to connect.  I desire to comprehend what makes you tick on a level different than what others have made effort to do.  If you see my character to be different around you than when you’ve seen me elsewhere, please, by all means, take that as a compliment.  You matter.

Being a chameleon, in the respect that I’m attempting to describe, is not the same as when they had a sale on faces at the Dollar Store and some chick bought more than a BOGO.  To those people I say, if you’re going to have two faces, honey, at least make one pretty.  Because in those changing appearances, neither is ever beautiful as they are both tainted by the overall integrity (or rather, lack thereof) of the individual.  No, being a chameleon, in the sense I want you to visualize and condone, is a trait of adaptation, a show of respect, an expression of praise.  I don’t just want to be able to be myself around you but I want to be able to be part of you, around you.  I will watch TV shows you recommend (at least trying on for size).  I will listen to your music; I have eclectic taste anyway.  I will ask how your life is going and will attempt to commune with quips and analogies from my own comical or dramatic history to let you know that you are not alone in the fight.

None of us ever is, no matter how lonely it sometimes feels to be a chameleon in the desert.

The Beginning of My Success

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It is always difficult to begin a new journal.  I stare at blank pages and wonder where to start.  In order to begin, there has to have been an ending.  What has ended?  How does one ever know what “endings” are temporary and what is truly over…completed?  This past year has been riddled with changes and yet I don’t know what of these are starts or finishes.  As odd as that seems, it is but a miniature diorama of life.  I have learned one thing well:  the only constant in life is change.

Even love is not constant and is ever-changing.  The only constant love exists between you and God, who loves as an eternal parent even when you misbehave, and the love between a parent – the worldly kind – and their own child(ren).  This love is one that never, ever goes away, always grows exponentially and never fades…even when you feel it is undeserved.  Children will one day grow to understand this parental love (I hope I see mine grow to know it.) and only then will God’s love make more sense.

All of that being said, I’m looking at this new year knowing that all of the yesterdays have gone and I am left with a pile of total gains and losses to try to place in some assemblage of order so that I can start with a new plan of action.  I am not good with order and organization, however much I would love to be.

Where to start?  I know a few things that I want to be solid foundation in this particular beginning.

1.) I am an independent and strong woman.  I don’t need a man and his affection or love or expectations in order to live, survive and even thrive.  I won’t deny wanting to have someone near to care about me…someone who is there by my side when I am lonely, sick, scared or just plain happy and wanting to share that with someone special who will understand and be happy that I’m happy.  I do not, however, need someone else to make me happy.  I have learned that I am capable of happiness and contentment all by myself.

2.) God is an integral and essential part of who I am, deep inside.  He must become, again, part of who I am on the outside.  I will face challenges of the opinions of others during this conversion of appearance.  I have walked far outside the path of where I believe I am supposed to be. This, it itself, is a personal recognition of need and is not open for speculation or criticism of others.  To stray from my current path in an attempt to traverse rough terrain while laboring to converge with a path on “higher ground” will mean facing sandspurs, sharp rocks and steep, overbearing hills.  The worst of these metaphorical pitfalls are actually other people who seem to love nothing more than to tear down another.  I will walk among them, around them and even right beside them if that is what it takes to reach my desired and, yes, necessary destination.

3.) I will bring my children on every essential leg of this journey.  I always know they are watching me closely; if they can see the struggle of my exploration, perhaps they will be able to avoid some of the difficulties in the trek that I have taken.  I wish for my boys to never have to traverse the thorny fields I have travelled these last years, even though I have learned much and still experienced some great joys in the pilgrimage.

I hold these things up not as resolutions which I believe, by design, are destined to be broken.  I lay them before myself as a map to a new place.  I seek a place of peace, contentment and self-respect.  I want my whole life to have the sensation that I feel while laying in my big, comfortable bed, surrounded by my three boys and fluffy comforters, with a funny movie on the television and their giggles erupting around me.  If my whole life could feel just like that moment, my life could be nothing but a total success.

Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself

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Worry.  Apprehension.  Uncertainty.  Vexation.  Disquiet.  Anxiety.  Doubt.

So many words to describe such a hazardous, emotional behavior.  I have always thought myself to be an optimist but have awakened to a rude new discovery.  Somewhere along the crooked path that has become the road map of my life, I have pulled a light-blocking curtain between myself and positivism.  My rose-colored glasses have become scratched and somehow their shape is warped, seeming to improperly fit my face.  Confidence, exhilaration, self-assurance and even sanguineness all seem to have taken flight as well.  These words, these “things” that once exuded from my very pores and encompassed my whole outlook on life and which also defined whom I was to others, now appear to have waltzed off in some lively dance toward another banquet affair that must have seemed more appealing to attend than my own.  My own soiree has somehow become less enticing to such honored guests.

Now, as I sit like a wallflower lamenting my misfortune at having been the less-appealing option for the ever-sought “popular crowd” of emotions and behavioral accoutrements, I am at a loss for methods of captivating their attentions once again.  How can I lure these seemingly elusive characters back to my daily demeanor?  I brawl daily with the darkened antonyms of my desired disposition, thrashing and deflecting in a fruitless skirmish against intangible adversaries.  I do not know how to struggle against the unseen or to traverse a path around their camp in order to reach my own prior enchanting encampment.  The glow of twinkling lights that identify the convivial mindset to whence I wish to return seem to tease and taunt me from the distance at times, but only when I even become aware that they have been replaced by sinister counterparts.

The metamorphosis of my overall perspective has been so subtle over many years that I scarcely noticed the change.  At one time people would have described me as buoyant, lighthearted, cheerful, spirited and positive.  I most always had a contagious smile and reflected a persona that was repeatedly referred to as “bubbly”.  With these personality traits also came encouragement and reinforcement for others who struggled against despair or even just a plateau of uniformity in their own lives.  I wanted others to be capable of experiencing the joie de vivre that I enjoyed.  I am perplexed by the realization that I am no longer that individual and by the oddly imperceptible journey that has led me here.

Yesterday was one of the days that allowed, nay, demanded that I recognize the transformation of my identity.  Having received news to be thankful for, the fact that I had fretted needlessly over these results for days struck me with the force of a lightning strike.  Minutes, hours, days spent imagining what would need to be done had the outcome been negative.  Everyone battles anxiety at times yet my “old self” would have said “don’t borrow trouble” or “no sense in worrying over what may not be”.  The concerns would have been floating around behind my thoughts rather than taking them over with the rumble of a volcano about to erupt.

Today I am searching for an alley in which to duck until the villainous qualities have dashed past my hiding place and lost me in their pursuit.  I want to stand quietly there until they are out of sight and then scamper quickly in the opposite direction towards my old companions whose company was always substantially more affable and satisfying.  Enchantment, vivacity, mirth and hopefulness must be just down the road, if only I can see the horizon on which the sun is setting so as to get my bearings…

Trudging backwards…wish me luck.

A Woman In Search Of A Word

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In Search of My Word...Liz’s friend:  “What word are you?”  Liz:  “Hmm…started off as daughter. Was pretty good at that. Wife…not so good at that. Girlfriend…not so good.”  Friend:  “Maybe you are a woman in search of a word…”  ~ Eat Pray Love ♥ ~

I do believe I am in search of my word.  In the movie Liz suggested “writer” as her own and her friend said “That is what you do; it is not who you are.”  My own mind mimics that wanting to say “nurse” or “caregiver” because it is what I love and it feels like a part of me to put my hands and words on injured or failing bodies and souls and try to help somehow but I am rarely able to practice that as my work now.  Taking care of my children or of my patients feels as if it gives me purpose and something I am known to be capable and even skilled at doing.  There is also the predicament that my skills of lifting the spirits of others were much more efficacious when God was wrapped around my life as a silken cocoon of protection before I allowed a rip of denigration to assault His guardianship.  The resulting flock of moths that swarmed the opening and drowned out the light have never retreated, thus weakening my ability to render the cultivation of the aforementioned gift.  I often find myself wanting to reach out to soothe and end up in a self-wounding battle of alternating self-loathing and self-pity.  These are things which I know lack nobility, humility and honor but which seem to circle in an ever-present, exhausting tidal wave of emotion.

These words, however, would still be a title for “what I do” and not “who I am”.  So I am, indeed, a woman in search of my own word.  It should be a word which tells me who I am and what I mean or what I am to contribute to this world.  It should be a word that defines my being so acutely that I no longer allow anyone to swathe me with their own elucidation.  It should be a word that thwarts my own unwanted desire to allow anyone else to be or choose my word for me.  Notice I did not say “It should be a word that tells OTHERS…”; others would not need to know my word because they will be able to sense who I am based on the fruits of my labor and perhaps even by my existence in the circle of my life that overlaps with the circle of their own.  Possession and knowledge of such a powerful tool as a character-encompassing idiom could breathe new life into my life.  I feel that I need a word, one word, all my own to remind me that I do not need any other titles to define me.   But does such a word even exist?

The realizations strikes me suddenly, like the comedic hand-slap to the head of a stooge, that trying to find one’s “word” sounds as if attempting to allow only one description for a multitude of characteristics.  I am aware that one person can “be” many things to many people.  It is not my attributes that I wish to entitle but my purpose.  I grasp the idea that there is no single word that is capable of explaining to another that which demonstrates an overall encirclement of my personality and being.  I simply seek this word as a foundation on which to build my own understanding of who I am.  I can represent different words to different people but knowing which one I represent to myself is paramount in seeking to slay the dragons of past failures and defend my fortress from future blitzkrieg.  Each antecedent onslaught has come in such a lightning-fast manner that I felt unprepared to protect my own walls and thus their bricks dropped miserably around me in forgotten rag-doll fashion and have since disintegrated into clouds of choking dust.  Knowing my “word”, in my mind, is the epitome of raising a forcefield around one’s encampment.  Once I know who I am, I will no longer feel I need the approval and recognition of others in order to merely survive.  Instead I will not only survive but LIVE as who I am and not what others expect me to be.  And yet again I am forced to inquire as to whether such a word exists that can provide all of these protections.

So today I begin my quest.  The territory may often seem uncharted and the forests dark and unwelcoming.  The people oft appear villainous but some are indeed utilitarian and will help at the cost of their own sacrifice of time and efforts for the betterment of the kingdom.  I shall go on to seek my personal holy grail and do not intend to cease searching until I find the verbal accoutrement that will allow me to map my life’s path in years to come.

Who am I?  I am now a woman in search of a word.