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Posts Tagged "The Crucible Bookii"
As I walk along the beach, I look out over the horizon. I gaze for a long time, dipping deep into my mind, into the nothingness, free-falling and letting loose of the stresses from the last month. I am tired but the wind in my hair and the gooshy sand under my feet and the salty wet wind refresh me. I am starting to feel alive again. I can feel my mind emptying and the joy nipping at my heels as I walk. As I look into the distance, I see something in the water. I can’t quite see what is floating my way. I walk and I wait and I eventually sit down in the sand and watch it floating in. It feels gritty on my skin to plop down in the sand and it is warm under my legs. I sift the sand through my fingers as I sit watching and waiting. The bobbling thing floats toward me and then away again as the waves wash in and out. I realize the tide must be coming in, or whatever it is would be moving away from me and not toward me. I feel timeless propped up on the sand watching and waiting. I have nowhere to be and nowhere to go. For the first time in a year, my time is my own. So, I sit and wait. “Oh,” I exclaim. I am a little surprised to hear myself speak out loud. I realize it is a bottle floating on the waves. Now I am super curious. I continue watching and I start calculating when I can run into the water to retrieve the bottle. Dreams of genies and notes in bottles whirl around my consciousness. My cynical side rears, “Don’t be silly. It’s probably garbage,” says my critical voice. I roll my eyes at my own unwillingness to play and race splashing into the water. The water is cooler than I expected and makes me catch my breath. I slow down...
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I am angry. Yup. Just plain mad! And I’ve changed my mind about something that I used to be wrong about. I am a fairly conservative dresser. I don’t ever wear sleeveless things and I rarely wear shorts. I am fairly modest in my choices even though I like bright colors and I like things that are a little bit funky. I notice if my children wear things that look “tacky” and I have been known to send all three of them back upstairs to change for various reasons. That said, I am fed up with so-called “dress code enforcement” in schools that only gets applied to women. I read an article the other day that talked about “students humiliated for dress code enforcement.” I want to point out these weren’t just students, they were all young women. Young girls were asked to “bend over” to see if their skirts are too short. Women are being sent home in schools all over the place. You can see the video here of one school. Another mom fought back when her daughter was sent home on the last day of school because her dress was allegedly too short. She wore the offending dress to her daughter’s graduation ceremony. You can see that here. In Quebec this week, a 3-year-old girl was called out for swimming without a top and asked to leave. Read the article here. The child’s mother was told the child couldn’t be topless because they didn’t want her to be targeted by pedophiles. Are you kidding me? What? Are we really going there with our children? After further consideration, I think we need to examine our policy on dress codes altogether. Everyone is talking about whether the schools are being too strict and whether the clothing really is offensive. I think everyone is asking the wrong questions. The question we should be asking is why can’t women drape their bodies in whatever they want to? We have laws for public nudity. I am not...
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Watching my parents age is excruciating. They are kind and lovely people and I want them to defy aging. I want to choose a moment in time and freeze them, exactly like they were, at their best – healthy, full of energy, and happy… probably in the early 1990s and keep them exactly like that forever. I want them to be whole and perfect and not to feel any pain–much the same as I feel about my children. My mother has had Multiple Sclerosis since she was in high school. She’s fought it bravely her whole life and has been happy and very healthy. She has used a cane for most of my life and is now using a walker. When I’m with her, I cannot accept the changes that are happening to her. I want her to fight harder and to defy the aging that is happening to her. I don’t know if she can fight hard enough–start physical therapy again, do exercises, build strength, and stay out of the wheelchair for a couple more years. I know she’s struggling to accept the changes that are happening to her. It is the proverbial “bad thing” that has been looming over her for my entire life: The Chair. Immovability. It is the thing to fight against and I am watching her give up. I am pushing her to fight, fight, fight. Maybe what I need to be doing is telling her it’s okay. Some of the agony is in me not wanting to say the wrong thing and I don’t want to contribute to her giving up. Years ago when I trained to be a hospice volunteer, they taught us to be willing to just talk about death. So many people in our patients’ lives wanted them to get better and sometimes they needed someone to just be with them to talk about dying and what they were experiencing. I wonder if this is the same for my mom–that she is facing losing her ability to walk and...
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I have fallen off the yoga wagon this last couple of months. After almost daily yoga and a 30 day challenge in May, I went to some yoga in June and very little in July. I am nursing a shoulder injury that aches fairly often and it has given me the excuse I needed to not practice yoga regularly. This morning I looked at the clock at 6am and realized if I hurried a little, I could make it to yoga. Ironically, it was the pain in my shoulder that woke me up about 5am. I went to a Moksha class and decided I would try not doing the postures that might inflame my shoulder. I had a fabulous work-out and I realize how much I have been missing the breathing at yoga. It keeps me so aware of my breath all day. I really liked when I was doing daily yoga and I never had to think about whether I was doing enough exercise. It was handled. I have been missing that. I know historically I am not good at maintaining an exercise program so I need strong boundaries or rules. I was just thinking about what worked today that hasn’t worked other days. I realized it takes a certain amount of bravery for me to do physical exercise. It doesn’t always feel good to my body. It is a slightly unpleasant sensation when I am doing it but afterward I feel fantastic. It reminds me of one of the early days after Mel’s transition where he told me one of the big differences after testosterone is that exercise FEELS GOOD. I remember being curious about that at the time and today made me think of it again. That takes me to bravery. So, I have always found that I am most compliant with a first-thing-in-the-morning exercise class. If the day gets later, I have gathered more and more data and reasons why I shouldn’t go to work out. I let myself off...
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I took a course from a guy named Larry Byrum in Boulder, Colorado years ago. He teaches classes on relationships and how to find the perfect partner at the Higher Alignment Center. His work is quite interesting and the system he uses has served me well. One of the aspects he talked about was “pace.” Larry used a scale of 1 to 100 to describe pace. I took courses there over 10 years ago, so apologies if I misrepresent his current teachings. He said that for a romantic relationship to work, one needs to be within 20 points of their partner on the “pace” scale. After 20, he said he didn’t recommend it. In our society people make more money if they are faster paced. Those who are slower paced make less money and are sometimes perceived as “lazy” by people who go through life at a faster pace. We have a lot of judgment about pace in our society. Those who are slower paced may wonder if they “should” be doing more. This kind of “should” pops into my work with clients fairly regularly. It is my perspective that there are no “shoulds”–simply lives full of choices, victories and gratitude. I am fairly sure Mel and I are about 20 points apart. When Mel and I are alone together we are fine. We vacation well. Sometimes he gets up early and goes off to do things while I am still hanging out. We are fairly active on vacation so it suits both of us, then I come home tired and rest. Throwing in all the kid stuff can be challenging for me. I am the slowest paced person in my family although Xander may be similar to me in his pacing. The myriad of kids’ activities leaves me exhausted by the end of the school year. Mel does more driving in the evening than I do but the constant comings and goings drain me. I give myself permission to say no to “one more...
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