February
It truly is amazing how our subconscious mind works. I chug along with life and one day I wake up and just feel blue. Not like the blue where you just wake up in a funk, but the blue that kind of takes you over and you cry about everything. (Since I’m not a person who cries a lot, I take notice). I look up and I say what the heck is wrong with me? And then I notice the date and it makes sense. Yes it’s February. February, it used to be such an exciting month, 3 birthdays in my family plus the birthdays of over 20 friends (apparently May and June are big months for making whoopie, probably because no matter where you live it’s too hot to go outside). Anyway, as I was saying, up until 7 years ago, February was a great month. Lots of celebrations, laughter and love. The second month of the year, so if I made resolutions now would be the time where I went back to not having any, the year is well on its way and we are looking forward to a great year ahead.
But that all changed for me and my family 7 years ago. I fight the battle in my head wishing I could skip February, but not wanting to rob my sister and my Dad of their birthday celebrations. I think about how they must feel, knowing they feel the same way I do, and knowing a month that used to be celebration for them is just sad for them too. In my heart, knowing that I am not the only one in my family who at some point early in February wakes up with feelings of dread, sadness, emptiness and loss. This for me is February since my Mom passed away.
Throughout the year I have my good days and my bad moments. A memory could spark and I feel sadness for a little while and then a song comes on that reminds me that she is here and I am okay. February though, is different. I wake up feeling empty and heavy all at the same time, I say to myself “It’s going to be a great day” but that feeling, that truly I could never put into words, never really goes away. A song comes on that reminds me that she is here and I just sob and wish that she truly was. I’m a person who pretty good at hiding my emotions, I refuse to be a victim to anything in life, but this is different. So some days in February, I wake up and I cry before I get out of bed and I wonder how I’m going to get out of the little funk I’m in, and by the end of the day I realize I never did. People say stuff like “What’s wrong with you today?”, “Wake up on the wrong side of the bed today?”, “Bitchy much?”, “Are you going to be like this all day?”
We’re in this time where people are uncomfortable with emotion, where we are constantly hearing “Don’t be a victim” or “You need to get out of that victim mentality” and we start to bottle everything up an refuse to show what we are feeling because we’re worried about how others will treat us. Well here are my two cents on the “victim” subject. I am a HUGE believer in not being a “victim”, BUT does that mean that we aren’t supposed to feel? Or do we at some point need to acknowledge that we are feeling sad, or lonely, or angry and just be with it and feel it. And maybe that means that we are gloomy or cranky for a day, a week or even a month, and maybe it doesn’t mean that anyone needs to fix us.
When someone we care about passes away we hear “It will get easier with time”, “Time heals all wounds”, “I know how you feel”. Here’s some ugly truth for you. It does not get easier with time, my wounds aren’t healed and you have no freakin idea how I feel. We choose our emotions right? We choose how we allow others to make us feel, so I choose this, I choose today to be gloomy and sad and cry my little heart out and I choose NOT to feel guilty for what some people want to call being a “victim”. And truly, as a friend of someone who has lost someone, please know that you can’t fix it and you can’t make it better. That’s not what being a friend is about. Maybe that person needs you to just be there, be with, and not say a word. For some reason as humans we feel this need to fix people and make them feel better so we try to say the right things, that truly just turn out to be the wrong things, simply because we have become so uncomfortable just being in the moment with someone. My very favorite poem is called “The Invitation” by Oriah, one paragraph rings in my head often.
“I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.”
Last year, on the anniversary of my Mother’s death I woke up in a hotel room just crying. I look back on that day often because it was such a terrible day for me. My best friend had no idea how to make me feel better and two things he said still pop in my head and bother me to my bone. First he said “You should be celebrating her life”. To which of course I responded “I celebrated her life last week on her birthday, today I’m morning her loss.” DUH!! Then later he asked me if I was “going to be gloomy all day.” To which of course I shot back “I might be, is that a problem for you?” I was angry with him for a long time because of those two things. I can’t lie, when I think about it I’m still angered. All I needed was him to just sit there and be with me, not finding it necessary to fill the space with words.
So here I sit on February 4th looking forward at what the month holds for me. Tomorrow I will have breakfast with the most important people in my life and celebrate the birthdays of my Sister and my Dad. On February 15th, I will wake up and celebrate the life that my mother’s 61st birthday and a week later on the 22nd I will wake up and mourn her loss. In between I will wake up and I will have my good days and bad days. Memories will undoubtedly pop in my head that I forgot about and I will laugh or cry (or both) at the flip of a switch. I will hear more songs that remind me of my Mom than any other time of the year, I will hear her voice and smell her perfume. I will be reminded that it doesn’t get easier, and maybe it isn’t supposed to. I will be reminded that my reason for being here is to do what would make her proud, and I will. I will create new beginnings this month, a new project, new milestones, wonderful things that make her proud and provide sparks of light and hope for when next February comes around. I will wake up and thank God for my life, my family and the amazing blessings that I have in my life and I will hope for a better day. I will strive to be a better person tomorrow than I was today and I will be reminded that when someone I love is hurting, maybe I don’t have to try to fix it….maybe they just need me to be there.
There are few lessons in this one… I’ll let you find them on your own.
I’ll end today by saying HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my family and friends this month and by saying I miss you to death my sweet angel.
Blessings….
The Invitation
The Invitation by Oriah
It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me
what planets are
squaring your moon…
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.
I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.
I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.
It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.
I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”
It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.
It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.
I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.
By Oriah © Mountain Dreaming,
Joy
I’m long overdue for a post and what I’m about to share is something I have been going back and forth about for the last 24 hours. It is something that is going to get slightly personal for me, and quite honestly uncomfortable to share. HOWEVER, I decided that if by sharing what I have to say can help or change the thought of one person it will have been worth-while. So, here it goes.
I have been feeling oddly disconnected lately, disconnected and conflicted. I think the majority of it just has to do with a lot of new things in life and trying to find balance, and heading more in the direction of what I truly desire. So, last night I had a slight little “breakdown” for lack of a better word and I discovered something. Like, hardcore something I have never thought about in my life. I realized something about myself that is sticking in my heart, and I’m trying to understand it a little bit better and work through it.
As a young child I experienced and witnessed some messed up stuff, so I learned how to put up a guard and not really let my feelings show much. Then at 19 when I was in my first serious relationship I felt way too much and wore it on my sleeve. After 7+ years of that followed by the loss of my mother I realize now, that I reverted back to a childhood habit and took it to another level…. I just don’t feel my own emotions. Nothing, Nada, Zip. Now this is really kind of weird, because I am an extremely empathetic person, and feel other peoples’ pain and joy so deeply I feel it deep in my soul. But what I finally realized last night is that when it comes to my own joy and pain, I got nothing.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am relatively happy person. I love my family and I have a few close friend who make me pretty happy. But when it comes to true jump up and down excitement…nope, don’t remember the last time that happened….when it comes to feeling my pain……nope, nothing….. I used to think that it was because I have known for the last 7 years that nothing could hurt as much as the loss of my mother, but I honestly never even dealt with that pain. It’s like the moment she was gone, I turned off. I literally turned off all internal, self-related emotion. And now… well I kind of wonder where it went. I wonder if I can’t feel my own pain, will I ever feel TRUE joy. And THAT is why I have to share. Here is my lesson……
Turning off my pain has been a self-defense mechanism that served me for a time. The challenge is that I never took the time to really do anything with it, and now over the years I have just day by day turned it all off. NOW, I realize, this self-defense mechanism is no longer serving me, truly it hasn’t for several years. And while I confess that I still don’t think I am ready to jump head first into my mother’s death, I do have this new awareness. This awareness that I am living in neutral. Sure no feelings of pain, and at the same time I have risked the feeling of joy. That’s been my cost.
Living in neutral is fine for a time, there are times when that is what best serves us, and actually sometimes helps us to move forward. But when you open your eyes one day and realize that you have been stuck feeling the same way for years, you have to realize that something is amiss. And what are you willing to do about it?
Myself, I have been journaling a lot, and taking one day at a time, and making new small changes every day. What I want to say to you, anyone who is reading this who feels 
stuck in a similar “thing”, is don’t wait too long. Talk to someone, write, get your creative juices flowing. While it FEELS better not to feel any pain, understand that there is a cost to everything. So the cost of not feeling pain, is not feeling any of the other wonderful feelings that we are truly meant to feel every day.
So yeah, that’s my story. Today is better than yesterday….May tomorrow be better than today.
Blessings….
The key to change… is to let go of fear
I think its natural to have a fear of change, I’m pretty sure every person has experienced it at least once in life.
In my last post I had mentioned that I have been re-evaluating my life and that I felt it was time to stop waiting for life to happen. Well I have taken the first step. I have officially given my notice at my job in order to start my own business. While it was something that I was waiting for until I had the amount of money I felt like I needed as a cushion, I also felt like I would never have that money. Not that the money wouldn’t come to me, but you know, you save money, then something in the car or house breaks and the money is gone. Its like people who say they want kids but they are waiting until the right time…Its waiting until the right time that forces life to pass you by.
I realize that while I have overcome a lot of things in life, but I have also allowed fear to stop me from doing a lot.
Starting my own Transaction Management business is something that I have been wanting to do for several years, but I had been waiting for the right time. Well I have made the right time today. I know that I am good at what I do, and I know I will be successful. Sure there may be a few months that I will struggle, but the truth is I will most likely be very successful. Even if I’m not, at least I’ll know that I tried.
The more I think about it, the more I things I think about that fears stop us from doing. Changing jobs, starting businesses for fear of failure, those are common. Then there are those of us who never tell the person we love that we love them because we are afraid they won’t feel the same way. We are hesitant to start a relationship because we are afraid it will fail or that we will lose the friendship we have with that person. We don’t buy a house because we are afraid we won’t be able to afford it. We put of having children because we think maybe we can’t afford it, or that we won’t be good enough parent.
But maybe it isn’t always about the fear of failure or the fear that we can’t afford something, or that we aren’t good enough. Maybe we have other fears, the fear that our new business will actually be successful. The fear that we don’t deserve that success,or that we don’t deserve that new house, or worse that we don’t deserve the unconditional love of a relationship or a child.
Here’s the thing, if we don’t overcome those fears, there can be no change, and without change there can be now growth. The sad truth is but not telling the people we love that we love them, or taking a chance on that relationship, or new job or having that child we always wanted we miss the moment, a moment we most likely will never get back.
In the last year I have told someone I was in love with them…and no they didn’t feel the same way… but I’m still here, I survived. I held a baby for the first time since I miscarried 13 years ago, something I refused to do in the past because I was afraid I couldn’t handle it. I left a job with people that I adored to take less money, I now gave my notice to start my own business. I’ve said things to people that I was afraid would make them hate me, but they didn’t because they knew where my heart was. Sure the fear is still there, its something that will always be in the back of our heads, it just a part of life. But the truth is that fear is nothing but an illusion, even an excuse not to challenge ourselves. We get comfortable where we are and every change scares us. Changes and choices we make may hurt more than others. However, those choices and changes, and overcoming fears are growth, regardless of the outcome. If we aren’t growing, can we even say that we are living?
If I have learned nothing else this week, I have learned that life is entirely to short to wait for great things to come to us, life is too short to not take the risk to make a change, or to say the things we are afraid to say. Tomorrow is NOT promised, we have all heard that, we all know it logically. Sadly though, it sometimes takes the loss of a friend to really remind us and make us understand it. While I can say I don’t have any words left unsaid with the people I care about, I know I have a lot of changes to make to fulfill my dreams.
What fears are you willing to overcome to have the life you deserve? What change are you willing to make to ensure that life doesn’t just pass you by? What words that need to be said are you willing to say before you never get a chance to say them?
My regret is that it took the loss of an amazing man this week to remind me of these things that I already knew. Rest in Peace David Horton.
Happy 60th Birthday to My Beloved Mother
Tomorrow would have been my Mother’s 60th birthday….Next Tuesday will be 6 years that she is gone. Whoever said it gets easier lied. Some have said it doesn’t get easier, you just cry less. I would challenge that as well, you just cry less in public, you learn to do it in private. I don’t want to take this time to whine though, I want to take this time to pay tribute to my Mother.
Only those who were blessed to have met her could possibly have any idea what a unique and amazing woman she was. I have heard from countless people how she touched their lives, and in reality few of those people even really knew her inside and out. Most saw an extremely beautiful woman whose make up was always perfect, whose lipstick was flawless, and whose smile lit up a room. A woman who in her own hidden pains, spent so much time taking away other peoples’ pain. Many people saw a woman who loved her children more than herself, and who gushed when she spoke about or looked at her husband….most never knew about the extremely turbulant times she endured during the first half of her life. Some would see her and were intimidated by her perfect posture, with her chin always raised to the sky, wearing stunning jewelry…few knowing that she survived things in life that people should never have to endure, that she rose up past adversity and worked hard for what she had. People only had the opportunity to see the woman that she allowed them to see… only part of herself.
I have a million wonderful memories of her, the one that comes to mind the most is her doing the Mashed Potato in the kitchen. I don’t know if that’s my favorite, but I know that I can still play the song and vividly see her doing the dance if I close my eyes.
People who had never had the opportunity to meet her could never understand what they missed. When I talk to people about her, I often see in their eyes a blank stare, or a look that they think I glorify her, or that standard, insincere “she sounds like she was a great woman.” They could never possibly know, because my words could do her no justice.
My mother was not a perfect woman, she had her faults like every one else, even worse than some, but the truth is that words could never describe her. Words could never describe the feeling you would get when she would walk into the room, or the way it felt to have one of her hugs, or experience her look into your eyes and know what is wrong, and often how to fix it. She was an example to her children, and anyone who knew her that your past and your circumstances didn’t have to hold you down. She was a woman of faith, a woman so full of love with so many gifts to share.
She was my best friend and my angel while she was here on earth with me. I don’t miss her less as time goes by, I have just learned to hide it better. The truth is, people don’t want to hear about how much you miss your mother, because they don’t have a clue what I’m missing. And that’s okay, people don’t know what they don’t know, and I would never wish on anyone the pain of losing a parent, or losing anyone.
For tomorrow, while I will mourn the fact that she is not here to have a HUGE 60th birthday celebration, I WILL celebrate her. I will celebrate her life, I will celebrate that fact that she gave me 2 amazing sisters and a great Dad. I will celebrate all of the lessons that she had taught me, and continues to teach me every day. I will shed some tears, and I will have some laughs over some great memories. I will wake up tomorrow and say HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOMMY, I LOVE YOU!! And maybe, just maybe I’ll do some Mashed Potato. . .
Follow Me