Ruminating

My last post was titled Feet in Two Worlds, in which I contemplated the feelings we may experience when we are faced with choosing between two positions, and then asking if can we stand on both sides. 

As I’ve pondered the “two worlds” these past few weeks, I started thinking about it in a different way. Like a lot of other things, it can be multifaceted. 

My thoughts then traveled to the complexities of growing up and parent/child roles.

I remember I couldn’t wait to be an adult. I was excited to move out and start my own life, make my own decisions. I thought I was so grown up. But when things got stressful, there were times I wanted to go back home and have my parents tell me I should do. I felt torn between my desire to be an adult and prove myself and at the same time wanting the simplicity of being taken care of. 

Several decades later it felt like my feet were in two worlds again. This is a place others have been, and many still are.

While yet a child to my mom, I was, along with my siblings, overseeing and even making many decisions for her. Her cognitive decline was slow, so slow it took us a long time to recognize it. 

Where I found myself back then was being that child, yet in many ways being more like a parent to my mom. I missed her and the way life was when she was there to turn to for advice and comfort. I remember feeling like I wanted to run from that world, the place where I longed to be a young girl again and have my mom as my confidante and advisor, when in actuality I was now the “grown up” in our relationship. She was still my mom, and yet she wasn’t. 

That is where I stayed. With my feet planted in both of those worlds. And while living in that dual space wasn’t easy, I was honored to give that love back to her. 

Feet In Two Worlds

We live in a world where we are often expected to choose sides. Not in every situation or circumstance, mind you. However, there are no lack of opportunities to do just that. And once we’ve chosen, we often plant our feet and refuse to budge. 

Some people don’t find it so easy to choose just one side.  I can relate. The older I get, the less certain I am that one side has everything right and the other one is all wrong. It’s not always that clear.

What do we do when we see things differently than others? We want the opportunity to be heard…yet can we sit and listen to an opposing view or opinion? If we come to the table with our decision made and not even willing to listen to others, how can things ever improve? If you’ve ever sat with someone and felt like they listened, and you really felt heard, I bet you were more open to consider what they had to say as well. Can you be the one to create that space?

I’m not suggesting anyone recklessly jump sides or compromise their values. But when we stand so firm on our side that our ears, minds and hearts are closed, what changes? Who wins? 

I just would like to see more of us be brave and willing to stand, even for a little bit, with our feet in two worlds. 

Tracking

If you’ve ever tried to lose weight, one of the things they advise is tracking what you eat. Either by writing it all down or these days, an app can be downloaded on your phone to monitor it all. This way, you have a better idea of what you are consuming and what needs to change. 

Let me just say, I hate tracking.

There is something else that we would benefit from tracking: how our bodies respond to stress. When you’re in traffic or behind a slow driver, are you holding the steering wheel so tight your knuckles are white, or you’re screaming at a driver who probably has no idea they are being yelled at? Perhaps you are watching the news and the more you listen, the more you just start feeling weighed down? 

If we do the work of tracking for a while, discovering what is going on inside our body and how to respond has great benefits. This is a type of tracking I’ve been working on.

I recently had a phone conversation with someone that left me feeling like I had just put on about 20 layers of winter clothing. I felt warm and so heavy with the weight I could barely go on to my next task. In fact, I physically could not. 

Thankfully, I had some tracking experience under my belt and understood what was going on, and more importantly, what would help me move through this. I needed to move and also to cry. So I did.

I stood up and shook my arms and my body, kind of like what you see when someone gets out of a swimming pool to shake off the excess water. And then I started crying. It felt both awful and good at the same time. I also talked with a trusted person, another thing that helps me.

Having done the work of tracking in the past, I knew what to do so the experience of that day didn’t throw me into an emotional dark place where I made choices that weren’t good for me or caused me to say mean or hurtful things to those around me. 

So even though it was a tough experience, I’m able to look back and recognize the small victory I had because of learning how to pay attention and track what was going on inside of me. I see that as a win.

Life is a Moving Target

Most of us want to be happy.  It is a common desire or goal.  But how do we achieve it?  

A few years ago, when I took a Yale online course on happiness, one of the things I learned is when we finally obtain something we may be striving for, we are often not satisfied. Well, at least not for very long. 

Since then I’ve heard many stories about people who have attained great success, maybe they got the job they always wanted, won the lottery or received an award for their achievement. They have a feeling of satisfaction or even euphoria…but like an old balloon, the feeling eventually deflates.  I then thought of it like target practice.  

The purpose of target practice is to become proficient in hitting your target exactly where you are aiming. Success requires deliberate and consistent effort. Especially if the target is not a stationary object. I imagine practicing at a gun range is drastically different than skeet shooting. 

What I learned in that course and in many things I’ve heard and read since then, is that external things are not going to provide a sustaining feeling of satisfaction or fulfillment. That truly can only come from inside, and often changes as we age and our priorities shift.  Learning that requires effort and self-reflection, also deliberate and consistent.

It’s a process. And I believe it’s ever changing and never static. The thing is, we are all given the same playing field to figure it out. It’s called life. 

Hello 2023

This past year has brought some unexpected challenges and expenses with it. As I say goodbye to 2022 and enter into a new year, I want to approach it with curiosity and possibility and not apprehension.

I’ve never really made any type of New Year’s resolution. It just seems like an opportunity to fail. 

The past few years I’ve taken a different approach. In January I get together with a women’s group and we spend time creating a personal vision board. We use pictures from magazines or other materials to represent some things we are hoping and striving for in the coming year. 

My past vision boards have contained not only goals, they have also depicted a motto or belief that speaks to me. 

One of the things on my board for 2020 was to finish my book, which I did. For 2021 there was a line of advice I really wanted to heed: trust yourself, she will listen. That is the year I courageously listened to my heart and changed jobs after three decades with the same medical group. It was a scary move, yet I do believe a wise choice for me. In 2022 I wanted to ride a bike more often, which I did, as well as read more books, which I have. 

As I looked over my past boards, there are also things that haven’t happened, but I don’t judge them as failures. It could be that my goal has changed or that there were factors beyond my control that prevented it from occurring. Perhaps it just wasn’t the right time for what I was aiming for. 

I don’t know yet what I will put on this year’s board. I just know at the end of the year, I want to step out of it looking back and appreciating any growth and knowledge I will have gained.  That’s a vision I can focus on.

Traditions

It’s that time of year when so many people feel anticipation and start looking forward to their holiday traditions. They often bring families together and are passed down from one generation to the next. When the traditions are challenged however, it can be met with resistance.

When our children were younger, we decided to change things up and instead of gift-giving, we suggested going somewhere and creating memories. My children weren’t quite sure about this new plan but went along. The first day into our new adventure, we were having so much fun they said they wanted to start doing this every Christmas. And we did.

We typically did not go far, usually within a few hours’ drive and would spend two to three nights. We looked for cities that offered something our hometown didn’t. A few times we went to an indoor water park. They loved being able to wear a bathing suit and swim in the winter. We also went to a children’s museum and another time we visited an aquarium. One year we did a “big” trip which took months to plan and spent a week at a resort in Disney World. 

The memories we created all those years are special. They have both shared they don’t remember many of the gifts they received from us, but the trips they will never forget. They are older now and live out of state, which hinders planning many of those short family trips. At least with today’s technology we can still “see” each other and create new traditions, and share special moments in a different way.

It’s important to be flexible as families change and grow. I’ve learned that being able to accept new and different ways to celebrate, as well as initiating new traditions, can still create lasting family memories.

The Felt Sense

We are all familiar with the five senses of perception: sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. I was reading today about another sense we all have but may not have heard about called the Felt Sense.

I read about this in the book Try Softer by Aundi Kobler. She describes this as when the sensations in our bodies are telling us something, and we just have a feeling, a “knowing” that we cannot explain. It often informs us of something that is going on inside ourselves.

We all have it, and in its simplest form is when we experience hunger or perhaps thirst. Maybe our stomach growls or our mouth gets dry. When I allow myself to get too hungry, my felt sense is I begin to lose focus. That’s my cue I need to get some food in my body. 

As I learned about this extra sense, it immediately brought to mind another time I experienced it more profoundly. About six years ago I had been struggling with this feeling that something was just not right with me. I had this internal sensation which I can only describe as a feeling just under my skin that something was not right within me. I had never experienced this before, the constant buzz of low-level anxiety. I wondered if I was going crazy. A few times I also thought maybe I was sick, like I had cancer and was dying. 

I made an appointment with my doctor and was sharing this with her. I asked for something for the anxiety and she encouraged me instead to see one of her colleagues, a psychologist who had been very successful in helping many of her other patients stop the anxiety medications they had been taking for years. I agreed and made an appointment.

Long story short, in my first appointment with him I spent the majority of that session calmly explaining all the things I thought was causing my stress. I then shared that three years earlier my dad had died. I began to sob. What he helped me discover was that I had never dealt with that. My felt sense was my body telling me I needed to grieve.

Thankfully I listened. I found a caring grief therapist who helped me down that unknown, scary path. Grief is no longer as menacing or intimidating to me, and taking that journey helped me when later I began to lose my mom first to dementia, and then when she died.  

In a time when intelligence and a high IQ are seen as superior, I think it is just as important to develop our felt sense. It just may protect us from some hidden threats to our well-being. 

Snakeskins

Did you know that snakes shed their skin three to six times a year?  And that the younger they are, the more frequently they shed?  The process then slows down as they age.  

This time of the shedding is called ecdysis, with the history of the word borrowed from Greek meaning getting out or escape.  You might be wondering why I’m talking about snakes and their process of getting rid of their old skin.   

I started thinking about this a few days ago, how snakes basically slither out of their old skin.  My thoughts occurred after attending a two-day event for my department at work.  Over the last several weeks we have been preparing for the event with the end goal being to determine how we can improve some of our processes and workflow.  I think it was worthwhile and believe our upcoming changes will help us become more efficient and create a new workflow that may be simpler.

Still, it is a change.  As much as I want to profess otherwise, I sometimes struggle with change.

The reason a snake sheds is to allow for further growth.  It’s the same for us humans.   As we go through changes in our lives, it is often a time of growing and can be unpleasant.  While the snake creeps and wriggles out of the old, they can become irritable.  I can relate to that.  When I’m enduring a change or starting something new where I’m not completely sure of myself, I can be a little irritable also.  

That’s the reason I started thinking about why I need to be like a snake and shed the old “workflow” skin.  If a snake is struggling and cannot complete the shedding process, it can create a really bad life for the snake and affect its health.  When we humans fight and resist change, it can create problems for us too.  I remember times I’ve resisted some change I was undergoing or experiencing.  It was not a fun time. 

My lesson, and my goal…be like a snake and let go of the old.

Tunnel Vision Feelings

Tunnel vision is a term that can be used to describe single-minded focus or concentration on one particular thing. Have you ever had a tunnel vision feeling?

It’s where you experience an emotion or feeling and you just can’t let it go, like a dog with a bone. You’re determined to hold onto it. Or maybe you want to let it go, but you just can’t figure out how.

Here’s the thing: a tunnel is a passageway, it has an entrance and an exit. We need to let these feelings move through us and not get stuck. If a vehicle got stuck in a tunnel, it would cause a huge back up, it’s the same with feelings or emotions.

Stuck feelings can wreak havoc on our lives. I’ve met a few people who have struggled with tunnel vision feelings, and admit to having been there myself a few times. It can make us feel irritable or unmotivated, we can have trouble sleeping and feel hopeless. I also believe when it’s really bad, it can even cause physical illness and disease.

I wish I had a magic wand to wave that I could immediately let go of those feelings that make me uncomfortable: anger, irritation, fear, envy and pride, just to name a few. Unfortunately, it’s not always that easy.

Learning how to let those emotions travel through us and not get stuck can take some time and effort, and what works for one person might not work for another. We first need to acknowledge or admit what it is we are feeling and then we can begin to release them. Some people exercise, meditate, or get creative like painting, drawing or writing. Those are healthy ways.

The important thing is to find a way (or two) that works for you, and sometimes that is just trial and error. I know what works for me one day might not work on another.

I encourage you to pay attention so that if your feelings get stuck, you find a way to unravel them so they can pass right through. Coming out of that dark tunnel and seeing the light is worth the effort.

Safe Haven

A safe haven is a place you can go where you feel safe and protected. If we are lucky, for most of us our homes are a safe haven. Unfortunately, that is not true for everyone.

Looking back at my own childhood, I’m not sure I thought of my home as a safe haven. I remember feeling frightened when my dad got angry and I learned to steer clear. Fortunately, as he grew older he mellowed, was softer and he became a safe haven for me.

As an adult, I loved going to my parents home and would often go there when I needed to feel safe, not because I was actually “unsafe” or in danger in any way. It was more a feeling that no matter what was going on in my life, being there with them I felt wrapped up in love. Even if they were crabby themselves, or bickering like long married couples do, they were genuinely happy for me to be there. I also believe when I left, they were ready to have their home to themselves, back to the quietness and routine of just the two of them.

While a home or a physical location can be a safe haven, I think it is more so that people can be. I think it takes some time and attention to decipher who is and is not safe, not only in the big world, but in our own little world or environment. Hopefully you have developed a quick sense of who is trustworthy and who is not.

Safe people are those that when you’ve shared something of yourself with them, they don’t judge or ridicule you, or carelessly tell it to others. The shared piece of yourself is held like a treasure. They genuinely want the absolute best for you.

I think we can also be a safe haven for ourselves. When something is revealed to me, either by some introspection or someone else sharing it with me, am I able to safely receive it? If I have a reaction of self-loathing or judgement, perhaps denial and anger, do I feel safe? It takes some practice as well as effort to create that safe place within ourselves, so that when things happen we can sit with and examine it, and give ourselves some self-compassion and time to see what comes of it.

As you ponder the people in your life that are safe for you, I hope you can include yourself.