Here and Now
All told I've opted for a really quiet birthday this year. We're having a leisurely morning then going on a hike & letterbox hunt at a park not too far from our house. We'll picnic and then come home to garden. It is going to be a pretty wonderful day spent with some of my favorite beings.
I'm celebrating my first birthday since my Mother died this past winter. It has felt at times pretty rough, although given that my last birthday-related communication from her was deliberately hurtful, it is also something of a relief. More steps into this strange, new world where my Mother no longer can hurt me. Still, it has made this birthday seem a little less celebratory in some ways.
In other ways it feels like an enormous milestone. Over the past 16 years I've completely changed my life to live more healthfully and more ethically. I don't have as much of a comparison to my Father's family, since they've always been estranged, but on my Mother's side the later half of the 40s, if not the early half, came with one or more prescriptions for managing heart disease and/or Type II Diabetes. Hypertension, high cholesterol, and dangerously high blood glucose levels all ran in my family. Women tended to die of strokes or some type of heart failure. Obesity was also something that just began to happen after high school. It was the normal behavior for pretty much all the women in my family, always on an endless cycle of dieting, binging, stress-eating, etc.
To be 47 years old, not obese and not on a single medication for heart disease or diabetes is an enormous accomplishment.
Yes, I take daily medications. I take things that help me live with the chronic pain from my back due to degenerative disc disease and I take things to help me manage the anxiety and depression that arise from my C-PTSD. Those and things to further support my overall health, like a daily multivitamin! That's it though, and that is something that my Mother would make out as if I'd performed some kind of miracle instead of giving me the credit for working really very hard indeed to change my life, to steer myself toward health.
In a way I don't think I'd ever thought I'd be here now. Bigger than the still daily shock of recalling that I stopped working in tech nearly 3 years ago. I really doubted my health for so many years, internalizing my Mother's never-ending medical crises until I started to believe that I was next, I'd get cancer and die. I'd have a heart attack. I'd get congestive heart failure too.
Yet here I am.
I'm still figuring out how to engage around doing work with other people, which still feels challenging to get back into but I'm slowly learning the boundaries of my ability to work on projects again. I'm at a point now that I don't think I really could go back into the stress of the kind of tech work I did for nearly 2 decades, even very occasional meetings tends to increase my anxiety. Not that I really want to go back to tech in any way, sometimes I just miss the money and it briefly crosses my mind. That's when I recall the tone of my doctor's voice when she describes my health a few years ago as being in "acute crises" and "on the verge of hospitalization".
I'm learning how to be a business owner, luckily with the help of a program for "dislocated workers" that provides me with free training and support from a business advisor. I'm close to completing my business plan and then can submit it for a small seed grant from the program. I came from such a blue collar family that being a business owner, trying to get my brain around how business works, feels like such an unexpected experience.
So much about my life now is unexpected, not at all what I used to be planning for. 47 sees me watching for sales and trying to do our grocery shopping strategically, cooking more inexpensive meals at home. I am reminded of the frugality, the barest of minimum my Mother and I lived with for long stretches at a time. It isn't always easy and I do miss my tech salary. That said, my life now is so full of richness, wonder, delight, and love. There are so many things I continue to discover are possible when I don't work 50-60 hours a week, including connecting deeply with CK over gardening as well as having time to really appreciate all the things, including beautiful flowers, she brings to my life.
I'm so grateful to be here now, in this life, with this health, and with the support of the loving beings that now surround me. I'm teaching 9-12 Yoga classes a week now and continuing to work towards completing my certification in Integrated Movement Therapy. I'm stretching my confidence slowly in regards to my art, but continue to explore the ideas that come to me as both a way of creating beauty and to let myself use my art as a way to express the journey I've been on as I heal.
Having come all this way through all this welter
Under my own power,
I've earned this worn-down, hard, incredible sight called Here and Now.
I've taken liberty a bit with some lines above from a poem by Northwest poet, David Wagoner, "Getting There". It's a poem that has continued to open and unfold for me since discovering it when I was 15 or so. It feels appropriate to put it here again, it has been in my mind the past several days as this birthday approached.
Getting There
by David Wagoner
You take a final step and, look, suddenly
You’re there. You’ve arrived
At the one place all your drudgery was aimed for:
This common ground
Where you stretch out, pressing your cheek to sandstone.
What did you want
To be? You’ll remember soon. You feel like tinder
Under a burning glass,
A luminous point of change. The sky is pulsing
Against the cracked horizon,
Holding it firm till the arrival of stars
In time with your heartbeats.
Like wind etching rock, you’ve made a lasting impression
On the self you were
By having come all this way through all this welter
Under your own power,
Though your traces on a map would make an unpromising
Meandering lifeline.
What have you learned so far? You’ll find out later,
Telling it haltingly
Like a dream, that lost traveler’s dream
Under the last hill
Where through the night you’ll take your time out of mind
To unburden yourself
Of elements along elementary paths
By the break of morning.
You’ve earned this worn-down, hard, incredible sight
Called Here and Now.
Now, what you make of it means everything,
Means starting over:
The life in your hands is neither here nor there
But getting there,
So you’re standing again and breathing, beginning another
Journey without regret
Forever, being your own unpeaceable kingdom,
The end of endings.
Resiliency Day
Last year CK was out of town on Mother's Day, to help me through what has become a sad holiday for me, I invited people over for tomato soup and grilled cheese. I got out coloring books, colored pencils, puzzles, and other crafty things. It was a quiet gathering, but full of love.
This year was still hard, particularly since it is the first Mother's Day since she's died. I was grateful CK was home and we spent the sunny day working out in the garden together, had dinner out, and watched a show. Instead of Mother's Day, I have suggested that instead we celebrate "Resiliency Day". CK has pointed out we could celebrate "Dog / Cat Mom's Day", which is true, but I like the idea of a day acknowledging our resiliency, really celebrating it.
Maybe it is just a day where we do nice things for ourselves, like my day of grilled cheese and tomato soup with coloring books. This past Sunday I took a lot of pleasure in tearing out some landscaping cloth and moving rocks as part of a project to reclaim a space to grow veggies in; it made me feel connected to my strength.
That's the whole point of celebrating resiliency; celebrating our strength and our creativity in surviving.
I'd love to see this idea grow. How we can take a holiday that has become painfully associated, like Mother's Day has for me, and instead use it to celebrate how our creativity, flexibility, and strength helped us to survive, possibly even thrive despite considerable disadvantages.
That's my plan at least. I'll celebrate Resiliency Day on any of the dates that give me a bit of a crash. Taking dates, like my Mother's birthday, where it is hard not to be pulled down into anger and grief, and instead focus on how I continue to make changes to live in a way that breaks the generational abuse cycle.
72 Bows, 49 Days
Yesterday was the memorial for my Mother. She didn't want me invited, didn't even want me informed of her death on November 24, 2015. As it was, I was informed a week after she'd already died. Already been cremated. Already had her dog taken to another home. Already done, all of it.
I though about going. Really explored if defying her last wishes and showing up to bear witness to her life would in any way heal the depth of pain I have felt at the many ways she used isolation and cutting me off from contact with others as a form of punishment. I considered the cost of going to such a hostile environment, populated by people who supported my Mother, believed the things she'd say about me, and shared the profound homophobia she cultivated in her last year and a half of her life, and decided that all that stacked against a chance, a slim one at that, of any kind of healing or growth. One might hope that perhaps she knew how miserable her memorial would be for me to attend and asked me not attend out of compassion for me, however, that isn't the case. It was intended as punishment for my being a disrespectful daughter.
Instead, we stayed home and worked on chores, read, and I ended up going to bed early. At the time my Mother's memorial was due to start I decided was the perfect time for my daily Sadhana. I lit the candles, rang the bells, lit the incense. I took a deep breath and was struck with how to focus my intention to honor my Mother's memory.
71 full bows for every year she lived. A last bow for the year that wasn't finished. Then I sat with a photo I'd come across of her as a young girl with her sister. I was struck at how left out she looks, how unhappy in comparison to the glowing smile and gleaming curls of my Aunt. The toxic family behaviors seen in this photo. I suspect my Mother might be around the age I was when I first realized I couldn't trust anyone in my family to take care of me.
Today marks 49 days since her death. It wasn't her belief at all, but to me this time represents her journey across the Bardo. Since those bows and all day today I've focused my hope that she move onto a better life. A life where she is able to feel the love around her, where she is able to feel contentment, where she is able to play at the game of joy without a single stumble.
The Beginning of Grief
I made 72 bows
For her life.
Fast, at first,
On the flow
Of the breath.
Slower as the
Numbers added.
The last 12 requiring
Multiple breaths each.
Then sitting, breathing in.
Feeling the blood moving,
The muscles responding
To the sudden burst of
Breath and movement.
Willing myself to
Let her go,
Let her be
Found,
Content,
Seen,
Loved.
Then 49 days
Pass by and
I feel like I am
Paused, waiting
For the feeling
That she
Has finally left.
**Photo taken by myself of an art installation by Sarah Jane.
Getting There
Getting There
by David Wagoner*
You take a final step and, look, suddenly
You’re there. You’ve arrived
At the one place all your drudgery was aimed for:
This common ground
Where you stretch out, pressing your cheek to sandstone.
What did you want
To be? You’ll remember soon. You feel like tinder
Under a burning glass,
A luminous point of change. The sky is pulsing
Against the cracked horizon,
Holding it firm till the arrival of stars
In time with your heartbeats.
Like wind etching rock, you’ve made a lasting impression
On the self you were
By having come all this way through all this welter
Under your own power,
Though your traces on a map would make an unpromising
Meandering lifeline.
What have you learned so far? You’ll find out later,
Telling it haltingly
Like a dream, that lost traveler’s dream
Under the last hill
Where through the night you’ll take your time out of mind
To unburden yourself
Of elements along elementary paths
By the break of morning.
You’ve earned this worn-down, hard, incredible sight
Called Here and Now.
Now, what you make of it means everything,
Means starting over:
The life in your hands is neither here nor there
But getting there,
So you’re standing again and breathing, beginning another
Journey without regret
Forever, being your own unpeaceable kingdom,
The end of endings.
I discovered the poet David Wagoner, when I was around 15 or so. I was blown away by the way he talked about death, both of humans and of forests. He's a poet who made an impression upon me as a human and as a writer. Several years ago, when CK and I were in those first awkward weeks of a relationship, I invited her to a friend's birthday party. He requested that in lieu of gifts that his friends put on a talent show for him.
I read poetry, it is something I learned to do in high school, even did it competitively into college. Yep, forensics. Yep, competitive public speaking. I was one of those kids. I really loved it and the skills I learned in it have continued to be useful to me to this day. For part of a season I had a whole set of dark, death-y poems of David Wagoner's I read. There was a year in high school where we lost a student from each class; the junior class loss was a friend, not a close friend, but we were on the swim and water polo teams together. The poetry fit.
I'm not sure if I found Getting There when I was younger. However, when searching out the "right" poem to read to a friend to celebrate his fortieth birthday, I came across it. My friend loved it as well as my choice of Pablo Neuruda's Ode to Wine (this poem follows at the bottom of this post, because it is just too marvelous to miss).
I feel like I have begun getting somewhere. Some place where I feel like I'm finally on a path and not, yet again, thrashing around in the brambles, hopelessly lost.
While I was on retreat in November for Level 2 Integrated Movement Therapy training the two-year anniversary of the last time I saw my Mother passed. Two long years, one year which felt as though it consisted almost entirely of learning how to sleep again, since making the decision to not have any interactions with my Mother because she is incapable of not treating me abusively. Kind of a big anniversary.
However, all told, being in training with my teacher, at a place I have so quickly come to love, seemed like as good as any place to be. The other option probably would have involved snuggling in the bed with dogs and cats. Not that the home option is bad, the retreat option just seemed better, like it was probably a really good place for me to mark that anniversary.
The actual day, the day where I last saw my Mother, was our last night of the retreat and we had a small fire ceremony involving a nighttime walk in the triple-spiral labyrinth at the Grunewald Guild. Before going out we reflected on a word, a phrase, something we wanted to work on releasing, letting go of. I picked a pretty powerful word to offer up to the fire.
The anniversary hadn't felt as though it was really bringing me too low most of the week. I was grateful too feel on a more even keel then I had back in September. That's until I was halfway through the second spiral and I felt as though all the anger, grief, and profound loss I have felt since that day just hit me all at once. For a moment I stumbled, nearly falling out of the labyrinth I was walking in. I made my way around it, offered something it is high time for me to let go of to the fire, crying steadily all the while.
I've had anxious, restless dreams since returning. My brain continues to try and integrate, process things. Today I saw my massage therapist who helped release the profound tension in my upper body I've been carrying since the fire walk.
Thanksgiving is the day after tomorrow. Friends are coming over, our longstanding tradition. The transition into the winter holiday season, starting with Thanksgiving, still feels a little painful. However, it feels like I've been getting there more easily these days.
*"Getting There" by David Wagoner, from Traveling Light: COLLECTED AND NEW POEMS (Illinois Poetry Series)
Ode to Wine
by Pablo Neruda
Day-colored wine,
night-colored wine,
wine with purple feet
or wine with topaz blood,
wine,
starry child
of earth,
wine, smooth
as a golden sword,
soft
as lascivious velvet,
wine, spiral-seashelled
and full of wonder,
amorous,
marine;
never has one goblet contained you,
one song, one man,
you are choral, gregarious,
at the least, you must be shared.
At times
you feed on mortal
memories;
your wave carries us
from tomb to tomb,
stonecutter of icy sepulchers,
and we weep
transitory tears;
your
glorious
spring dress
is different,
blood rises through the shoots,
wind incites the day,
nothing is left
of your immutable soul.
Wine
stirs the spring, happiness
bursts through the earth like a plant,
walls crumble,
and rocky cliffs,
chasms close,
as song is born.
A jug of wine, and thou beside me
in the wilderness,
sang the ancient poet.
Let the wine pitcher
add to the kiss of love its own.My darling, suddenly
the line of your hip
becomes the brimming curve
of the wine goblet,
your breast is the grape cluster,
your nipples are the grapes,
the gleam of spirits lights your hair,
and your navel is a chaste seal
stamped on the vessel of your belly,
your love an inexhaustible
cascade of wine,
light that illuminates my senses,
the earthly splendor of life.But you are more than love,
the fiery kiss,
the heat of fire,
more than the wine of life;
you are
the community of man,
translucency,
chorus of discipline,
abundance of flowers.
I like on the table,
when we're speaking,
the light of a bottle
of intelligent wine.
Drink it,
and remember in every
drop of gold,
in every topaz glass,
in every purple ladle,
that autumn labored
to fill the vessel with wine;
and in the ritual of his office,
let the simple man remember
to think of the soil and of his duty,
to propagate the canticle of the wine.
Looking Forward
I feel like I'm coming in, trying to blow off the cobwebs, remove the dustcovers, and start setting things to order again.
So very much has been happening, it has really been overwhelming at times. I would start to post about things, then it would be too much and I'd put it off. Then it got to the point it felt like I'd never write a catch up post.
Like any Practice, the essence is in the present moment. The Now.
So what has happened since May?
More yoga classes have happened. I teach a total of eight classes a week currently. Seven classes are at studios or clubs, two of which don't require membership to attend. One class I've started under my own business name, Samatha Yoga, is a Yoga for Women class that I hold at a studio space I rent in downtown Portland.
In April I started to investigate Integrated Movement Therapy (IMT) as a possible direction to head in my desire to train in a form of Yoga Therapy. That classes are largely held in Washington, Seattle and a little town called Plain, and Portland was part of the appeal. I also heard some really great feedback about IMT from the Executive Director of Living Yoga.
I signed up for some group classes on Yoga for Anxiety with one of the IMT instructors and felt a real connection. The more weeks into the program I went, the more interested I became in the ways the IMT approach to Yoga Therapy. In mid-April I took the IMT Basics class as well as the Level I 3-day intensive on IMT for Adults. My hope is to be complete with the program, including practicum and internship, by next winter.
In May I joined the Board of Directors for Living Yoga. I was starting to do a dive into helping improve the usefulness of data and some software-as-a-service type tools when August rolled around with a huge pile of Big Life Changes. A sudden increase in stress, combined with the realization that the schedule I'm taking for my IMT studies conflicts with many of the Board meetings, as well as wanting to take as many teaching positions as possible right now to help extend our savings further, led me to the decision to leave the Board. I'm hoping I may be able to revisit joining sometime in the future.
Also in May, we purchased a used 2002 Chevy Astro Passenger Van. We'd done some research on vans to facilitate moving props to group classes and for us to camp in. The Astro was the winner and we found a good one at a very small dealer near our house.
June is the month of the Surprise Bulldog. I'd taken the van to our mechanic's shop for a good once-over and an oil change. I came home with a shy, skittish, 6-month old bulldog puppy. His owners had gone through a traumatic breakup. One would no longer have anything to do with him and the other owner, the adult son of the owner of the shop I go to, was keeping him crated for up to 13 hours a day. When the van was done, the puppy came up with me. Later that night we named him Bertie. Depending upon who you ask it is either short for Bertrand Russell (CK) or Bertram Wilberforce Wooster (me). Let me tell you, an English Bulldog puppy is an adventure in so many ways
In early August, after several years of not being heard or respected, among other things, CK decided to leave her position at her high tech, high stress job. Right now she's been taking it easy and deciding what she wants to build. This whole event gave us some rather intense weeks throughout the month as we got closer to her last day, August 27th, the day before my birthday.
On August 26th I received a truly mean, spiteful letter in the mail from my Mother. Thankfully I had an appointment with my therapist scheduled for the 27th in anticipation of birthday blues, so the letter got immediate attention. I have wondered if she's trying to provoke me into responding somehow, or if it is just pure maliciousness and making sure she gets the last word in. In the future I'll be returning mail from her unopened.
Then I was 46 and we had a relaxing day. I taught a yoga class, because I wanted to, and otherwise we just had a mellow day. We ended the day with rock & roll; seeing Steve Earle & the Dukes perform. I am happy to report that 46 is not too old to rock and roll, however, I personally recommend at least a day's recovery time afterward.
To make my birthday extra awesome CK snapped a picture of Steve Earle and me. She also told him it was my birthday and he signed a personalized message on the concert poster we'd picked up.
That brings us right in September. The first week CK was officially not working she built a beautiful book shelf for our living room. I spent the first week of the month getting ready for the two-week, residential training retreat I had coming up. The official Samarya Yoga Teacher Training intensive, held at the Grunewald Guild in Plain, Washington. Given some of the experiences I had with Zen sesshin practice, I had a lot of anxiety going up there. Not to mention the heightened stress I was under due to the rather busy August we'd had. Still, can't keep putting things off until I feel "strong enough" to do them.
To make it a little easier on me I outfitted the van for a camping try-out. I had power, so an electric blanket to stay warm during the chilly mountain nights as well as power for my laptop and my very own electric kettle. I also made some snazzy curtains to cover all the windows.
I ended up flipping the bed around, finding that those back doors let in quite a draft. I came away with several items to improve the experience. The suction cups to hold the curtains need better positioning, and perhaps more of them. I want to find a way to block the back doors. Other than that, I was very comfortable in my little van-cave and so grateful for a place that offered total retreat when I was overwhelmed.
The training was intense. Upon returning and starting to catch-up (debrief) with my therapist she asked me about making a list of everything that came up, so we could prioritize them. I looked at her without blinking and told her that Everything had come up, in due time, across the long days of the retreat.
It was at times a tour through trauma. It was at other times hugely uplifting, the satisfaction of learning deeply, curiosity encouraged, dynamics of human interaction explored, the practice of gratitude established, an understanding of sisterhood unfolded, and so much more. The picture is of me just after our closing ceremony (still have taken very few selfies, but this one isn't too bad).
I was back home for 5 days after that experience, teaching all my classes, and then up to Seattle for a 3-day intensive on Level I IMT for Teens. I'm working on getting my time with my mentors done, hopefully over the next few weeks. In mid-October I'll have the 3-day intensive on Level I for Children. I leave again for Plain, Washington on November 1st for the 1-week, IMT Level II intensive.
Flowering
May was spent processing anger, waves of it. Then, unexpectedly, a childhood memory suddenly focused into clarity, which took some grieving and new, different anger to integrate and express.
Enjoying the Cool of the Park - June 21, 2015 - Tigard, Oregon
Similarly to learning safe ways to express anger I've also been exploring ways to "have a good cry". The idea of putting the words "good" and "cry" together is absolutely alien to me given my family of origin. Animal movies, sentimental ones particularly, seem to do the trick. Periodically Dora and I've watched a few really sappy dog movies when CK's has been away on work trips.
It has been a learning experience, in many ways.
Stumbling Towards Peace
So much for my National Poetry Month pledge. Ah well.
Red Gerbera Daisy - May 25, 2015 - Portland, Oregon
Creativity, writing or other artistic medium, has been distant this winter into spring. I'm also not really motivated to read much either. I was thinking this morning about the two kinds of shame that arise around this. First out of the gate comes the, "Why are you at your desk working on collage, polymer clay pieces, organizing, bead work, anything!?" That one is so obvious. I should be making an effort to spend time at my desk dedicated to my art. This is the way artists become selling artists.
The more subtle voice of criticism is softer and hints at some colossal, irredeemable flaw in not wanting to be creative. To be perfectly content in this slow, fugue state and not desire to break out and make art seems like the biggest betrayal, failure of them all.
Which means that some days, still many days, I work a little (3 classes a week, moving up to 5 come June), try to take care of some household errands and/or chores, and nap. I still feel kind of amazed at just how much I still nap and how an hour of therapy can throw me into a tailspin lasting for days. A particularly intense therapy session earlier this month has seen me back to nearly daily naps, many over 2-3 hours.
What finally occurred to me on the 11th was that I'm angry. I left that therapy session angry, which was a far healthier response than the shame and body disgust I went in with. That said, I'm really at a loss when it comes to anger. A childhood of being disallowed the expression of any "negative emotions", anger, disrespecting elders, "talking smart", anything perceived or labeled as "back talk", etc. As a young child this was enforced through physical action followed by banishing me to my bedroom where I was also not to cry and carry on, lest I be "given something to cry about". As I grew older I would mostly just be banished. Cut off from contact aside from school attendance. The rest of the time I was in my room with the door closed, shutting me away.
What I realized now is that when I'm angry I tend to get in a gray, exhausted, demotiavted funk really quickly. This leads me to just go to bed and nap. I go somewhere quiet and try to wait it out. Which really worked for me growing up, but as an adult.... well it still works because I'm teaching and not working some stressful, full-time+ job in IT. However, I also get that the anger I feel at the abuses I survived is a pretty reasonable response.
And yet... there are my vows, particularly the Ninth Grave Precept which directs us to, "Actualize harmony. Do not be angry."
So I'm trying to find ways that let me acknowledge and reconcile the anger I feel, particularly my "inner, younger selves" that were so utterly denied any way to express anger at what was happening in the present moment. Ways to express the anger that are safe, measured, and do not bring further harm to myself or others. I'm brainstorming some "intuitive art" sessions where I just pick colors, textures, words, and images from my collage materials that the inner anger resonates with and, on the advice of my therapist and CK, I occasionally try yelling and screaming in the car.
Learning Rest
I've only been able to establish a restful sleeping pattern in the past year. Peeling back the years of trauma and job-related stress (those 17 odd years of being on call) that created my inability to sleep well, chronic insomnia (couldn't get to sleep, couldn't stay asleep), starting from age 4 or earlier, has been hard. Multiple professionals have helped to treat me and give me tools to help me learn to rest at last.
These days I don't sleep as often or as much as I was in early 2014, but the need is still there. After more than a year of practice I am finally able to listen to my body without fear or self-shaming and let myself nap, fully rest, whenever I need to. It is nothing short of miraculous.
Learning Rest
Bleeding Hearts Return - Portland, Oregon - April 2, 2015
After a lifetime
Of restlessness.
Nights of scattered,
Small hours of sleep
Caught between the
Night terrors and the
Waking anxiety that
Brings them.
To experience the
Gift of sleep, to
Learn the rhythm
Of the body and
Its need for rest,
True rest that heals,
Is sipping from
Kwan Yin's jug.
Drinking in the
Elixir of life.
Taking Flight
In February I registered my business, Samatha Yoga, which I hope to begin growing this year as a mobile yoga teaching practice, bringing classes to offices, conferences, wedding showers, and more. I've been communicating with one local company already after having counter-pitched an inquiry from a technical recruiter; saying that I wasn't in the tech business anymore but wouldn't they love to improve the Health and Wellness options at the office by having me come teach yoga.
I've also been teaching two mornings a week at a gym in Happy Valley. It really is growing the ideas I come up with without any props aside from the yoga mats the students bring themselves. However, if my resolve to eventually only teach classes or private sessions were props are abundantly available wasn't already made, this experience only strengthens it!
I also spent part of a week attending workshops at Art and Soul last month, which was exhausting and exhilarating in equal measures. I took two workshops, which I'll be writing about soon on the ZenZada blog soon.
I've recently done some immersions where yoga, meditation, and/or energy work and journaling is used an approach to work with anxiety. These aren't teacher training, but as a teacher I'm finding them very valuable as I gather information to make the best decision for my training to become a certified yoga therapist.
At the beginning of March I sold my old house in North Portland. The sales cleared all the debt associated with the property as well as some remaining personal debt, including the very last of my student loans. As embark upon this exciting new experience of running my own business it is an enormous relief to have the liability of the house hanging over me now that I no longer receive a lucrative tech income.
So in many ways my new life seems to be taking off! Which is as exciting as it is tiring.
Fly away, Scrub Jay!
This month also sees my unemployment benefits expire. I am feeling anxious and guilty about this date sneaking up on me. I have been refining, tweaking, researching, refining, etc. on my application to the Self Employment Assistance Program that I'm afraid I may have missed the deadline to apply. There's another federal program I should still be able to apply for, I hope.
I'm feeling mad and frustrated with myself and the days where I feel like I've been zapped by a Cone of Demotivation (+4) that leaves it hard to even keep up with things around the house, make art, improve my business materials. I've been hit by another round of headaches; seems muscle tension is impeding the circulation of lymphatic fluid and blood in my head and neck.
In my meditation practice I've returned back to something my old Zen teacher used to say, "I am whole, complete, lacking nothing." It helps keep firm the reframing of seeing myself as wounded, not broken. I'm working on a bright book of affirmations for the year and am including this mantra, of sorts in it.
In February I also played around with using one of the heavy paper cranes I'd made for our first wedding as the basis for collage, becoming a kind of paper sculpture. One of these large cranes had been delivered to my Mother in the hospital on that day. When packing up her things for the last time I chose to keep it. However, seeing it was rather bittersweet for me. I added more layers of paint to it, a quote from Mary Oliver on one side, "Leave some room in your heart for the unimaginable." and that mantra on the other. In February it was sent, along with 60 beautiful cranes folded from chiyogami paper and two hats, knitted by my friend LG, with a paper crane pattern worked into it. It made it in time to Lansing, Michigan, to bring one of the last smiles smiled by my second college friend to lose their battle with cancer. Yesterday, very early, she peacefully passed onto the next journey.
Spring starts as rather a mixed bag. Sadness, excitement, joy, anxiety (always), hope.
Cranes4CJ Paper Sculpture
October Observations
October is here, arriving with a burst of rain and then come days of warm, summery days and crisp evenings. Really, one of my favorite times of year in Portland. Leaves are just turning, apples are plentiful, all the moss that had gone brown in the summer heat turns to green again. I'll miss the last two weeks of the month because we'll be leaving the house, and all the beautiful creatures living in it, in the very capable hands of a dear friend while CK and I enjoy a trip.
Kitchen Benefactors
Part of the trip for her will be work, but we have several days for just us. It has only taken two marriage ceremonies for us to have a honeymoon, but we're finally doing it. I'm getting really excited for the adventure of an entirely new place, one I've always wanted to visit. I'm also just happy for us, the last few trips CK and have taken together have been completely overshadowed by the Mama-Drama-Rama the claimed 2012 & 2013. We deserve a nice holiday with no emergencies to deal with at home.W
My talk to MozFest didn't get accepted, which is disappointing, but it is nice to not be worrying about my slides, etc. before giving a talk. I will be attending though, if anyone else is there and wants to look me up.
I've been applying for teaching positions at studios around town. Really, it feels like auditioning, particularly when I give a demo of my teaching. I never thought I'd come to prefer the grueling, multi-person, multi-hour interviews of the tech industry, but the audition thing is so nerve wracking that I'd take the old way back any day! What I've discovered is that there are a lot of teachers in the area and a lot of owners that have a very specific image they're trying to project.
No, I'm still not working in tech. The earliest review of that, a date given grudgingly, would be January 2015. However, the overwhelming opinion is in favor of me not going back to the tech industry at all. I've been noodling over this quite a bit the past few weeks after getting some unexpected news about my last company/team. I spent a good week in blue sky mode, fantasizing about going back so I could prove I could hack it, or make a difference, or finish something.
Then I had a good talk about all these feelings coming up with my therapist and after some discussion I saw that a large part of my desire to return to my last company is out of some hope it will "fix" my feelings about leaving college. It will somehow repair the past if I prove something that doesn't really matter in the present.
That brings me back to healing from the idea that you can spend 17 years building yourself into something and be told that you have to stop. I never thought that would ever happen. Maybe wouldn't have had I not had such a supportive wife and felt that I still had to keep everything moving along, regardless of my own health and the health of my relationships.
I am humbled by the abundance of support I now have in my life. Instead of trying to find a job that just gets me by, that doesn't let me take the time to really heal the hurt and trauma I've survived, I am instead thinking of ideas of how to market my private yoga sessions with people. I'm also on Week 6 of The Artist's Way, and that has been bringing me some profound insight on how I view my health and identifying the ways in which I'm mean to myself; writing things down so I can better work with them. I've also been working through a lot of anger about my Mother, huge amounts; my therapist and PMHNP both say that it is about time for me to feel angry, about a whole lot of things.
All that means I'm also still napping, which I'm trying to be less judgmental about having identified my impatience for my need to rest as a way I'm mean to myself! Some things, like having a 45 minute conversation about what it was like at my job this time last year as part of the process to review my eligibility for unemployment benefits, will leave me feeling worn out for a day or two. I am keeping in mind and trying to celebrate that it is an improvement over a week's fugue-state after challenging tasks like that.
The good news about sticking with the hard work is that it is helping things out; I am getting unemployment benefits now that I've been released to some kind of work and am actively searching. I'm going to be applying for a couple of programs that help you establish your own business, which I'm qualifying for since my physician has advised me not to return to my old career. Teaching classes here and there is going to be hectic and costly in regards to time spent commuting and fuel. CK has been brainstorming ideas for me to set up a solo teaching practice, with a class or workshop at a studio here and there.
I've also just started an Etsy shop. It isn't "open" yet because I need to face down my block over photographing artwork to post. In addition to pieces listed, I'll also be taking custom work. This winter I experienced a huge shift it what I was creating and am really excited by the direction I'm heading it, but I've avoiding photography for some fear of failure.
I'm planning to take an introduction to matting and framing artwork class at the Multnomah Arts Center next month. I plan to use at least one of my own pieces of artwork since I have so many questions on how to mat them. I know it will get me over the fear of using the mat cutter I bought a few months ago!
Since I've been doing so much with making art, I've started a new blog, ZenZada. We're also going to include stories about our life (mostly raccoon adventures thus far), reviews of places we stay when we travel, vegan/GF travel tips, and other lifestyle things like that. I started it in part to have a place to write about my co-creative art project with a Portland artist.
Vegan Nosh continues to move along, I've been doing a series of experiments with vegan burger recipes and posting about them. Since we found out CK cannot have gluten, I've been doing more experimenting and cooking at home, which is really better for us in so many ways.