5.10.17 Our Memories

Our memories are impacted by where we are today. We revisit a memory many times, and each time it looks a bit different, our impression and insight changing, because our vantage point is new. 
And if we've kept things together, our perspective grows broader and sees farther, our retrospection connecting up understanding and wisdom. 
Over time the memory shifts and changes, not because we are distorting it, but because we continue to move along a path of learning and experiencing.
When we stop and look back, we are further down the path, maybe at a greater altitude, so that our overall perspective improves - we keep seeing the memory in the new context of a greater view.
Course, we can become injured or damaged or messed up, with addiction or illness or distress, all of which can twist and pervert clarity, and hand to us on a shiny platter a story of make believe .

 

5.12.17 Honoring The Truth of Our Experience

Sometimes it comes to pass that others will deny 

our most unspeakable experiences.

But listen carefully to how their fear turns them

 away from truth, from empathy, from witnessing. 

Sometimes, when others leave us alone with our 

sad wronged repast, there is no help for it, but to turn, 

and honor the truth of our experience.

5.12.17 Mating Aweigh

     We have a babillion Sparrows here, with nine birdhouses, one under-the-eaves nest for many years. Last year each nest produced three clutches of eggs, and we had huge possies of toddler Sparrows sweeping about together, learning to fly and play and talk and explore.
     In fact, there we so many and such easy pickings, the Goshawk moved into the neighborhood, fighting off the defenses of the five sibling crows born here a couple of years back. The buttery white and brown Goshawk got their own sweet mate, and had their own baby to feed.
     So, true to form, they'd slice through the back garden, agile and low, and grab a baby Sparrow, to bring back to feed their babe.
     This spring we now have multiple clutches born, peeling away in nests, as parents zoom about, finding food.
     This morning I watched all the babies from last summer twittering around their parents and old homes, as the newest arrivals quickly grow themselves up.
     And, already, all the parents are busy as bees,mating mating aweigh.

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5.12.17 Proposal: Family Drama Day

I propose a Family Drama Day, a distinguishable annual event ,that most certainly all families, and even Hallmark, could get involved in. 
Perhaps family members could shore up a few months, at least, of drama, just for special. 
We could all gird ourselves, prepared for the slew of meaningless useless react-ivism and hysterical assertions, to be strewn across us all, in a gala of projection. 
Then we could arrange a well deserved few months detente , until the cease fire is declared over, and everyone who is Drama-tic could unceremoniously begin to spew drama incontinently, as needed, respite over, the normalcy of crap fest engaged once again.

 

5.13.17 How People Get Weird When Someone Has Cancer

     There's this weird thing some people do, with illness or cancers. They do it often with my husband having a difficult-no-good-lousy cancer. 
     Now, these are very nice people, decent and kind and hardworking and good. 
     They'll ask me how he's doing, and I'll smile and say 'Good!' 
They'll always look a little discomfited, or unsettled somehow, as they smile and say 'Yes, but , how is he DOING?' 
     I'll look at their smiling kind faces, wondering wtf, quietly and nicely to myself, you know? 
     And I'll smile AGAIN, wondering what parallel universe this is , and I'll say 'He's doing well.' Kinda like, 'OK! There ya go. You all good now? '
But they won't be. They'll be ill at ease and looking down and I'll say 'Ok, well, take care!' 
     I'll walk away, wondering.
     After a recent bout of this, it came to me, why their disappointment.
     Big bad lousy no good cancers scare everybody. But when it's happening in your family, after a year or two of solid every second of the day terror, you resource up.
     You find and build your really great astounding amazing effective toolbox, and then you'll focus every single moment on WHAT WILL WORK, and then you study how to live cooled out as best you can, while grateful for the life you are given. 
     People either have not been there yet, and truly feel like 'But for the grace of God..'. 
     Or they've been there or are there, and it's hard for it not to tear people apart. But it's really really possible, if you want, to have it streamline you into the essence of who you are. It is. 
     It's really hard for families not to come apart at the seams. I stopped going to perfectly well intentioned support groups for those supporting those with cancer, because it was a disaster. In those places. It's just tough stuff for everybody. All the messes we eve avoided come on up and explode in the air and all over us, and we kind of meet face to face with what is true. 
     Now, when people run into someone who has cancer or is close to someone with cancer, they want the goods . They do.
     They want the struggle and the low down and dirty. 
     So if that's what you're serving the day you run into them, maybe that is received well. 
     But if that's not how you roll, the litany of dates and meds and emergencies won't be what matters to you, and you don't confide, and they'll be discomfited.
     I mean, how on earth would you convey the incredible strengthening that is possible, the things you can do so blood work actually enriches over time. 
     Or how you can blow doctors minds with all the weirdo amazing crap you're exhausted doing. Getting down and dirty sometimes does not help. Sometimes focusing and remaining balanced and making the effort is what you choose instead.
     When perfectly nice people are culturally wired to wait for down and dirty, they get disappointed. I don't even think they realize what they're doing . To you. 
     And then you turn away, getting that it's not going to be a good idea to linger with those people , either. And they get added to this funny growing list of people who want to assume all kinds of stuff and spread it all over you, or want to get those goods.
     There is nothing for it but to hang with people who are aware and present, and then you go off, reveling in your grace filled day.