Category Archives: Life of Healing

Taking It

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Well, here I am. Taking it. That’s good news really. My emotions still resemble a roller coaster ride but this is progress.  It could be all mucking around in the pits and no high peaks with great views. Just an update on the personal side to catch you all up, I know I’ve been a bit silent.

Mr. Furnace and I talk every day.  I understand his motives for what he’s doing regarding his ex. He is a good man with a good heart and good motives. Whether she is up to the challenge or deserves this from him is neither here nor there. He has to live with himself and his actions and this is something he must do for himself to feel that he’s tied up all loose ends. I get that, I applaud that, but I still zapped those sheets. I am what I am. And he laughed. He loves me just the way I am, warts and all. While this is very challenging right now and some of it really pushes some of my buttons, I’m feeling really good about the work he and I are doing together and individually. I feel very good about he and I.

While I have not been offered a job yet, so far nothing has come to happy fruition, I’ve had more interviews in the past couple months than I had in the previous two years. Many interviews and all in my field. I’m still applying for jobs at places like the local Fred Meyer and would be glad to have one there but the interest is all in my field and there is a good amount of it I think. I had a phone interview today that went quite well and had three applications accepted this week and pushed to the next level. Things are flowing and as long I stay as positive as I can something is going to change soon. Not IF I get a job but WHEN I get a job as a friend pointed out to me last week.

I’ve made a lot of new friends this year. People who really do seem to enjoy my company. I’m asked to chair meetings, join others for lunch, participate. I’m invited. I needed that so very much. To feel some sense of belonging in a time when I was feeling very left out.

I’m really moving in the direction of making big changes in my spiritual life and practice. I will always be a tree hugging dirt kissing nature lover and worshiper but that’s about all I can commit to at the moment. We shall see how this progresses. I’m not feeling the lurve in anything but the most simple living moment by moment.

My mom and I are doing well, ever since I shared my story about the adoption inventory, she’s been on my side and very supportive. Dad is becoming more confused as the days go by but he’s really keeping his good attitude and is a pleasant guy to be around. His situation really touches my heart. Bro and I are doing very VERY well, our relationship is quite solid and mutual and it feels good.

I made almost all the Yule presents I’m giving this year with a couple exceptions like the books I got Dad and the Polar Bear on a runaway sled that poops jelly beans for the nephew. I am a great auntie, one of my favorite roles ever.

So it isn’t all sadness and processing of old damage, not by any means. My needs are met and met well. I have a warm safe place to live, plenty of food (too much this time of year! so I’ve been able to share that with those who have much less), I have the love a good man, the love of many friends, Miss Mitty is doing well although I’m keeping an eye on her, and there are job prospects. Life is good and I am grateful. If this is taking it I guess I can be grateful. Twist my arm why don’t you…

And with that I leave you with TED’s  _The Three A’s of Awesome!!!

The Astonishing Thing IS…

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You’ve been reading my posts about how my head works. They include some of the things I think about my own lovability. I’m certain I’m not alone, that some of you have at least a moment or a thought like that once a year. Hopefully not daily like I do but there must be some sort of recognition or identification.

What my head says and what my reality is can be so diametrically opposed it really IS astonishing.

Here is my reality (the one that is in addition to relationship challenges and being fired):

  • Three readers have sent me stuff, unasked for, out of the goodness of their hearts. Because they want to help, to support, to show their love and appreciation to a total stranger who has some how managed to touch their lives across the globe. Another has offered. For nothing in return but the sharing of the goodness and love.
  • A woman today asked me I was going to be at my usual Friday night meeting because she has a newcomer guy who needs to see that women with recovery are cool. And she wanted me to be there. I wasn’t going because I did a nooner today, had a meeting after the meeting, AND tomorrow is our yard sale, but jeez, now I GOTTA.
  • Another woman, TODAY, and I went out to coffee. I’ve thought she was cool and all kinds of wonderfulness for the last year and she has been having a tough time too. Many of the women in the program have dropped her like a hot potato because of a decision she made that actually IS rather radical according to AA’s guidelines. When she needed them most, they abandoned her. Boy could I relate to that. We met for coffee and she asked me to be her sponsor because her sponsor fired her over it. I was all YAY! but on the condition that we are friends, helpers, teachers and students for each other, that friendship be the overriding dynamic. YAY! The deal here is if folks are afraid that her decision is going to cause her to drink again, shouldn’t they be there to pick her up if she falls??? That’s what I thought. I’m going to be there for her if and when she needs me and have fun with her in the meantime. We are finding our way in the challenges that many years of spiritual growth in the program are putting in our paths.
  • I got asked to speak and lead a meeting a week ago and the guy didn’t know me so he asked if I had three months or more, a requirement to speak.  Another guy said, “Oh her? She? Can TALK. Good choice.”  Since I think what HE says is pretty cool, that was an honor and a half. Today he said I should be wearing his jewelry, evidently he’s a silversmith among other things and all his cool stuff that he wears is his. Another artist. Always looking for opps to trade too. Skulls and big chunky silver stuff. Whee!!
  • A friend hired me to develop her website. Small but fun and still a challenge. She’s more excited than I am.
  • My cousin’s ex girlfriend contacted me today telling me how wonderful she thinks I am and how sorry she was to hear about my job.  And to suggest we get together to have coffee and a drive through the autumn foliage in one of our northern valleys.

I get feedback all the time that I am loved. ALL. THE. TIME. WTF?? Most of the feedback I’ve been getting has been in the last year and a half and not from the people who were in my life in a conscious way.  Lots of it comes from you! I am far more grateful than you may ever know. The tide is shifting and the love is coming from unexpected places.

What I need is to be mindful. To start writing these things down. I started a little book with all the good stuff that I get from D to remind me when I go crazy that what I think isn’t necessarily real. I will start in the back with the stuff that everyone else says and does.

And thanks go out to Mr. Furnace. Who deserves his own paragraph, not a bullet point. Who read my previous post and said, “Wow. That’s quite a statement. Let it all hang out baby.”  See what I mean? I’m crazy…  😉

Coming up for air

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Literally.  It seems that the stuff in a fire extinguisher, and several were used, works by sucking the oxygen out of the air.  So not only was the basement missing oxygen but every single thing was covered with fire extinguisher dust, smoke dust, and then the dust of a decade of a never cleaned law office.  The insurance company sent in three women to clean this horror show of a wreck room.  Bottles of white out, pens, envelopes, 10 years of boxes of software, 5″ floppy disks, books books books.  A nightmare.

My brother, who arrived Wednesday night, and I have been cleaning out the garage for 2 days.  Four big loads in a huge rented pickup truck later, we are still not done.  Two to the dump, don’t think for a minute that throwing things in a landfill makes me anything but miserable, and two trips to our local thrift store.  He’s not had any sleep and I seem to have caught a cold.  This afternoon we will tackle it again.  Some of the boxes I’m sorting go back to junk mail from 1997.  OMG.   I can’t even begin to illustrate the clutter and packratedness.

On the flip side, it’s super good to have my brother here.  Together we can do what alone would have done us in.

This is not us but it was the photo that closest resembled what we’re dealing with…

Add in six trunks full of everything from great art paper to coffee tins full of nails plus 2 kayak racks, 10 boxes of various poisonous chemicals, baskets galore, and perhaps one box of stuff we’re keeping and well, *sob* and yet  *woohoo!*

The fire has catalyzed some serious action.  The faux ceiling in the bathroom is down and we are hiring an electrician to take care of that fire hazard that is our lighting asap.  Also, it looks like I’m going to be able to move into the basement finished rooms and have basically my own apartment with a shared kitchen upstairs.  That won’t happen overnight but it will happen in the next couple months and I’m pretty excited about getting my stuff out of storage and having something that looks like my life back in this area.  I’ve been living in a 10×10 room that is really like living in a hotel room for a year now.  It will be a year March 7th.  I’m really done with this and hope that I get to have some say in the paint color.

We did find a box of silver coins from 1883 – 1964.  None of them appear to be of much value for their dates or their condition but I’m going to sell them for their melt value.  Tons of furniture is going to be sold and what doesn’t sell is going to the thrift store or the dump.  It has to be done, there is no choice.  And most of this has to happen before Monday at 5pm.  Bro’s flight home leaves Tuesday morning.  What a champ he’s been and thank god for his force of nature presence in this project.

My parents are a little bewildered and stressed over this whole thing as one can well imagine but they have been very, very brave and let us make most of the decisions for them.  They’ve stayed away for the most part and just let us muscle our way through and they are to be commended because they simply couldn’t do it themselves and this is painful for them.  They are embarrassed, ashamed, and relieved.

See you all later next week when the work is done, bro has flown home, and I’m working on a cool project that is mine and perhaps in a space where I can actually work on larger projects.  We are healing from the trauma of 30 years of shame and the horror that is a wild fire in your home.

P.S.  My camera stopped functioning. About 6 months ago my brother sent my dad a camera but it has never been used.  Bro saw that Dad will never be able to use it because it’s the part of dad’s brain that has left.  The figure it out part.  I have a new camera just like that.  *snap*  Thank you thank you.

I cleaned out my mom’s office, which was like the photo above all by myself and bought a new twin memory foam mattress so that Bro had a decent place to stay. He said he would have been royally pissed to have to spend $1000 to stay in a hotel for a week simply because there is so much clutter no one can move.

I’ve been working extremely hard, physically and mentally this entire week, and I am sore as hell but I’m pretty impressed at how my body is taking this.  Any one would be sore after inactivity but I was worried about my fibromyalgia and I feel pretty darned good all in all.

And I haven’t had a period in 8 weeks!  WOOHOO!   No migraines, no cramps, no pms, happy camper here.

Halleluah

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I couldn’t get through this without sobbing.  One of my all time favorite songs, Halleluah heals me every time I hear it.  It is a song about love and healing and blessing.  But to hear K.D. Lang sing it when, where, and, in the end an additonal, why, for Nodar, well see if you can make it through dry eyed.  This? Was the voice and song of an angel in her bare feet.

I thought that the opening ceremony this year was the most amazing, most encompassing, most passionate, most inclusive I’ve seen.  This pagan sat there in awe as she watched the shaman drum life into being.  As the scenes unfurled before me in silence I could only be amazed and grateful to have witnessed the life span of Canada.

I don’t have television and was in a restaurant eating with some friends when I looked up to see the snow falling and the shaman walk out of the mist and start pounding the ground with his/her staff.  None of us needed the sound and most of the table sat and just watched, struck peaceful.

But I missed this part.  While I know that this was planned long in advance for me it added a special poignancy to the sadness of Nodar’s death that was underlying the ceremony.

I hope that I’ll be able to get my hands on a DVD of the entire ceremony as copyright is keeping it from being shown on YouTube.  Have it I must.

Flying on a Broom – epiphany

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I was re-reading my Flying on a Broom post (it feels so good to relive that night, what can I say) and something occurred to me.  I mentioned in it three women and a dog.  And “Maiden Mother Crone” popped into my head.  We had a Maiden and we had a Mother but was I a Crone yet?

This week is special.  My entire womanly life my periods have been regular with one exception.  That one exception was the pregnancy with my son.  I have always been regular like clockwork with or without the pill.  Having had my tubes tied in 1992 I’ve been able to note that I really am regular as a Swiss clock.

Three years ago, I started peri-menopause.  Hot flashes especially and from January through March I’d havea  period every 10-14 days then back to normal.  Last year I simply began having periods every three weeks.  It’s one of the reasons I got my iron levels tested last week to make sure my exhaustion wasn’t related to anemia.  Thankfully my numbers are fine.  But still. A period every three weeks for over a year. Ghastly.  The hot flashes had ceased and that was good.  I don’t mind the being hot nearly as much as I do the fact that when I have a hot flash my brain disappears for about 5-10 minutes. Seriously can not think.

Until this month.  It’s been 5 weeks.  *5 WEEKS*  Oh thank you Lady!  It’s about time. And this week? The hot flashes are back in spades. As I said, I don’t mind them, I just notice them and fan myself a lot.  I know 5 weeks is not menopause.  But I have to say that I was dismayed that I was one whose cycles sped up instead of slowed down. It made me sad and impatient. It appears I am finally on the great slow down. WOOHOO!

I’m not really interested in menopause. I’m far more interested in menoSTOP.  While I’ll have to watch my skin and keep hydrated and make sure my lady parts are happy I can deal.  But no more horrible Oxycodone requiring cramps, no more hormone migraines, jeez, no more fuss and muss.

SO MOTE IT BE!!!!!

And there is it was, plain as day right in front of me.  I am the Crone. We were truly the triumvirate on that dark Saturn night.  The experience was so amazing I would venture to say that it was an initiation of sorts.  I’ve had a few but this is the first one that was between me and the Gods alone that I recognized as such right away.  I get to consider myself a sexy, juicy, CRONE.  And this? Makes me just so frikking happy on so many levels I am fit to burst.