Bits and Pieces Of Joy

MonSters are scary…

June 2nd, 2011

There is a MonSter inside of me.

It was there…even many years ago. Back then, I didn’t know what it was. It didn’t have a name. And it barely had a presence…just an whisper. Then one day, almost 8 years ago, it spoke aloud. To me.

One day I woke up, and one of my legs didn’t. Like…it was still asleep. And it stayed that way for six months or so. Curious, for sure. Worrisome, maybe. A bother. Walking upstairs when only one of your lower appendages is cooperating, is tricky. Yes, tricky is a good word. So my curious self finally found my way to a specialist. A specialist in MonSters. And so it was that on a sticky summer morning, over the phone, I was told that inside of me, inside of my brain and down my spine, lived a MonSter.

There are moments in life that imprint themselves upon one’s soul with indelible ink.

I remember exactly where I was standing. I remember that I was holding a teaspoon of baby food in my hand. I remember saying very calmly, to the voice on the other end of the line ‘Could you please repeat that, I thought that I heard you say…’. I remember the look on Eric’s face.

MonSters are scary. You never know when they might show up. It’s the not knowing, really. Its the wondering…when. A MonSter doesn’t just sit there out in the open and let you get used to its presence. It hides and then when your head is turned, when you’re busy going about your life, it jumps out and scares the breath out of you.

That’s what happened to me. Just after I had my little boy, the MonSter decided that I wasn’t listening and it needed to shout a little louder.

Things had mostly returned to normal for me, physically. The leg thing had mostly resolved, only resurfacing as an intense buzz up my leg and to my crotch when I walked a long while. I had experienced a sudden hearing loss combined with tinnitus (a high-pitched squeal). It was fleeting, and served more as an experiential learning for my clinical practice, than anything. I began a battle with my insides, having been significantly affected in my ’saddle region’, as my doctor termed it. I know…super sexy, right? There were other, less objective symptoms. Perhaps I was more tired. Perhaps I was more clumsy. Perhaps I was less focused.

And then. I experienced a rapid, progressive loss of vision. First in one eye and then the other. Plateauing at near complete loss in my left and moderate loss in my right. Resulting in 6 weeks of the death of my visual world as I knew it. And although I learned to navigate my house, my neighborhood, my life through a cloudy lens, my fear of this MonSter became bigger than me. I was anxious. I was sad. I was terrified. I felt so alone. A baby + toddler + loss of independence = sad mommy. A sad me.

And just like that, as quickly as it had appeared, the MonSter retreated yet again, my vision restored. I felt immense relief but although I knew I should be grateful, I was too pissed and full of pity for myself to quite get there. To the grateful place. I had a hard time moving past the ‘poor me’ place. Others tried to help me get there, but I had to find my own way. I did. In my own time.

I think maybe we each have our own monsters. Some of us probably have a few. This one has a name. This one can be documented by brain scans and blood tests. This one has nothing to do with make-believe. And maybe, in some ways, that makes it easier. Some monsters are more elusive; it’s almost impossible to know if they’re even there.

*I wrote most of this awhile ago and am just now gathering the courage to post it. I’m working through a few things right now and one is my denial over this…disease.

The MonSter has a name. It’s M.S. I have Multiple Sclerosis. It’s not who I am but it is something I have. I drew an unlucky, short straw. Not the unluckiest or the shortest, to be sure, but still not great. I have re-started the journey of taking my medication again. I’ve begun a ritual whereby each time I push the needle into my skin I say ‘take that!’. Mostly inside my head. But sometimes right out-loud.

Take that, MonSter.

Want to read more random thoughts from inside my head? Visit my blog Polkadotbliss. Have something to say? Leave me a comment. You’ll make my day and good karma will flow your way!

Tags: monsters, multiple sclerosis
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Just Another Day With An Angel

January 6th, 2011

This was going to be a story of heartbreak. Because I happen to have one. Right now. It’s fresh and it’s raw and it feels awful and it’s so…present…in my mind and in my body. It seems like all I can feel right now. So I decided to write about it.

But. Today as I was trying to find time and the inclination to begin, I was reminded of something. I was reminded that in all darkness there is light. That there is brightness and love all around me. And that even when it feels like I can’t go on, I can. I do.

So, rather than being a story about heartbreak, this is a story about the heart of an angel and the wisdom of a child.

I have a little girl who I have always known to be special. Extraordinarily special. She has a kindness and gentleness about her that is magical. It can only be described as angelic. From the time that I first held her I felt her love. I remember when she was three, I was having a ‘moment’ and found myself saying aloud that I couldn’t believe that I was going out (to a friends house) in jeans and a t-shirt, looking so terrible. She slipped her teensy hand in mine and she looked up at in me, eyes wide, and said ‘But mommy…it’s what’s inside your heart that counts’. Three years old and smarter than I’ll ever be.

And then, in a dark time early in the ‘nights of solitude’, I was kissing the kids goodnight. I was aching…they would leave the next morning for their week with their dad. I couldn’t stop the tears despite my best efforts. They dripped onto her face in the dark. I said ‘I’m sorry…I don’t mean to cry. It’s just that I’m going to miss you’. She again slipped her hand in mine and said ‘But mommy…it will be okay…you live inside of my heart’.

So over the past handful of days, I have been a crumbling mess. It has been all I could do to breathe. And each breath has felt like fresh hurt. I have cried big, loud, ugly tears. I have paced. I have cried some more. I have completed necessary tasks in a trance. All the while I have felt like a terrible mother to my little boy and girl, not being as much ‘fun’, not being ‘present’ and not running here and there. We stayed in, cocooned together. He and she and I.

I’ve heard that animals sense pain in their kind.They change their behaviours, show a kind of empathy. She, my angel, has cuddled me close, held her little hand in mine and whispered ‘I love you’. She has shown me the strength of love.

Then tonight.

First, I was brushing her hair, putting it into a bun for her ballet class, and I told her she was beautiful. She said ‘Thank you Mommy…but I always know where I am the most beautiful and that’s right in here’ (pointing to her heart). And then she smiled and skipped down the stairs with her big fuzzy green dance bag slung over her wee 8-year-old shoulder.

We had one of our special ‘girl’s nights’ together. We were driving home, sharing a chocolate caramel, when she told me that she remembered the times before her brother was born, when would go to Chapters, read a story in the big teacup chair and share a chocolate ‘creamy’, we called them. I said ‘YOU are a good rememberer, sugar’. She answered ‘I know, right? I remember lots of thing. I even remember the night you told me that we were going to live in two houses’.

Oh Jesus.

My breath stopped, stuck right in my throat.

A voice that didn’t belong to me squeaked out ‘Oh?’ and she said ‘Yeah…and I even remember where we were’.

Squeak: ‘You do?’

Angel: ‘Yeah…you know in the little corner by the coat hooks at Daddy’s. We were sitting…’

My ears filled with the ocean and I couldn’t hear because I remembered too. The moment of telling my 5-year-old daughter that ’we’, which had always been all of us, would be living in two houses…that I would be moving out…that ’we’ would never quite be the same ‘we’ again.

My breath held as I pulled the car into the garage. Thankful to be home. Thankful I wouldn’t need to drive as I could no longer see, due to the tears falling down my shamed face. ’Honey….’ squeak.

‘Mommy, why are you crying?’. It was then that I noticed that her voice was even. She was genuinely surprised to see me affected by her story in this way.

‘It’s just that it’s kind of a sad story, love’.

‘What is?’

It all is. It’s all sad. The end is so often sad. Sometimes sad things happen…and words fell out of my mouth that were uttered by another, the heartbreaker, the day before ‘Sometimes the right decisions aren’t the easy ones’ ‘And’, I added in my own words, ’sometimes that’s just sad’.

‘Hey…’ I asked tentatively, afraid of the answer,’do you remember how you felt when i told you?’ She thought for a moment and then answered ‘No. That’s the funny thing. I remember the big stuff but not all the little stuff’. Big grin with a shrug.

I share this from my heart, the heart of a mother that spends too many of her days, too many moments of too many days worried that the things that I do are going to forever ruin my kids. That me figuring out me has done them irreparable damage. Worried that somehow I am undeserving of and will wreck the gifts that have been given me. But today I learned: they’re not nearly as wreckable as I once thought. And that the love I have for them and show them daily has given them the strength of resilience.

And finally, I share this. Tonight, she and I were each reading, she in her bed, I in mine. She stood in my doorway and told me ‘There’s a song in my [Geronimo Stilton] book’. ‘Would you like to sing it to me?’ I asked. She nodded and bounced herself onto the bed beside me. My angel sang:

Rest your head, O gentle night,

Soon the day will bring its light.

But for now the stars will shine,

And everything will be just fine!

image by Tracey Poffenroth (thanks Trace!)

Want to read more random thoughts from inside my head? Visit my blog Polkadotbliss. Have something to say? Leave me a comment. You’ll make my day and good karma will flow your way!

Tags: angel, heartbreak, kids, love
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Deflated

September 14th, 2010

(Or How a Warning Light Is Actually Sometimes a Wakeup Call)

A flat. Rats.

Not so many weeks ago, I was driving down the road, and I noticed a little warning light on the dash of my car. Well, in full disclosure, I discovered what I described as ‘an exclamation mark in a triangle’. And someone gently asked me ‘you mean a warning light’? Umm…yes. That’s exactly what I mean.

So anyway. A warning light. I was actually more focused on what it was warning me about. Or how long it had been on. How long it was trying to get my attention.

I figured out it was indicating a low tire. And when I say figured out, I mean someone told me.

My reaction? Oh. Just a low tire. No biggie. It’s not urgent, afterall. I have had major car disasters before. Most memorably, I bottomed-out my big ol’ Volvo and 3 blocks later got a ‘check engine’ message. Actually, that Volvo was a wonder. There was no exclamation mark in no triangle. No, it alerted me with a full on flashing message that said something like ’stop the car and get engine CHECKED right now! The radiator has exploded!’. That’s how I remember it.

So a little warning light about a low tire. Yeah, I’ll get to it. Later.

I managed to ignore it for a day or so. But then that nagging light started to get to me. In fact, while lying in bed that night I started to worry about it. And so I decided it finally needed my attention. If I didn’t do something about it, who would?

The next day, I stopped at the gas station and pulled up to the ‘air’ sign. With no particular plan, mind you. But I hopped out and did a walk-about and stared at each tire one by one. Oops. I found it. The tire that was simply ‘low’ a couple days prior, now could only be described as full-on flat. Deflated.

You know where I’m going with this, don’t you?

I’m the master of denial. All four tires are turning, getting me to where I need to go. A pretty little red light on the dashboard. Lalala. LALALA. Warning? What warning? Whatchu talking ’bout Willis?

And then Blammo! I can’t ignore it anymore.

And that’s how it happens. In my life. With me. Inside of me. I ignore the signs; I deny the niggling feelings. I keep carrying on and on and on knowing that I need to stop and pay attention. But I don’t want to. It’s easier to just keep going through the motions. Ignore, ignore, ignore. Deny, deny, deny.

There’s just one teensy tiny little glitch in this otherwise masterful plan: it doesn’t work. Nope. The truth is, our bodies are like cars.

Stay with me, friends.

If there is a problem, if something isn’t quite right, if there is something out of balance, a little warning light comes on. For me, sometimes that warning light is a knot in the pit of my stomach. Sometimes it’s tears that pop up out of nowhere. Sometimes it’s a golfball that takes up residence in my throat and I can’t breathe. And Sometimes I just feel ‘off’ and I don’t know what the hell.

It sure would be easier if it were an exclamation mark in a triangle. On my forehead, perhaps. Or better still, like the good ol’ reliable Volvo, a big flashing clear-as-a-bell message telling me exactly what’s wrong and what I should do about it.

But either way, it can’t be ignored forever. Eventually it needs attending to. Something needs to be done about the warning, the niggling. But so often, I wait until I’m completely deflated.

It’s easy for things to get out of control on me. For me to LET things get out of control. This time, I could have predicted it. It’s the time of year, for one. Fall is my favourite season, something about the crisp air and warm sweaters. The nesting. But it’s also a time loaded up with bittersweet memories. And then my ego took a hit. Damn ego. And then I started to feel my aloneness which felt suspiciously like lonely. And then…and then…and then. Did I mention the ego? Damn ego.

Not a full-on disaster. But I’m just feeling a little…deflated. Like I need to do something to fill me up.

And so. At a time like this I can choose to put a little air in my tires and keep on going.

Or, recognize it’s time for a change. I’m not even sure what that will mean, but for today that’s enough.

(photo: I, Timmy via Flickr)

Want to read more random thoughts from inside my head? Visit my blog Polkadotbliss. Have something to say? Leave me a comment. You’ll make my day and good karma will flow your way!

Tags: deflated, ego, warning
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Channeling My Inner Bakerella

September 8th, 2010

My inner who?

Bakerella. Yep. The biggest thing in baking blogs since…ummm…Bakerella? Apparently. I’m pretty new to her too; a friend kindly told me all about her and I was dazzled! Her site is amazing. She specializes in these tiny little treats called Cake Pops. And they are freaking adorable. Seriously. The kinda thing that makes my heart sing. Talk about bits and pieces of joy! And the photos are so…yummy?!

And so, channeling my inner Bakerella, I thought I’d try my hand at making some Cake Pops. Just simple ones. To start. I’ll expand to the more elaborate shapes and characters another time. Maybe.

Sounds easy enough.

Mix up a cake.

Bake it.

Mine is in a star-shaped pan. Not to be fancy, but because I don’t have a regular 9×13 pan. What evs.

Crumble it up.

Mix up some icing (’frosting’, if you’re south of the border).

I made mine peanut butter, ’cause that’s how I roll.

Mix the cake and icing into a play doh-like consistency. Umm…

Roll them into little balls.

Chill. As in chill-out. I don’t know about you but I’m feeling a little worn out.

Put them on a stick and dip in melted chocolate dipping wafers. Voila!

Ummm…Bakerella? HELP! What the hell? Ooops. It seems my little ’switch-up’ with the greasy peanut butter icing may not have been the best plan. Rats! Better luck next time!

But still super tasty!

My point is, I’m inspired. You know what? Not just by Bakerella. By so many incredibly talented women out there. I like to think of myself as a crafty sort, but seriously. I can get lost in Etsy and all of the sweet wonderful goodies there. I could spend hours (weeks!) immersed in any number of blogs or websites that are all at once informative and visually succulent. And not just online. Amazing photography, cool little shops, I love love love it all.

And here’s the thing. What I find the MOST inspiring about so many of these fabulous women is that they are just like me. Like you. Just ‘regular’ women who had ideas. Who are following their hearts. Their passions. I love their stories almost as much as I admire their talents.

I am neither a baker nor a photographer. I’m not really a writer or an artist. But I can dabble, try new things, and dream just a little. When I grow up I want to be any one of those things, or maybe a combination of them all!

Where do you find your inspiration? What makes your heart flutter? What do you want to be when you grow up?

Want to read more random thoughts from inside my head? Visit my blog Polkadotbliss. Have something to say? Leave me a comment. You’ll make my day and good karma will flow your way!

Tags: Bakerella, Everythingmom, inspiration, Totshots
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Tuesday Tidbits

September 7th, 2010

‘Buy or borrow self-improvement books, but don’t read them. Stack them around your bedroom and use them as places to rest bowls of cookies.

Watch exercise shows on television, but don’t do the exercises. Practice believing that the benefit lies in imagining yourself doing the exercises.

Don’t power walk. Saunter slowly in the sun, eating chocolate, and carry a blanket so you can take a nap.’

-Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy (SARK)

(photo: iStockphoto)

Want to read more random thoughts from inside my head? Visit my blog Polkadotbliss. Have something to say? Leave me a comment. You’ll make my day and good karma will flow your way!

Tags: SARK
Posted in bits and pieces of joy, tidbits | 2 Comments »

Cheez whiz Land

September 5th, 2010

So the other night, I’m lying in bed. I can’t sleep. It’s one of those staring at the ceiling-the more I think about how badly I need to go to sleep the worse it is-kinda can’t sleep nights. I had been lying there for at least an hour. Mind swirling. I keep half sitting up- to check the time. 11:23 (not bad…go to sleep now and I still get 7 hours). 12:07 (oh dear). 12:33 (what the hell). 1:13 (shit). 2:02 (well, hello Cheez whiz Land).

Cheez whiz Land, you say? Yep. Cheez whiz Land.

To explain, I have to take you back a few (ahem!) years. It’s circa 1983. I’m having a sleep-over at my BFF’s house. She and I are hitting the hay after a big night of modeling ’I Dream of Genie’ costumes fashioned out of her bubble-gum pink polyester sheer curtains, dining on chips and dill-pickle dip, channeling our inner Madonna while belting out ‘Like a Virgin’, spying on her brother in his underwear, giggling…so much giggling.

Anyway, we’re lying in bed chatting. Actually, it is me chatting incessantly and she is appeasing me with polite ‘I’m listening and engaged in what it is you’re saying’ kind of sounds like ‘mmmhhmm’. After awhile, she’s silent.

Me: ‘ummmm…T?’

nothing

Me: (with a finger poke to the arm) ‘AHEM…T!?’

Her: (arms flailing) ‘SHHHHH!!! I’m in Cheez whiz Land!’

HAHAHA!!

So Cheez whiz Land has become one of our many ‘inside’ jokes.

Cheez whiz Land. That limbo-land between wake and sleep. A place I have come to covet. A beautiful, creative place where my mind takes me sometimes. It can’t be planned. Try as I might, I can’t go there at will. It sneaks up on me when I least expect it. But when it does, I feel my mind enter this altered state. One where everything suddenly becomes clear. I no longer feel the exhaustion of sleep-deprivation, but feel really alive.

In Cheez whiz Land, my brain takes on a mind of it’s own. I am incredibly articulate there. So says me.

On this particular night, I had been unable to sleep because of something on my mind. A conversation I was anticipating having the following day. Dreading. I had been feeling the heaviness of impending confrontation. What would I say? How would I begin? And then there I was. Cheez whiz Land.

Suddenly, I knew exactly what to say. I played it out in my mind. I was confident. Witty. It didn’t matter what he said. I had the perfect response. The anxiety was gone, the dread, gone. Ahhh…

While I’m there, and with that pesky little conversation over with, I am free to explore. I come up with all kinds of things I want to write about, and draft them perfectly here in my mind. I come up with an idea or two about things I’m going to create; I even have the time to put my basement in perfect order, in my head, all from the comfort of my bed, before I drift off to sleep.

I dare say that all of my best ideas have been crafted in Cheez whiz Land. In fact, it was here that I came up with Polkadot Bliss. It seems to be a space where my mind wanders aimlessly without the fear of judgement, or even logic. Yes, that’s it. There’s no room for logistics here. All the naysayer parts of my brain have drifted off to slumber. Here, there is endless energy, endless resources for all I intend to do. Here, I’m in charge of everything. Even what others say, what they think.

It truly is a wonderful place to visit. But I always know it is just that, a transient place that will vanish as quickly as it has come, as soon as my body succumbs to sleep. The recollection of these times is always the same; coming in waves of remembrance in the grogginess of the next day. Much is forgotten. But as slivers of recognition become memories, I collect them, much as you would collect treasures in a basket, and I save them to look over later.

Sadly, the execution of my brilliance is less flawless in reality, in the light of day. I’m not nearly so articulate, for one. And, upon review, not every idea is a gem. Logistics do, in real life, get in the way. But still. I relish those delicious snippets of time spent in this ‘fantasy’ world. In Cheez whiz Land.

Maybe someday you’ll come along.

Want to read more random thoughts from inside my head? Visit my blog Polkadotbliss. Have something to say? Leave me a comment. You’ll make my day and good karma will flow your way!

Tags: Cheez whiz, dream, sleep
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My, What Green Grass You Have

September 2nd, 2010

I’ve been thinking about this for awhile. Why is that we believe the grass always greener on the other side?

Why is it that we are so busy looking over the fence at everyone else, sometimes we can’t even appreciate what’s in our own backyard? In our own life. In our own self?

I am so quick to measure my own ’success’ by comparing myself to others. Why is it that I can’t feel ‘good enough’ about me, my thoughts, my decisions, my actions, me as my own entity? Me. As a friend, a mom…

What does success mean, anyway? Who defines this for each one of us?

Is it the things we possess? Our stuff. The car we drive. Where we live. The designer name on our purse.

How about not just the label on our jeans, but the size stitched on the inside tag.

Is it the family we have? The number of friends we have…on Facebook?

Is it our job? The amount in our bank account? Power…prestige…all measured.

Confession: a tiny bit of me is wants all of it. More than I have now. I want the beautiful house with the picket fence. I want the new car. I want the designer jeans (in a size two, if you please). I want the big bank account so that I can travel and leave my worries behind. I want some swanky job with an impressive title.

Bigger confession: I want the ‘perfect’ life. You know the one…

I want love. My one and only…the stuff of fairytales.

But maybe…it can be so much simpler than all of that. How about if we defined success not by what we possess…who we possess…but instead, by our character…

‘you have achieved success if you have lived well, laughed often and loved much’ -author unknown

Wouldn’t it be a happier world if we could all just accept who we are. Where we are. And want what we have.

Which gives me an idea. I have decided to draft my own little gratitude list.

Here ’tis:

1. I am grateful for my health. My legs carry me on adventures wherever I want to go; my arms reach out and hug anyone I please; my eyes can see the pride in my childrens’ faces when they learn something new; my ears can hear their laughter. And I love that, however many times it is broken, my heart still sometimes skips a beat.

2. I am grateful for my education. More than a piece of paper, it has opened doors, given me financial stability, and allowed me freedom to live the life I choose.

3. I am grateful for lovely friends. The funny ones. The serious ones. The ones with seriously big shoulders for my sometimes seriously big tears. Ones with big, bold personalities. The ones who call me on my shit. Ones who know my middle name and use it. To call me on my shit. Friends who teach me and friends that listen. Ones that love me for me. The ones who show me unconditional love.

4. I am grateful for family. The family that chose me and the one that I have created. My children have given me so much. THEY have helped me to live well, laugh often, and love so so much.

For all of that….I AM grateful. Big time.

Green grass? Got it. Right here. Right now.

Image courtesy of Christopher Sessums via Flickr

Tags: envy, green grass, success
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1000 Nights Of Solitude

August 23rd, 2010

Or thereabouts…

That’s about how long it has been since I moved out…into my own house. After six years of marriage.

It was a December morning. It was cold and there was snow on the ground. We had spent the weeks leading up packing up boxes and making piles of my things in the dining room. It was overflowing and stacked to the ceiling in some places.

Half of pretty much everything we had gathered in our life together. All in one little room.

It was a rocky day. First, the movers no-showed. A sign? Not likely. But annoying nonetheless. I did find some movers and other than them smashing out the glass in the entrance of the ‘old’ house (rats!), things went pretty smoothly. By the end of an exhausting day, me and all of my worldly possessions found ourselves in a heap, in a little house, 3 blocks away.

Three blocks and a world away. All feeling a little displaced. My things and I.

Thank God for my parents, who had come to help me move. Somehow the boxes and the things inside found themselves a home. As I watched it all, perched above, outside of myself.

I think I was in and out of my body that weekend. The moving-out piece was just a formality, really. We had separated months before, legally, and emotionally….well, it had been longer. But even still, of course there was pain. And sadness. Deep and raw. Pain I tried so hard to avoid. And there, outside of myself, I didn’t have to feel it.

It was the finality of it all. The loss, the death of the future we had mapped out together. He and I.

But. I kept it together and smiled…surely I must have joked…laughed, even. Perhaps about all the space I would have! Oh a clean house, finally! A great way to downsize! I just don’t remember, but that’s how I imagine it.

And then. The night came. And the flood. Of emotions and tears. Loud, big, messy tears.

Here I was…a five minute walk from my children. In a strange house. With strange noises. Alone. Just me and my thoughts.

Yep.

The first few weeks were challenging. The nights, seemingly longer than ever before, were the worst. But I managed. Save for one night while alone with the kids, when I convinced myself that the noises I heard were feet crunching in the snow. In my backyard. And I sat, paralyzed, upon my bed. From there I managed to dial the phone and squeaked out to the man formerly known as my husband that there was somebody in my backyard. He said he’d be right over to check it out. He was, and he did. All was apparently fine, he told me from the doorway of my bedroom, after letting himself in (I was still stuck in bed, paralyzed, remember?) Alrighty then, nighty night.

And off he went on his merry way, after my reassurance that I’d make it through the night. Jesus. Did I mention it was midnight? when I first became aware of the grave danger that my children and I were surely in. In suburban Calgary. In December.

A saint. Clearly. Not just the very best father my children could ever dream of. But a saint, pure and simple.

There have been many nights since then, and days too, of course. For the most part, each one easier than the last. Half of the time the children are snug in their beds upstairs. The other half, 3 blocks away.

I have found my routine. My groove. Life is a funny thing. It has a way of filling up the spaces of time. I remember thinking, in the beginning, that a whole extra day existed after work when the children are with their dad. What did people [without kids] do with all their time?? Now, while my nights with and without the kids look vastly different, each is mostly filled. I still miss the kids, but I don’t feel so empty anymore, simply because they are sleeping somewhere else.

I have even learned to embrace the solitude. Loneliness, too, is funny. Certainly there are times when I wish I had someone else around to share the details of the day. And there are days when I have surely felt lonely. But I have discovered that solitude does not equal loneliness.

And, sometimes it’s just fun to dance naked. All by yourself.

Tags: alone, divorce, loneliness, separation, solitude
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What I Think I Kinda Might Know For Sure

August 19th, 2010

Or…why that Oprah has a few things on me…

Here’s the truth: I have no idea what I know for sure.

I’m writing this days after my birthday. My thirty seventh, to be exact. Or flirty seventh, if you prefer to listen to my 4 year old. I do. It certainly sounds more fun, no?

Anyway…so my birthday kinda gets me thinking. About where I’ve been…where I’m going. The kinds of things I’ve done…not done. The choices I’ve made. And my brain stumbles upon this: Looking back, I hardly recognize this person who has lived my life. In so many ways the girl I was, even a few years ago, is so much a stranger to me. Now.

Even in the very simplest of ways. My likes. Dislikes. Passions. Pleasures. Insecurities. Some similar…but so many unrecognizably different now. So many times in the past I have felt such strong conviction…THIS is what I need to be doing, THIS is what I want, THIS will bring me happiness…

I am reminded of one of my favourite quotes, by author Maya Angelou:

‘When you know better, you do better’

And so. I consider this, what I think I kinda might know for sure:

There is always a reason. For every choice that we make. For every ‘chance’ meeting of another. For every disappointment. For every heart break. For all the joys and all the sorrows. There is something to be gained. No experience is a wasted one. Each serves to bring you to where you are.

I am who I am for all my mistakes, mishaps and missteps. They are uniquely mine.

That which my eyes see at this moment differs from what they saw 10 years ago…two months…10 days ago.

Even when staring straight ahead at the same exact thing.

I can only do/think/say what I know to be true at any given moment. At this moment. And this moment is fleeting. The miracle is that every experience shapes what and how we see; how we hear, interpret. Maybe simply the connection with another human being. And then we are changed. Sometimes in small ways; sometimes big.

But always changed.

Herein lies the beauty of all of this. Knowing this allows me to be gentle with myslf when looking back on past decisions. Because, the truth is, I am no longer the same person. Of course I would no longer make the same choices! Feel the same way! Act or react in the same manner! Of course not. When you know better, you do better.

So while there’s nothing I know for sure, I’m fairly certain, at flirty seven, that I’m coming to know who I am. Right now. And maybe more importantly, I am beginning to view where I have been with compassion and love.

Tags: choices, oprah
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Tuesday Tidbits #4

August 17th, 2010

When you get those rare moments of clarity, those flashes when the universe makes sense, you try desperately to hold on to them. They are the life boats for the darker times, when the vastness of it all, the incomprehensible nature of life is completely elusive. So the question becomes, or should have been all a long… What would you do if you knew you only had one day, or one week, or one month to live? What life boat would you grab on to? What secret would you tell? What band would you see? What person would you declare your love to? What wish would you fulfill? What exotic locale would you fly to for coffee? What book would you write?
-from One Week

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Bits and Pieces Of Joy