Month: June 2018

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“Should I Stay or Should I Go Now”…Love Part III

“Should I stay or should I go now?
Should I stay or should I go now?
If I go there will be trouble
And if I stay it will be double
So ya gotta let me know
Should I cool it or should I blow? ”
The Clash

A funny thing about living past my 20’s and 30’s is that I can’t help but notice trends in my coping style. I can’t help but gather data that paints a picture of who I’ve become. I suppose, on one hand, it’s another way of saying, “the choices you make define you.” But I think it’s more than that. In my 20’s, despite my best intentions and attempts at self-awareness, I thought I was breaking patterns. I thought I was defining myself. I did try, and that counts for something. I believe it was part of the process, and I’m not un-proud of who I am. It’s a boon for me that I love big and I love hard. It’s an emblem I am not ashamed of. But I spent much of my life loving and leaving fast and I see now how it’s led me here. I’m good. I’m where I am in the moment, and it’s OK. I guess I just wonder if I was meant to be or could have been someone or something else. If I could have been more. I wonder if there is still time.

Mostly I’m just surprised by how much I thought I was creating of myself when in fact I was simply responding to programming and becoming.

Despite my most deliberate efforts, I lived my defining years through a set of experiences I had very little choice in making. My childhood imprinted the belief that told me who I was so the choices I made were choices I was bound to make.

Should I stay or should I go was my subtext and I didn’t even know it. In a way, should I stay or should I go determined the course of my life. It certainly determined who and how I loved.

I wasn’t able to see how I had internalized my childhood life until after I had made choices based on it. It was only through reflection of that “lack of choice” that I was able to finally begin becoming the person I wanted to be. I suppose that too was a process in the making, and part and parcel of being a person, so it’s OK. I guess I just wish I hadn’t taken so long.

Nevertheless, here I am, not too much worse for the ware. I’m still standing. I haven’t given up. I’m happy. I’m not happy in the way I thought I would be in my twenties. But deep in my being, I know happiness because of what I’ve lived through. I know a new happiness because of the love of people who stood by me, including love I’m learning to give myself. I guess at the end of the day, that’s pretty impressive.

“No one’s gone till they’re gone”.
Fear the Walking Dead.

I find this idea of “becoming’ endlessly fascinating. And I always wonder how “being” applies to love.

I want to know, realize, and become everything I possibly can. I want to see, really see, who I am. I want to be the best version of myself. Mostly, though, I want to help guide my son’s childhood with as enlightened a hand as possible. I want to know I did my best to help him walk a path where he makes better choices in his defining years than perhaps I did. At least less desperate choices.

I live by gut and heart…and then the brain. I love my passion and my drive, I’m OK making my way through the heart first. That being said, I was smart enough to marry a computer developer and inventor who lives by data. Also, Buddha’s diagnosis has proven impossible to survive without data and logic So, luckily, I have also come to appreciate, if not love, data.

I can be taught.

This sentence, I love data, if you knew me when, is a complete juxtaposition of who I was or wanted to be many years ago. But there it is. Life and experience that lead to a choice where I am now an avid gawker of data. (Just for the record, I don’t have a spreadsheet or anything. I write I think, I reflect. Some systems just don’t need to change.)

With new wisdom, experience, love and forgiveness, fault and failure I use this data not only to understand myself but how I define love. Because to me, it all boils down to love. How I love myself determines how I love others. The better I love others the better I love myself. Round and round it goes until purpose, contribution, peace, and happiness all collide. At least that’s my theory.

I want love to be what defines me. Big love.

Collecting four decades of data on my personality, partner choices, jobs, achievements, and relationships I found some interesting trends. Trends that help me understand what love means to me and how to love better!

Here are my 10 most common trends based on this data.

1. I am loyal to a fault
2. I crave affection and soothing in atypical amounts. Meaning I need more than a lot of love to make up for love taken as a child.
3. Justice is subjective unless you’re cruel to others. Then your just an asshole.
4. I am an addict, therefore, until my 40’s, my life was seen in stark black and white.
5. I want to save the world from loneliness and unworthiness. I want to be saved from loneliness and unworthiness.
6. I believe in hard work and purpose. The search for the meaning of life.
7. I am a good leader, not a great employee.
8. I believe I am good enough for success but don’t really believe I deserve it.
9. I have judgment for people who have children that aren’t willing to become what they need you to be to raise them without loneliness and unworthiness.
10. Perfectionism is a blessing and a curse but not something I’m entirely willing to give up. It’s a mark of my coding.
11. If you hurt me, you are dead to me…forever. Without even a goodbye. You are erased.

And here lies the rub. Number 11: If you hurt me, you are dead to me…forever.

“Should I stay or should I go?” Most likely, I will go.

Not very enlightened.

My subconscious definition of love is equal to abandonment or enmeshment. So, I believe that if you love me, you will leave me or assimilate me. In attempts to hold my own boundaries, to be myself, I leave people as fast as I fall in love with them. At least I used to.

I am learning that’s it’s allowed, even right, to redefine love as we go along defining ourselves. I didn’t believe that as a child and think it’s why I’m happier now. I have given myself permission, more and more each year, to chose love that works for me rather than let love just happen to me.

If you hurt me enough, you will be dead to me. But if you keep trying to communicate, to understand me as I try to understand you, I won’t run anymore. I will stick it out.

Your path isn’t mine to decide. You have the choice. I don’t want to run. I don’t want to be a runner. I just want to know I’m worth more than tolerating abuse. I want a big love that’s real love.

I’m not entirely healed so if you love me, please don’t fuck with me. I will go and that will be that.

I want to choose to stay instead of go. I want to see who I can be, how much better I can love when I stay instead of go.

 

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TIMERS

As I introduce more positive behavior tools I want to stress the importance of a TIMER. Next to laminating and using the word “flexible”, a timer is something I use all the time. And I don’t think I can stress the word all enough. I use a timer with Buddha when he needs to complete tasks like homework, reading, doing dishes or even when he needs to shower. I find timers are effective for four main reasons:

  • It keeps your child on task– When a child is given a task with no time frame they usually slack off or forget about it. Having a timer keeps them going because they want to finish the task before they hear that beep.
  • It requires less nagging and reminding– Instead of constantly reminding your kids to finish a task you want them to do, all you have to say is “You have 2 minutes left”
  • It helps with independence– The main goal for my students is independence. I want them to be able to complete tasks on their own from homework to brushing their teeth. Once you use a timer enough, you can ask your children to use it on their own. You’ll be surprised at how much they can get done!
  • It’s fun- Turn using a timer into a game. Ask your kids how much time they think they need to finish a task and respond by saying “Yeah? I bet you can do it in just __ minutes”.

How to use it:

  1. Introduce the timer. Explain how it will work and even model it if need be. Make it clear that different tasks will have different times.
  2. Use the timer as much as you can.
  3. Go over the time frame before beginning the activity. For example, say: “You can play outside for 10 minutes. I’m going to set the time and once it goes off you have to come in”.
  4. Give reminders. Make sure to remind your kids when the timer is getting low. You don’t want to add extra stress, but it is very helpful when a child knows how much time they have left. Especially if your child has a hard time with transitions (i.e. getting out of the pool, switching from iPad to reading). A simple “Hey, there is 1 minutes left” will make all the difference.
  5. Give positive praise! When they complete a task before the timer goes off celebrate it. It’s hard to do, so give them the praise they deserve.
  6. As always, be consistent. Use the timer as much as possible and remember, once the timer goes off, that’s the end. Try not to add more time.

Here is a video of me using a timer with Buddha. I tell him the set time before he begins playing and I use reminders as the timer gets closer to the end. This task would have been near impossible 6 months ago. The transition from a fun activity to work was very difficult for Buddha, but using a timer made things so much easier.

Below are two links to timers that work great with kids. The first is a basic timer, while the second is more visual.

Note- Your phone or watch can be just as effective, but it’s better to use a visual clock with your child first before moving onto a timer that only you can see.

Timer 1:

 

 

Timer 2:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I Love You…Me. Love Part II

I have known love, faked love, been confused by love, made love up, forced love, run from love, and controlled-well tried to control-love. I have watched love morph and seen love grow. I have watched it die. I have been hurt by love, been healed by love, discovered parts of myself through love, been stranded by love, driven to love and driven by love. I have been abandoned by love.

I have loved and been loved.

I have searched endlessly for love, for connection. And I have loved outwardly on every level in every way.

I do not love myself.

I know that my Odyssey, as cliche as it is, is the search for true love. My battles have been fought through attaching myself to outward love as a means to find inner acceptance; true, compassionate love for myself. And I have to, at least, recognize that I am a brave and valiant fighter, determined to succeed in creating love or die trying. But I do wonder if maybe I’ve been fighting the wrong battles, creating demons instead of following my heart. Have I been fighting myself as a means to love myself? Have I missed that love is grace and not earned through punishment, but granted by the miracle that we’re here at all?

Either way, I have Don Quixoted my way through life long enough. As romantic as it is, I’m tired. So, I think I may, for once, try the path of least resistance. It goes against my very being, but insanity, as they say, is repeating behavior and expecting a different result. I may be stubborn and have dabbled in crazy, but I like to think I’m not hopeless. I’d like to think I can be taught to try something new, not just try again.

I don’t know how I came up with this. It’s probably the percolation of therapy and experience, knowing I can survive rock bottom, and the stability my little family gives me even through trauma. Whatever the culminating cause, one day I tried something new and it’s helping.

I confess that in my grief and fear I can be….well, judgy. The latest example of this is the frustration, borderline rage, I feel navigating the city streets. I swear to God, people, PAY ATTENTION!! It’s not that hard. Walk on the right side of the path, keep the flow of traffic going, and don’t be an ass hole. It’s not that hard.

When I first moved to Philly I loved walking through the crowds, being a part of the flow. Now? I hate it. All I see is people being idiots!

I hate that I do this. I hate the stress it causes. I hate the energy I waste on being angry. I hate how people don’t seem to care about each other.

Of course, this is just a simple projection of my inner fear and judgment. And I hate that too. So, I had to find a way to get from point A to point B without an angry anxiety attack.

I have been playing with the idea that we are all made of the same stuff. I have begun to take away the story, the narrative, and let it lie that we are all….well, stardust, I guess. That we are simply the same. I have stripped the complicated excuses away. I have always felt myself an outlier, I have never really felt apart of the “all”.  So through my life, I created a fairy tale where I was the outsider banging on the door of existence for entry. Since this basic shift in perspective, though, this acceptance that it’s not the actions that deserve love but just the insane fact that we all ended up here at all, I began a little experiment to try and ease the angst.

As I walk down the street, I now say, in my head of course, to everyone I pass, “I love you”. I don’t mean I want them to come to dinner or even that I want to be friends. I just mean, I love you. We’re both made of the same stuff and by acknowledging that I can know love. I can love you. It is not an attachment love, but a recognition.

And guess what? It works. When I stopped putting labels on love, expectations of what I needed in return, and simply met existence with awareness, I softened. At the very least I became less hateful and angry.

For most of my life love was something I needed to fill the holes. I love love, I love being loved. I love soothing and reassurance. I love touch and acceptance. But that isn’t this love. This is a new love. A softening love. A simple, easy love.

I wasn’t loving wrong, but I was loving for the wrong reasons. There are many layers of love, many ways of connecting and I am grateful for the love I’ve known. But, I was missing the most obvious, the most simple love of all. The most basic but important kind of love. I wasn’t letting in the love that comes because we are all the same. That we’re here at all and we call came from the same source. I don’t know what that source is, but I will no longer punish myself or others because I don’t. It’s OK that I don’t know the source. Because what I do know is that if I can love strangers on the street simply because they exist, I can certainly love myself.

 

 

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Love-Part I

I love love. I mean, I really love, love. It’s everything to me, always has been. It’s the driving force behind every decision, good and bad, I have ever made. Love is powerful. Love heals. Love is a tool for growth and goodness. Love is respite and breath. Love broadens and coaxes out the best in us all. Love keeps its promises.

I believe free love is real love.

I believe love is the only thing that can save us from our collective self-destructive impulses, from ourselves.

I don’t always know what it looks like, but I know when it’s right. Love is real and right when everything works out…not usually the way I envisioned, but the way it was meant to. In the end, if I can get to the end, love is always right.

I was lucky, I came into the world knowing that love is the answer. And I was luckier still because even through heartache, bullying, and betrayal, I was encouraged to let love lead. Love was always an acceptable form of currency in my life, even if it wasn’t always evenly traded.

Since my first memories, I have committed myself to love; to absorbing, sharing, and holding, even hoarding when fear takes over, as much love as possible. From every atom in my sphere, through every second of the day, until forever, love has and always will be my answer.

What I didn’t know when I took on the mantle of love as my personal life quest, at the tiny age of impressionable and trusting, was the many forms of fear, judgment, and insecurity that masks itself as love. Love is not always discernible, but real love is always right. To me, that is what it means to be human. Finding real love is sifting through the pain to the heart.

Real love, pure and unselfish, empowers and emboldens us to be our best selves. To relish in the gift that is life, to see past the pain. It is the tradeoff of form and function, of suffering.

Love is worth it. As a child abandoned by her father, a young woman with a broken heart, and a mother with a sick child, sometimes it’s all too much to bear. But I will die, hopefully not soon, remembering the love. Love is the particles I will take with me into the next iteration of my being. I have no doubt.

Yes, I am human and I hurt…easily. And as such, love is complicated and full of expectation and foggy lenses that I will need to spend every day I am granted cleaning and refining.

But love is why I get up every day. And when I can’t get up it’s because I misconceive love, or try to control it to abate my grief and fear. Love has shown me what it means to be human. Love, through every struggle, sets me free.

How do I know love? That is a question deserving of far more attention than a simple singular post. So I am going to spend the next few weeks diving into the answers to these questions: How do I know love? What does love mean to me? What is love? How has love changed for me? And others.

To get me started, here is my answer to how do I know love?

I know love as a reflection of those I love. Their open hearts, their generosity, their kindness, their affection. I know love through a filter of experiences reflected through generations of resilience, trauma, pain, and joy.

I know love from:

A mother who was saved by the unexpected fullness of the love she felt for and by her children.

A father too afraid of himself for real love, who through lack thereof, showed me what love isn’t.

A brother who was saved by the love of his mother but can’t yet admit it so is held hostage by his resentment.

A sister who is taking New York City by the balls and making it her own because she knows the love of a good man. (That’s NOT the only reason, but it’s helping. And we all deserve the love of a good “other”)

A leader who allows himself mistakes but does not tolerate ignorance.

A boyfriend who loved me for who I was and then left me for the same reason.

A boyfriend who didn’t love me even though I pretended he did.

A dog who was batshit crazy, but insanely loyal to me until our last parting.

A friend who decided early on that she knew the love her heart needed and was smart enough to not listen to the naysayers. Me.

A stepfather, mentally ill and emotionally unwilling to face his own messes. A man who gave up fighting his selfishness and turned to manipulative control instead of love.

A director who saw more in me than I ever saw in myself and gave me the opportunity, guidance, and support to trust myself and shine as bright as my light could beam. A man who let me be exactly who I was in that moment without asking for more and then trusted me enough to hold the spotlight for him.

Three nannies who were exactly the people Buddha and I needed them at exactly the right time. Three different women who saved my life and made his so so so much better through their devotion, intelligence, objectiveness, spirit, and love.

A friend who has stood by me supported me, loved me, and accepted me for over 25 years. Through every bad boyfriend, job change, crazy family moment, and my son’s diagnosis she has been there because she is my friend.

A husband who didn’t believe in happiness, who didn’t believe himself capable or deserving of love until he held his son for the first time.

A son shattering from the inside out, who doesn’t know he may be systematically dying because the love from his parents is enough…for now.

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Anxiety, Bite Me

Today was a high anxiety day. Like eleven on a scale of one-to-ten, high. It was a nail-biting, shallow breathing, jaw clenching, “danger, danger, Will Robinson”, high anxiety day. And there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

These days are fewer and farther between lately for which I am mad grateful. But the familiar panic is always hovering on the horizon of my self-awareness. Like some side mirror where things are closer than they appear, a flustered funk is usually just a periphery glance away.

On these bad days, I need a system of recovery techniques practiced and ready at my disposal if I am to make it through with any modicum of success. Just like Buddha, I have a set of tools well oiled and ready to go. These daily machinations, if you will, keep me up and moving. They decide if I leave the house and whether I can be present throughout the day. They determine whether I react with negative emotion or respond with compassionate awareness. And they decide if I end the day feeling accomplished or in a sad heap feeling like a pile of useless shit.

I breathe, I exercise, I do lemons and turtles (tricks Buddha uses where you tense and then relax your body), I call a friend, I eat some chocolate, I get out of my house, I write. Sometimes I shop. I know, not the most healthy decision, but I relent occasionally and end up with flamingo flip-flops or weird kitchen gadgets and tea towels. Not the best, but it gets me away from myself.

Lately, I have been working on deciding to make a decision that might help instead of waiting for fate to play out as I flounder in my doubt and physical pain. In my anxiety paralysis, as I like to call it. This is a pain all too real considering it comes from my head. So I try to tap into my body and help the worries settle. I use my acting exercises or my somatic experience techniques. I’m full of self-help jargon.

I don’t like to meditate in a heightened state of anxiety, which is, of course, exactly when I should meditate. But it’s too hard. It takes too much effort. I’m not very good at it, honestly. When I’m “activated” I can’t manage it and then I feel worse for my failure at being unable to help myself so I don’t even try. I’m working on building the muscle memory when I’m feeling good so I can have daily access to that tool. It’s a process. A slow one.

On the really bad days, I live in a state of fear and failure so pervasive all I can manage is to stand in the middle of my living room stranded between flight and fight. Literally, I just stand there not knowing where to go in my own house. I am frozen, wishing I was anything else but me.

There have been too many days like this. My anxiety is real. As a child, I was sensitive and reactionary, socially afraid and prone to dramatics. Now I have a label, anxiety, and I am much better for it. I am not one to shirk responsibility but it makes me feel better to know that it isn’t my fault. That I wasn’t born wrong or broken. I just have anxiety.

Although I am grateful to be able to call it out and get help from professionals, it is exacerbated by my life with a “sick kid”. So on the one hand, I am better prepared for the pitfalls but on the other, it’s an un-winnable war.

Today took me by surprise because lately, I have been rockin’ a new attitude, a soul shift, that has helped keep the anxiety monster out of my throat and gut. Not only is this great news, but it goes a step further. I am becoming aware of the moments I feel good. I am noticing and getting comfortable with feeling Ok. This is huge for me and a long time coming. I’m not doing it alone, I don’t know that I could. The amount of concentration and practice it takes to catch a subtle moment of OKness is like trying to catch a fish with no pole, no net, and no arms. But I’m starting to get the hang of it and it’s awesome. I am living again and I love it!

Just…not today. Today I have gone through and through and through my self-help steps but still can’t shake this knot of tension threatening to cut me off at the nose, or diaphragm as the case may be. Honestly, if I take one more deep breath I’m going to pass out, so today calls for the mother of all coping skills. Sitting with my anxiety. Accepting my feelings. Naming my fear and shame and allowing them room to do whatever the hell they feel like doing to me for a little while longer.

I think we’ve all heard this enough to know it’s true. At this point, it’s so ubiquitous, it’s trite, which somehow only amplifies its power. I know that to ensure a feeling doesn’t harm me, I must be able to call it out, name it, and sit with it. I must allow it space to undulate and disperse on its own time. I must see it if I am to curb it.

The caveat to this is, of course, is if we are a danger to ourselves and others and then we must call for help with a fervent hustle! We must be protected as I have to protect Buddha from not only his seizures but sometimes from himself. This is real.

I can’t give in but I can accept.

From what I’ve seen, getting to the crux of feelings goes against everything society teaches us today. It certainly goes against the way our parents were raised which can’t help but bleed into our subconscious thoughts and patterns, blindly leading behavior that negates proper emotional processing. So we run from, push down, hide, and negate any feeling we’ve learned can hurt us. Any behavior we see has put us in either emotional or physical danger. I don’t know about you, but I have a lot of these examples.

In other words, it’s way harder to sit with my feelings than it seems like it should be. I don’t want to, I forgot how or wasn’t taught, and doing so I am afraid I am weak. It all just sucks but it feels like we aren’t allowed to let it suck so it poisons us from the inside out. And until we can see it and name, it will continue to ooze its slow death.

Here’s the good news. Today I’m not great, but because of this soul shift along with surviving the last few years of hell and plenty of help, I know that this feeling won’t last forever. It may last a few hours or it may last days. It will definitely last longer than I’d like it to, but either way, it will pass. This seems like it should have been obvious to me as so far the proverbial sun has routinely come out. For whatever reason though, probably my stubborn control-freak-streak, I needed this lesson beat into me with each new stage of my life. But I’ve got it now and it’s a tool I’m grateful to have at my disposal.

So today, I will sit and observe my anxiety. I will let it be and watch to make sure it doesn’t take me down a self-destructive path. I will hate it with every breath. But I will let it be. Because I know tomorrow will be another chance to hold my child, kiss my husband, call my mom, and laugh with my sister.

Tomorrow I, hopefully, will take a free breath and start again. The sun may not come out, but it won’t go down on me either. Not today!