So long, suckah!

So, last year on this very day, I wrote a note to 2013 and told that year in no uncertain terms, how much it sucked. I kicked it in the ass and said good riddance; I even went on to say that I was sure that 2014 was gonna make me forget all about the challenges of 2013. I was right. 2014 was even worse.

I won’t go into all of the tribulations of the past year, other than to say that losing my dad in April pretty much set the tone. What I will say is that I feel as if the last 18 months have been my personal ‘dark night of the soul’ that is required of all humans. Could it get worse? Of course and at some point, it probably will. Far in the future, if I have anything to say about it…which I probably don’t. And that brings me to the year’s large lesson.

Control: we have none. Planning: kind of a joke. Loss: inevitable. Time: dampens the pain and gives us perspective.

“This too shall pass” is such a cliché, but it’s such a useful one. Time is like a power wash. If we can just get through another hour, another day, another week and if we watch and listen and pay attention, that time also gives us the space to see events in our lives with more clarity. For me, clarity is comfort.

I was listening to my latest guru Caroline Myss recently and one of her main lessons is that we will NEVER know why things happen the way that they do. We just won’t and wasting our time digging through our psychic and emotional archives for “why” is a waste of time. Life truly is unknowable and if you relax into that, peace will find you.

So, I bid farewell to the hardest year of my life (so far). I can look back and see a cross country move, leaving friends and comfort behind, losing my soul mate dog, losing my dad, navigating a new environment, trying to help my 94 year-old mother accept her ‘new normal’ and recently retiring from a 30+ year radio career. That’s a lot to pack into a year and a half, but it has passed.

I’ve emerged from my dark night and though I’m still a little banged up, I’m ready for 2015. I’ve come to the conclusion that my mom is in the right facility and she’s safe and comfortable. I’m completely at peace with leaving my job. I am ready to take more time to explore our new home and community. I’m going to get back into my health and wellness routine. We are heading back to my beloved Rocky Mountains for a ski trip in about a month and then spring will come, as it always does.

The biggest thing that I’ve taken away from this period is that I am now more in tune with other’s losses. I am a more compassionate and empathetic person and I’m able to express that now. In 2014, 9 of my friends lost their dads and I know that so many more humans suffered as well. The world has been a brutal, chaotic place for the past year.

Peace begins in each of us and in the choices that we make.

Peace be with you and in you. Here’s to a new year and a Detroit Lions play-off win. For my dad.

The winter of my discontent…

This has been a particularly brutal winter and seeing as how it’s our first in this location, we didn’t quite know what to expect.

We figured that since we’d spent the last 14 years in the foothills and mountains of Colorado, there was nothing that northern Michigan could throw at us that we couldn’t handle.

We didn’t anticipate the worst winter in many years; a potential record-setter for misery.   Looks like we’re getting a taste of the old ‘worst case scenario’ right off the bat.

So, as I was looking out at what seems like the 1000^th day in a row of snow, I started imagining what it would be like if I could strap into a time machine.  And the question arose:  would I go forward…or backward?

I’ve never been a live-in-the-past, go backward kind of person.  Oh, I have fond memories and I do admit that I’ve found myself longing to return to the college dorm for a few months of irresponsible nonsense, but overall, I tend to look ahead.

But, ‘ahead’ seems murkier than usual.  I’m not sure if it’s age or my still weakened mojo or some regrets that are leaking like a puddle, under my door of confidence.  It could be the weather and the cabin fever that my husband and I are suffering from.  Or maybe the lack of sunlight, which doesn’t seem like such a big deal until you experience it.

I guess what I’m admitting to is a desire to go back in time.  A year, two years…15 years, even.  There are things that I wish I could change or re-think or just do-over.  It’s entirely non-productive, but I can’t quite shake it.

The thing is, there is no way of knowing if a different decision or path or reaction would have resulted in a better outcome.  As one of my favorite Taoist proverbs teaches us, “Who’s to say what’s right or wrong; who’s to say what’s good or bad?”  We are faced with choices, every second of every day and we make them.  Period.  But still…what if, right?

So, let’s remember that we can only deal with right now; with this particular moment.  I can count on spring arriving sometime in the next few months.  Followed by summer, with its glorious warmth and sun and water.  The things we moved here for.

Then autumn and harvest arrive, bringing beauty so intense that you want to cry every time you crest a hill or turn a corner.  Then, winter returns and it’s time to go inside; time to re-new and reassess and nest and hunker down.  We need this time to re-connect with ourselves, for better or for worse.

After my dog Chili died this past October, a friend came over with a whole box full of spring bulbs to plant on her grave.  I was so grateful, but in so much pain, that I sleep-walked through the process.  We planted and covered the bulbs, as I had covered her little body and soul.  My friend could look ahead when I could not.

Those bulbs are resting under nearly 3 feet of snow, but in a few months, they will emerge in stages.  Crocus first, followed by daffodils and tulips.  A reminder that no matter how badly we want to go back, we can’t.  There is a rhythm and a familiar cycle, but it’s always propelling us forward and onward.

And so, here I am.  Right in the middle of the season that forces us to go inward; to rest and renew and struggle and squirm and wait.  So, there is the lesson.  Don’t struggle; don’t wait.  No past, no future, just now.  Ugh…so hard.

That first crocus will be a welcome sight and a reminder that we need periods of rest and death and destruction, in order for the new blooms to appear.  After this particular winter, I should sprout something magnificent when the time is right.

It’s like gum on your shoe….

We’ve been in our new home in Michigan for about 6 weeks now and I love it. Love it.  Everything about it.

It’s weird because I dreaded leaving our house in Colorado.  I adored that house and even though I was ready to move to our new life, I was clinging to that house right up until the very last minute.  In fact, as I did my final walk-through, I sat down on the toilet in our master bath and bawled my eyes out.

Now that it’s in the rear view mirror, I have some thoughts on that whole clinging thing.  It’s a beautiful house.  We designed it from the ground up.  We made every decision right down to the drip edge and the door knobs.  It was mine.  It represented my success.  A beautiful custom-built, mountain home in a beautiful setting, close to a ski resort.  My American dream.  Hard to let go of that kind of symbol.

The funny thing is, I haven’t thought about that house once in the last 6 weeks.  Haven’t missed it for one second.  How can that be, when I was in such pain when I had to leave it?

Here’s what it teaches me:  letting go is the key to happiness.  Think of all of the stuff that we cling to; that we can’t imagine giving up or leaving or changing.  The stuff we hold onto is endless.  It’s hard to imagine a life without booze/job/lover/house/destructive and unhealthy habits/income/lifestyle/church/TV and the list goes on and on.

It’s like walking around with something clinging to the bottom of your shoe.  That irritating feeling when you get gum on your shoe and it sort of sticks with every other step.  You’re constantly looking down, scuffing along, trying to get that goddamned gum OFF YOUR SHOE.  That’s how clinging feels.  Distracting, annoying, nagging, sticky.

Make the change, walk away, scrape that shit off your shoe and guess what?  Life goes on. Every time I’ve made a major change in my life, it was scary and overwhelming and produced “what the hell am I thinking” nightmares, but it’s always turned out fine.  No, it’s turned out great.  I’ve grown and learned and adapted and morphed and evolved.  And I always ask myself, “What took so long?”.

Change isn’t all that scary.  It’s the thought and the planning and the worrying about change that creeps us out.  Think about something that you knew you COULD NOT LIVE WITHOUT and now you do.  It could be a person or a material possession or a home or a job or an addiction.  You can live without it.  In fact, you will thrive.  You will grow.

If you’re in a situation where you’re squatting between what is and what will be, project 6 months forward and envision your life.  You’ll see that all of this is behind you and you’re in your new place on your new path.  Feel good?

It is good. You’ll love it. Change isn’t scary.  Change is life.

Older…wiser…YES!

We’ve been going through a bit of a transition in our house regarding our plans for the future and it’s required a lot of physical, emotional and psychic energy over the past month or so.  It’s taken me a while to process my feelings about how life will look going forward; to stare my fears and anxiety in the face in order to grow and evolve.  We all come to forks in the road where we need to choose a path. I’m working on doing that from a place of wisdom, rather than fear; a place of growth, rather than stagnation.

I was corresponding with someone that I consider a mentor about some of the choices I’ve been struggling with and he told me that the problem with getting older is that sometimes we make choices based on fear; fear of shaking the status quo, fear of losing what we’ve worked so hard to accomplish and accumulate, fear of making the wrong choice.  He reminded me that I’ve always been one to make bold choices and now is certainly not the time to suddenly start making decisions based on fear of the unknown.

Because, let’s be honest:  life IS unknown.  No matter how much planning and scheming and plotting we do, it’s a crapshoot.  Giving into fear makes no sense because in the end, we all get whipsawed by fate.  Adaptation is a better guiding principle.

I have a dog tag necklace that has one word on it: Fearless.  I wear it to remind myself to speak, act and live a fearless life; I’m good with that.  As I get older, I’m trying to embrace that concept more and more. I know way more now than I did 20, or even 5 years ago and I’m emboldened by that.  It’s a shame that we don’t value and revere the wisdom that our elders can pass along.

As a kid, I would cringe and shut my ears every time my mother uttered the words “I’m older and wiser than you”. In fact, I ignored the sage advice that usually followed that statement for a very long time, much to my detriment.  I’m finally starting to understand the whole ‘older and wiser’ concept because it’s true.  I’m morphing from being irritated by older people AND younger people, into reverence for the old and their life experiences and amusement at the young and unwise.  I know what’s it’s like to be young and stupid and I can’t wait to be older and wiser.  Acceptance, adaptation, fearlessness; those are my new buzzwords.

I’m reading a book by Richard Rohr, called “Falling Upward: A Spirituality For theTwo Halves of Life” and his premise is that the first half of our lives is all about building our container, while the second half is for filling it up.  We work hard to build a life, a career, a family and we end up making a lot of sacrifices that can sap our souls.  The key is to get to the place where we can finally enjoy and fill that ‘container’ that we’ve spent so much time and energy creating.

I’ve built my container; it felt a bit crowded with extraneous stuff, so I’ve spent the past few months purging it.  Much of it has been a physical purge of possessions and junk, but it’s been equally about purging expectations, both mine and others.  I’m purging the past to make room for the future.  My container was full of a few too many moldy leftovers.  Things I was afraid to throw away.  Not any more.

Acceptance.  Adaptation.  Fearless.  Moving forward.