Point of Focus

Maybe I'm alone in this particular situation, but I'll put it out there and see.....

Most of my life is fabulous: I have amazingly wonderful grandchildren who I can't imagine loving more than I do. I have a job that is a dream -- it challenges me, entertains me, and allows me to interact with others. I have a partner of 26 years who has been so unbelievably steady in his loyalty to us that it shocks me. My brain is clear and quick. There are close, intimate friends who support me. I could go on and on, but you get the point...

I have one area of my life that is a thorough mess...an adult child with an addiction. Addiction is a cruel disease, one that steals what little humanity we possess. Addiction dehumanizes us to the point of constant pursuit of our basest desires....MORE, at ANY cost. We steal, lie, cheat, manipulate, etc. There are no depths to which we will not sink. Cliche, I know. But, true, nevertheless.

And, that one pinpoint area of my life eats up more of my energy, sucks the blood from my marrow, drains my literal soul. No, I'm not exaggerating. Those people whose lives have contained addiction, I imagine, will know the truth about it.

Its incredible to me when people say things like:
"You have to accept that you have no control over [them]." -- I DO accept it. It doesn't relieve my worry. I long ago learned that the only person I can control is me, and I sometimes struggle with that.

"You know what [addiction is] like." -- Yes. I do. How in the world would my intimate, personal knowledge of addiction IN ANY WAY help relieve me of concern for my child? Do people think before they speak, at all?

"Give it up to your [higher power]." -- Again, I recognize that there is a plan for everyone. I also recognize that we have free will. Our free will often doesn't take us on the travels intended by the plan. I don't know who your deity is, but I don't believe that mine intends for people to unduly suffer, debase themselves, and hurt others in pursuit of addiction. The synthesis of pharmaceutical grade drugs, by the way, was manufactured by HUMANS. No, I don't think that a higher power granted us that clever ability. No, I don't think that my Goddess intentionally punishes for (or with) diseases.

We can have a difference of opinion. Its my blog, so (of course) the opinion, here, will be mine.

I believe that my Goddess provides me with opportunities. If I'm aware and conscious and paying attention, I recognize those opportunities for what they are....paths to my intended destination. But, I can always choose NOT to see/take them. Then, my road becomes winding and difficult, in my experience.

I'm not fool, liar, or idiot. My selfdom isn't so large that I believe I have a direct line to the Divine. I don't fancy myself 'ascended master' or other ego-based lunacy. I do not believe that my Goddess speaks directly to me, nor that She pushes me in any one direction. When I call to Her for assistance, it is the Universal Energy that I seek to focus my personal intent. And, in response, I'm provided choices. Some good, some not.

But, I can return to the path, any time I choose. However, the further I get from the path, the more complicated it is to find my way back.

I teach psychology. I can quote, all day long, about why our brains are more impacted by trauma and negativity than by positive experience due to the flood of neurotransmitters released. (This is also why we're far more likely to remember nightmares that pleasant dreams.)

I read neurological research. I know all about the addictive process in the brain, what it does, what we know, and how it impacts learning, thought, and behavior.

No amount of knowledge helps to alleviate, nor shrink, that growing pinpoint area of discomfort. If you have a solution, I'm listening.

WHY do I have such a very hard time trying to prevent the singular problem area (yes, I have other 'problems' but they are of little or no consequence to me) from stealing all my attention?

Of course, the REAL question is: WHY ME? WHY THIS? WHY ANYONE? 

Addiction is a foul disease that I would venture (if we had the ability to look at true statistics) is as costly and damaging to society, and causes as many deaths as cancer. Yet, it gets nearly no attention, because our society still considers it a weakness of character or will.

WAKE UP! Please...

Happy Thanksgiving with Gratitude

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

I have a request. If you don't do it, nothing bad will happen. They are just suggestions, things that have worked beautifully for me in my own life. If you don't, my feelings won't be hurt, no tragedy will occur, you won't be cursed.

First, WATCH THIS:

Then, TRY THIS:

1. Do what is suggested in the video -- write a paragraph or two (or more) about someone who has inspired you. Then, call them and read it to them, or mail it to them, or post it as your status and tag them in it. If that person is gone, read it to someone who knew them or write a tribute to them and post it on Twitter. Be creative.

2. Please make yourself a gratitude list today. Write it down, somewhere big and clear. Then, put it somewhere where you will look at it every single day, several times a day.....like on a post-it note on your laptop screen, refrigerator door, or in your wallet. (I usually put the post-it on my cell phone screen so I have to look at it and move it every time my cell beeps.) PLEASE take it with you if you go shopping this weekend. 

3. Smile at every person you meet for the week. Say hello.

4. Look for the opportunity to help people with no benefit to you. Yes, I said that. If at all possible, the helping should be anonymous. Don't tell anyone. No one should know that you've done something nice for someone else but you. Donate some clothing to a Planet Aid box. Buy the coffee of the person behind you in line. Take some blankets to an area you know the homeless congregate. Send a gift card with a gift receipt to someone you know is struggling.

Whenever I do this, I'm smiling all day.

This morning, I woke up to find that my unruly dogs had eaten the entire loaf of homemade bread that I spent 3 hours making, last night. Am I disappointed? Yes. But, before that happened, I woke up in the arms of the same man that I've been with for 26 years, warm in a bed with blankets in a house with enough heat. After that, I made coffee that is hot & fragrant. I sipped that coffee while watching this video. I read dozens of Facebook posts from friends & family who are counting their blessings & wishing well to others.

My life is rich. Blessed be you all.

Those Little Moments

This is the first Saturday in a long time that I've had the luxury of sitting for a bit with my coffee, catching up on Facebook, and reading the news. I work Monday through Friday, and for the recent month, long 13 and 14 hour days. I'm not complaining. I love my job, but it does make the weekends quite busy. Usually, my Saturday errands began before 7 am and end late afternoon. By then, I have home chores, and a standing Saturday night commitment to get ready for and attend. No more Saturday.

Sunday, I sometimes am committed to my spiritual group. Other times, I try to fit in time with my husband, or another person to whom I owe my presence. I know that sounds a little snippy, or egotistical, but isn't it the truth?

When it comes down to it, the only thing we can truly offer another person is our time, our presence.

And, truth be told, mine is feeling a bit minimal, lately. My schedule will ease up in a few more weeks after registration wanes and the semester ends, term papers are graded and final grades submitted. Until then, I've settled into the understanding that my life will be busy and I'll need to get enough sleep to accommodate the extra and take care of myself in a kind way.

Thank goodness I've come to that!

I used to keep pushing and running and white-knuckling my way through life, burning the candle at both ends with a misguided belief that I'm invincible, immortal, and unbreakable. Huh. WRONG.

Today, I have a a little more respect for my body and its limitations. Its a miraculous thing, but it needs to be loved.

What are you doing to care for yourself, today? I'm savoring my coffee and the small moment of quiet before everyone else stirs, the house gets chaotic, and I have things to do.

I'm one of those...

Self-knowledge avails me of nothing. Yep. I said it. The human services teacher and professional. Its true, at least in my life. Awareness, alone, does nothing unless it is paired with action. I'm sure some of my colleagues will be jumping up and down, demanding that I retract the statement, but I won't.

I am a person who has difficulty with excess. Sometimes, I explain to people that I am, in fact, a true addict. In other words, if I find any activity pleasurable, I will pursue it to the ends of the earth. I will abuse it. I will make myself sick with it. No, no amount of will power will save me. No amount of singular knowledge will improve my circumstance. I believe, and the newest research seems to confirm, that there is something different about the wiring of the pleasure centers of my brain -- they are overactive, overstimulated, and they create a craving that is undeniable. No, its not about willpower. Its about chemistry, and neurology, and genetics.

You see, I actually come from a very long line of people who are as compulsive and excessive as me. They have wrought havoc in their small parts of the world, pursuing addictions (yes, that is the word for the excessive pursuit of pleasure) to the tune of disjointed families and damaged children. They've destroyed promising careers and businesses, wrecked above average brains, been imprisoned, and died prematurely. Some of them did minimal damage in their compulsive obsessions, creating morbid obesity and concurrent health issues related to that state. Some drank alcohol or smoked pot only at home, devastating the family income and relationships, but doing little damage outside the house. Most took their insanity into their communities, causing a range of injury to self and others.

I'm no different than any of them. In my pursuit of substances, I punished my family for imagined violations of my carefully crafted, anal-retentive plan to make the outside believe that we were the epitome of normalcy. I was cruel to an extent that thoroughly shames me, but hasn't entirely left me. There were jobs and houses lost, careers and educational paths abandoned, cars totaled, and so many more things. My particular brand of pleasure: numbness. Emotions overwhelm me. They can be painful and unpleasant. I don't like unpleasant sensations. Being a hedonist to the extreme, I seek pleasure. My flavors of pleasure vary and include a wide variety of experiences that some may consider painful, but pain brings numbness, too. In fact, all things in excess eventually create numb. Numb is, in my brain, the ultimate pleasure -- the complete absence of sensation. And, I can make it happen via most roads.

You can, in fact, eat until you are numb. I've proven this. I've eaten in a pattern that can be described as nothing short of a frenzy until I was blissfully empty and absent, unaware of my surroundings, or operating in such a foggy state, that my behaviors were automatic and dead. This is the state of oblivion that I desire above all else. And, the roads to this state are so many -- lust, shopping, relationships, exercise, knowledge, exhaustion, reading, fantasy, spirituality, drugs & alcohol. Oh, yes. Positive things, in excess, are not positive anymore. Restricting your diet to the point of starvation is not healthy. Exercising to the point of physical injury is clearly misguided. Reading for days, devoid of sleep or food, is specious at best. Avoiding sleep for any cause for 72 or more hours is unquestionably unsound. Working incessantly, beyond the level of reward or incentive, is truly foolish. But, I am guilty of all of these.

And, it always, always begins with the craving. Something in my brain tells me that I am in a state that is unpleasant -- boredom, anxiety, discomfort, stress -- and that tiny inkling of craving begins. Its like an itch that is in the one place that you cannot reach, cannot describe, and no amount of pretzeling your body makes it accessible.

And, it gnaws at you, like a little mouse in the corner of your belly, or the soft part of your brain. It gnaws. And, it keeps gnawing. It never sleeps. It moves and scurries and stirs and bites, and you bleed. One little mouse begets more little mice. They spread from one end of your body to the next.

Eventually, the hole becomes so large that the pain is intolerable. You can no longer bear the blood loss. You're anemic with it. Your head begins to spin. You're dizzy and unable to focus. You can think of nothing but the pain, the craving. The sensation of panic begins to spread through your nervous system as if you were confronted by a hungry lion.

And, with the panic, comes the shame. You should be able to manage this. You should be stronger. You're throwing all of your hard work away. How dare you squander what you have? Why would you do this, again? And, all the while, the little mice chew and chew and chew and chew until the pressure becomes so unmanageable that you do the thing you know will make it go away.

You do it and do it and do it until bliss comes and goes and emptiness follows. And, there you sit, devoid of any human expression. And, you are happy, for about a moment.

Then, the shame comes, anew. And it spreads. And the little mouse wakes up, where its hidden in its little corner.

And, the whole thing begins again.

The Valuing of Human Experience

I was sitting in a day-long training on Friday and a concept that had been floating around the periphery of my brain suddenly fell into clear relief. But, let me go back a bit:

The training was for lay persons on how to recognize and respond to suicidal ideation, depression, anxiety, and (in a very limited way) addiction. I expected to be thoroughly bored, having been trained and educated countless times on these same basic concepts; and teaching most of them in my own classroom.

Instead, I was quite engaged. The two gentlemen who conducted the training were dynamic and interesting speakers.** But, more than that, as a connected concept often does, it triggered some existing ideas to gather and gel.

It has always been my belief that, as a culture, Americans have an odd way of looking at things --

• if you cry, you're weak
• it is your responsibility to pull yourself up 'by the bootstraps' and move forward
• people with addiction, anxiety, or depression CHOOSE to be that way; if they just got up and DID something, they'd be fine, because its not really a disease
• the strong survive while the weak do (and should) perish
• people who are victims are somehow responsible for their victimization

I inwardly cringe every time I see those awful Facebook memes that tell you to just 'keep going' as if your experience means nothing. They say that you must become a 'survivor' instead of a 'victim,' 'powerful' instead of 'empowered.' Why? In our society, we blame the victim and glamorize the perpetrator. It is more important to be powerful than to be kind. Again, I ask why?

And, I realized, in a short moment that this has all come about because we grossly devalue our present, human experience. We're taught to live so thoroughly in the world of the future, planning for and moving toward imagined and yet unimagined goals, always ten (or two hundred) steps ahead; that we've become completely detached from our own experience. When we're victimized, injured, or otherwise hurt, we race to call ourselves 'survivors' by transcending this experience, distracting ourselves, and disregarding it. Why? 

EVERY experience forms us as people. We aren't formed only by those experiences by which we were successful, or those which are pleasurable. Research does, in fact, indicate that we are more highly impacted by those things that are challenging. Our society, as a course of its future-orientation, has created a world in which any and all life transitions are seen as merely inconsequential steps on the rung of the ladder which always climbs into the sky, beyond our sight, until the day of our death. 

Don't misunderstand. In no way do I suggest that we have no goals in life. Goals give us direction and allow us to determine our current behavior and path. Goals can be good. But, we aren't all goals. Our conscious cannot constantly live in the future and allow us to be healthy and well. When we devalue our current experience, several things happen:

• we will repeat the same errors because we've failed to learn the lessons associated with them, therefore, plunging headlong into the abyss, time and time again. (If you disagree with me on this, I'll show you any person who cannot maintain a job, relationship, etc...If we look closely, there will be common patterns and themes in their lives that impact them, repeatedly, and unconsciously, always undermining their progress without their awareness.)
• we will have a consistent sense of discontent, discomfort, and inferiority, because we've not taken the time to celebrate and grieve the transitional parts of life -- all transitions hold both positive and negative aspects which deserve equal attention
• as a society, we will behave in ways that demonstrate a lack of compassion, because our belief is that we must move continually forward without rest; that those who do rest are weak, foolish, or without value and should be left behind, labeled as 'lazy' and undeserving
• we will glamorize aspects of human behavior that we also punish (ie: violence, drug dealing, sexual deviance, etc.)

These things are so prevalent in our society and cultural norms that I'm saddened by them. I advocate for the following alternative:

• celebrate and grieve all life transitions, no matter how small. Take note of the inherent difficulty in moving from one expectation to the next. Find a circle of people to do this with you. There are lovely, but relatively unknown, movements in society who are trying to recapture this. The Red Tent leaps to mind. 
• try to be 'in the moment' whenever possible. Honor and recognize your own experience in this life. You are valuable. Feel what is. Allow yourself permission to process what is happening. 
• Educate and explain to others what you are aiming to do, so that they may critically consider this approach. 

But, most of all, live in a way that allows you to feel whole, complete, and present. Isn't that the point of it all? I will not race for the future so that my present is nothing but a blur. I will live where I am, a resident of my own mind, body, emotion, and soul, in the moment in which I stand. 

Blessed Be. 

**Please check out their organization. It is a worthy and valuable cause. If you need a seminar done on any of their topics, I would recommend them. 

Sea Hag

Mythos and the elements have been extremely heavy on my mind, lately. And, I've only really wanted to paint aspects of the elements which exist in popular myth. The canvas, this time, gathers the Sea Hag...

Sea Hag stories range from the Old World to the New...New Haven, CT, in fact, has quite a local history of their own sea hag. For them, the hag is a spectre that draws unsuspecting sailors to their death, pretending to be a damsel in distress upon the rocks. When the ships draw in to save her, they perish upon the jetty. 

The Celtic deity, the Morrighan, was said to appear as a crone, washing clothes in the river. The clothes she was washing would be those of the soldier about to die in battle. 

The Welsh had the Muilerteach, or the water hag. She was, in this persona, the goddess of the sea, but -- more so -- a personification of the sea, itself. Scottish mariners were quite frightened of her and often made sacrifices of their catch as tribute. 

And, of course, we know the stories of the Greek Sirens -- creatures with beautiful voices, who appeared to be stunning women, but were actually man-eating beasts. 

And, how could we leave out the Mermaid -- half fish, half woman. The sea creature who is often portrayed in art as beautiful and pale skinned. Unlikely. We all know what happens to our fingers and toes when we stay in the bath too long! I suspect the mermaid would be far more like a translucent ethereal being than a woman, but who am I to guess?

What does all of this tell me about my pondering and swiping of the brush on the canvas -- another side to water has become awakened for me. The dangerous side. The deadly side. The ancient side. Water holds the last truly unexplored place on our planet in its depths. The utter truth is that we do not know what it hides in the places we cannot go. 

The femme fatale lives in the depths -- a woman untamed, purely instinctual, entirely elemental, incredibly self-sustaining, dangerous, capable -- a FORCE of nature. This is what the Sea Hag represents for me. This beautiful, fearsome creature that does as she wills, with no regard. She is a part of me.

My Own Misery

Its a sobering moment to realize:

As an adult (without exception), every single time I experienced misery in my life, it was the result of a very few situations:

1. My own making (IE: I would do things that inadvertently set up difficult situations for myself. Common cliches: Slashing Peter to benefit Paul. I don't have a choice.). For instance, I would sabotage opportunities. When I had a new job, I would select unreliable people to babysit, ensuring that I'd miss time from work. Before people start doing that thing, "Well I only have so many options" blah, blah -- that's just not true. I had unlimited options. I wanted to not pay the money for a licensed day care, so I paid other people (family members, really) to watch the kids. I made my own problems through my choices. 

2. The inability to get out of my own way (IE: Doing the same things that have never brought desired results, but continuing to do them anyway. Lots of colloquialisms apply here: Its the way I've ALWAYS done it. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Can't see the forest for the trees.). I don't keep it a secret that I'm a person in recovery. I cannot begin to tell you how many times I drank too much at a work function, the night before an important event, or to manage anxiety over some perceived deficit. 

3. My own perceptions (IE: Blaming people, circumstances, or anything outside of myself for my experience. Applicable platitude: Its all YOUR fault. The whole world's against me. I've got no luck.). Every time that I've thrown my hands up in the air in my life and cried about not being able to catch a break, it was my own perceptions that created obstacles. I was having a bad day because the coffee maker was broken, the alarm clock didn't go off, or that jerk cut me off on the way to work. 

Fortunately, I know (today) that none of these things are valid. I make every choice in my life. If I make a bad one, I'm responsible for the results and consequences. If I recognize that my way isn't the only way, I can seek other's advice and counsel when I can't see my way out of a situation, or I cannot come up with a solution. If I practice personal accountability, I know that I'm responsible for my own perceptions, values, feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. I can CHOOSE how I want to react in every circumstance. Sometimes, things break or don't work, and other people do things that affect me. I can always choose how and whether I internalize that event. Therefore, I can decide how I allow it to affect me. 

I am no victim. I am a powerful being who can direct my own life. Sometimes, things will happen TO me; but, how I respond is 100% my decision.