Tag: grounding

Welcome Home…

Published on by PositivelyUnbrokenLeave a comment

Below is the first journal piece I wrote in my friend Kate’s amazing Soul Reclamation workshop over the weekend. I was not able to give the exercises of the workshop my full focus because of the demands of my job, so I will be working through some of them over the next couple of weeks.

1097047_10200467977685525_1957719571_o

How long has it been since you’ve been here? Truly been present in this place? Too long ago, I saw you here, lingering just outside the bounds of your self. Lingering longingly, like you had a sense you still belong here.

We’ve missed you. Welcome home. It’s been a long road, and I am hoping you can stay for a while. I know what you’re going to say… life, and all that. That’s always the first excuse. But you need some time to hang out here. To reconnect and get to know us again. To be present with us.

This is a journey, and I will grant myself permission to reconnect with myself, my life, my soul. There is so much that pulls me away on a daily basis. So much that grabs my attention and sucks me out in all different directions so I can’t possibly focus and center and find my wholeness.

This journey, this workshop is about reconnection. It is about finding myself, becoming whole once again, and granting myself the time to recognize that I need attention. I cannot continue to put all of myself, my attention into outside forces if I do not focus some attention on me, on the inside, on the person who makes it happen.

So grab a pen and take a seat. Linger awhile and do the work you need to do.

Welcome home. We’ve missed you.

Soul Reclamation Workshop

Published on by PositivelyUnbrokenLeave a comment

This weekend, I will be joining my friend Kate and several others for her “Soul Reclamation Workshop.” I have written with Kate before, and I am looking forward to the opportunity to do so again this weekend. If you are not busy, or if you are looking for something to jump-start a new direction for your writing, join us! You won’t be disappointed!

 

https://wishingstone.wordpress.com/retreats-and-workshops/soul-reclamation-spring-2016/

Emotions

Published on by PositivelyUnbroken3 Comments

DSC_0174

I have always been the type of person to cry at things that I find particularly moving, movies mostly—happy, sad, it doesn’t matter. I will cry. When I was pregnant with my children, I was particularly prone to crying at any little thing. I figured it was the hormones.

This past weekend, I was driving my daughter to a sports competition two hours from home. She was in the seat beside me dozing off. Despite her presence in the passenger seat, essentially I was on this drive alone with my thoughts.

Spring has landed with full force here in New England, and the hills are fluffed with an intense range of spring greens—pale green, bright green, pinkish green, yellow green. Even some flowering trees are sprinkled in, as well. As I drove, I was struck by the beauty, and my heart was full; I started tearing up.

Wait, what? I am crying at the vibrant spring greenery on the hillsides? Who cries at that??

Admittedly, it is an emotional time. The previous night, my son went off to the prom, and we are preparing for high school graduation. The emotions that I feel are in some ways exactly what I expected, and in some ways so much more intense than I could have imagined. On any given day, I will cycle from nostalgic to proud mom to happy to sad. I will run through years’ worth of memories all the way through now and to the future.

For now, it seems, I am once again particularly prone to crying. Apparently, those times come and go. This bout will stick with me, at least through the next month. Perhaps, I will keep my sunglasses handy—a good way to hide my tearing eyes—and pray for lots of sunny days so I can wear them without question.

Then again, does anyone really care if I let my emotions show?

Surprise Memory

Published on by PositivelyUnbroken4 Comments

IMG_2158

I was cleaning a drawer today, on a crazed hunt to find matches for the socks that had become separated from their mates months ago. Sometimes, the matches reappear in a future batch of laundry, and the individual socks linger in the drawer, one buried and the other floating near the surface. Once in awhile, I am motivated enough by the mess that results from my daily “stirring” of the drawer’s contents that I take the time to sit and straighten things out.

This morning in my straightening, I came across a pair of socks that I put in the drawer for safe-keeping, a pair that I frequently forget I have saved. It is a pair of teeny tiny baby socks that I received before C was born, 18 or so years ago. Each time I come across them, they catch me by surprise. The socks are so tiny that it’s difficult to believe he actually wore them in his first months. But he did.

Each time I stumble across these socks, I am reminded how quickly time passes. I finger the soft material as I mentally measure the passage of time in the exponential growth of my children. I click through each of their stages, from infancy to now.

I see smiles and a hint of mischief in their eyes, feel the warmth of their tiny hands in mine, remember random moments like how each of them would lick soap off their hands when I washed them after supper. I can hear their little voices, their footsteps, their cries. The socks bring back images and memories of so many of the things that have happened in our lives: the funny things they said and did, the experiences we had, the life struggles we faced. All of these things we did together.

Each new rediscovery of these socks is a gift. I find the socks, Itake a walk down memory lane, and then I place them back in the drawer where I can find them again in a month, a year, or two. Perhaps when I discover these socks again in six months or a year, when C is off at college, the walk down memory lane will be even more bittersweet.

 

[Image is a photo of the socks in the hand of the child who once wore them.]

Zigs and Zags #atozchallenge

Published on by PositivelyUnbroken7 Comments

IMG_1984

Recently, I departed my parents’ home to drive to a college visit with my daughter. The road was circuitous, winding through small towns, farmland, and valleys on its way to our destination. This trip was one that I had taken many times throughout my youth and college career, though I had not traveled the road in decades.

As we zigged and zagged along, J dozed in the seat next to me. While I was confident in our journey, the landmarks had changed over the years of my absence, and buildings existed in new forms along the route. I was hit with an occasional twinge of uncertainty.

It suddenly struck me just how deeply my children trust me. When my daughter gets in the car with me, she assumes that I know where I am going. Despite the zigs and zags of our path, she is right there, believing in my ability to get us from point A to point B safely.

Fostering and maintaining such a deep and abiding trust is a huge responsibility. I hope I never lose the trust of my children as we travel life’s zigs and zags together.

Veggies and Weeds #atozchallenge

Published on by PositivelyUnbroken4 Comments

Life Lessons from the Garden:

38499_1340356472522_4942090_n

I have spent the past several years as a gardener in my town’s Community Garden. At this time of year, I am typically planning my vegetable garden. I am acquiring seeds and making sure I have the proper fencing. I am hauling out tomato cages, and sorting through tools and row markers, loading up a bucket of supplies, and planning the layout of the garden I will grow. Not to mention fretting over how I am possibly going to fit everything into my small 10 x 20 garden plot (which is actually two plots in our community garden).

I have taken many lessons from the gardening experiences I have had throughout my life. I only hope that my children have learned one or two of these lessons as we have gardened together.

Planning: If you want to get the most out of your garden, you have to plan ahead. Vegetables are not planted haphazardly. Some require rows, some hills, and some—like tomatoes—are more individual in nature.

Patience: Once you plant the seeds, it will be a week or two before you even see the tiniest shoot of green emerge from the ground. And those shoots are just the beginning. It will be much longer before you can truly enjoy the fruits of your labor.

“Personal space” varies: Just like people, plants have different space requirements. Some plants only need to be separated from their friends by a couple of inches to grow to their potential, but others need their own little patch of space to grow up and spread out and produce the best vegetables.

Focus on the good: Nurture the plants you want in your garden. Remove the weeds, insects, and rodents that are not healthy or wanted and may even be harmful. These things can grow out of control, take over and ultimately, choke out the good stuff.

Persistence: As with any relationship, a gardener must constantly work at gardening. One day, you may spend hours in the garden weeding, and two days later, the weeds will have taken hold, once again, as the prominent greenery. Constant care and attention are required.

Things don’t always turn out the way you planned: There are so many variables that factor into a successful garden. Depending on the weather, the forces of nature, the local fauna, you may not reap what you think you have sown. One season might produce smaller than normal tomatoes. One season might produce a bumper crop of squash bugs—which means no squash/pumpkins/watermelon. But each season brings surprises. There maybe disappointments, but there will likely be pleasant surprises, as well.

Self-sufficiency: Growing a garden demands a great deal of attention, but it also demonstrates the amazing human potential to feed oneself using the resources of nature. And if your crop is big enough, you can preserve some of your harvest (by freezing or canning) for the coming winter.

Satisfaction: After a busy year of planting, watering, nurturing, weeding, and chasing vermin out of the garden, you can relish the satisfaction of having grown your own food. And there is nothing better than garden fresh veggies picked within the hour. Yes, vegetables taste just a bit better when you have grown them yourself.

This year, I will take a hiatus from my garden for a number of reasons. I will miss the daily reminders of these simple life lessons. But perhaps next year, I will choose to garden once again.

Ultimate Optimism #atozchallenge

Published on by PositivelyUnbroken4 Comments

DSC_1051

As I make my way through life, I have been collecting nuggets that I carry with me like badges. These are things I seldom whip out and flash around; instead, they are personal, trophies won through the experiences I have gone through—the struggles, the pain, the joys, and the triumphs.

One of the most useful nuggets I have acquired is ultimate optimism. Really more of an outlook on life—an approach to life, if you will—than a trophy or badge, I have had optimism since I was just a tyke. Maybe eight or ten. In fact, the only way I would have made it through some of my trials and tribulations is to hold onto the firm belief that things are going to get better.

When I am working with students or counseling my children, I will often refer to current challenges as “a bump in the road.” In the grand scheme of things, one day, as you look back on a situation from a different perspective, you will find that the trials, they really were just passing moments in time.

And at that point, when you look back on all you have been through, you will realize how strong you have become. And hopefully, you will realize that you, too, have the tool of ultimate optimism that you can draw on.

Because the truth is, things are going to get better.

Self-care, Sleep, and Single Parenting #atozchallenge

Published on by PositivelyUnbroken1 Comment

IMG_1857

When one of my coworkers left work on Friday, she said, “Have a good weekend. Be sure to do something for yourself this weekend.”

Yeah right, I thought, mentally running through the lengthy list of things that would consume my time in the two days before I returned to work.

“It’s important to take care of yourself,” she continued. “If you don’t, you won’t have anything left to give others.”

I know she is right. But for single parents, self-care is a luxury that is too often pushed to the back burner. For me, self-reflection takes place in the car on the way to and from work, and sleep…? Well, there is never enough of that.

But her comment did give me pause. Maybe—just maybe—I can figure out how to shake up my priorities so I move “self-care” a step or two up from the bottom of the list.

Challenges #atozchallenge

Published on by PositivelyUnbroken3 Comments

DSC_0443

Years ago, when I was facing a difficult time far from my family and support system, a minister said to me, “Bloom where you are planted.”

In fact, we all face our own unique challenges, and oftentimes, we forget that. We snap at the cashier at the grocery store who is moving too slowly because she has just returned to work after surgery. We honk at the teenager stalled at the intersection in front of us because we don’t realize he hasn’t quite adjusted driving a car with a manual transmission.  We sometimes get so caught up in our own lives that we forget others are dealing with their own struggles.

On my way to work this morning, I had to make a stop at the grocery store. Of course, I was running late. And it was snowing. I picked up the three items I needed, and I found myself debating which too-long check-out line to pick. Did I mention it was snowing? Because of the weather, the early morning shopping crowd was larger than usual.

I chose a place in the express lane. At one of the check-out counters, an older, somewhat disheveled man was loudly conversing with the cashier. He wasn’t angry, exactly, but he might have seemed so to a passing observer. He was questioning the charges. Each and every one. And as he did so, he was holding up the line.

I turned to survey the shoppers in my line, and I flashed an amused smile at the man directly behind me. He smiled back. “What do you think he was when he was younger?” he asked me.

“Hmm. That’s a tough one,” I responded, turning back to the man. I observed his gesticulation as he opened his wallet and displayed the contents (or lack thereof) to the cashier. She nodded and talked in a manner that was soothing but authoritative.

“School teacher?” he asked.

“No,” I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

“College professor?” he asked.

“That’s possible,” I responded. “Absent-minded type.”

“Sculptor!” he said, this time definitively.

“Yes! I think that’s it!” Truly, this man could have been just about anything.

“Guess the occupation,” the man then said to me. “It’s a new and amusing way to pass the time in line.”

“Well… that’s all well and good,” I told him. “Until someone looks at me and says, ‘I wonder what she did when she was younger.’” We both laughed.

Sometimes, the best way to handle challenge is through humor. Sometimes, the challenges we face make us stronger, and we are able to bloom more beautifully.

 

C

Balance #atozchallenge

Published on by PositivelyUnbroken2 Comments

balance-4-smallhenge-1564613

As a single mom, one of the things I struggle with most is balance. No matter how I structure my day, my self seems to get lost in the demands of raising three kids and attending to the responsibilities I have before me. There are days when I run from one commitment to another with barely a pause to breathe.

My daughter also struggles with balance. She has filled her schedule with challenging classes and demanding activities, and there is little time left to sit with her thoughts or spend time with friends.

Perhaps this is why we both always have a creative project going. She will often sit in her room and draw if she has a free block of time. I am non-discriminating in my creativity. I turn to writing or painting or playing with wire and beads. For me, at least, I know that if I can maintain creative energy, I will feel as though I am attending to my own needs, regardless of how unbalanced my life may be.