Category Archives: Emotional Health

Emotional Health, Uncategorized

Happy Easter

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Happy Easter from the beach nearest my condo. It is only four miles from where I sleep, but I have to drive in the car, cross a state line and go through a fee station to get here. I am lying on my beach towel, conducting a little self-care, taking a mini R&R, and thinking Easter thoughts. Perhaps I’ll just rest and relax here until Someone brings me grilled fish and little loaves of bread, breaks the bread and offers it to me saying, “Take. Eat.” Doesn’t that sound like a wonderful Easter Sunday brunch? Wouldn’t that make a believer out of you? But for now, I have the balm of the wet sand and sunshine, the smell of the water, and I will try to relax. I will not check my cell phone – which doesn’t have a signal out here anyway-to see if someone at the office needs me. I will spend an hour or two in sacred silence. I will walk away spiritually renewed, ready to speak truth, live in peace. I will know myself a little better and consequently be able to better love and understand those around me.

DSCN5804Beachlegs

Emotional Health

Take Me To Church

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It is Sunday morning as I write this – For many, a traditional day of gathering together in brick and mortar buildings for worship. A time for soul searching, spiritual refreshment. Others like to worship in mountain cathedrals, commune with the great outdoors. Still others find peace in the wilderness.

“If the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self.” Terry Tempest Williams

I hope you did something deeply spiritual today, something sacred. May the peace linger with you.

Character, Emotional Health, Uncategorized

Hiking with The Phantom of the Opera

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“I love to go a wandering, along the mountain path; and as I go, I love to sing, my knapsack on my back.” Who hasn’t chortled that song at the top of their lungs whilst trekking with a group of young people? Though I have grown older, I am nothing if not a happy wanderer.

So often the things we love most to do in life dovetail. Hiking and Music. That’s the perfect combination for me. Hiking. Writing about it. Writing a musical about it. Even better.

Nowadays I don’t often sing while hiking. Silence is better in the great outdoors. I embrace it. I think better in solitude. But there are times a tune whistled or hummed is just the right thing to get you through a narrow passage, barren stretch, or energize you for extra effort.

I have learned something about hiking along the Colorado River or its tributary canyons: There be willows – sometimes tamarisk – in riparian areas and sand bars. Willows and tamarisk can slap you, lash you and poke your eyes out.

Further up White Canyon from Sipapu Natural Bridge, the willows tower above my head, yet in the undergrowth, the trail is clear. The animals who regularly roam these paths are short, maybe coyotes. And there, on the wildlife path, I discovered a new way to wield my hiking pole.

Keep your hand at the level of your eye, may be a famous line from Phantom of the Opera but it’s also the latest principle I learned while putting one foot in front of the other.

Take your staff by the hilt, but still pointing down. Now salute with your fist in front of your nose, thumb on forehead, fist, pole and forearm vertical. You can now see around either side of your fist, your walking pole will part the willows from your forehead to your knees and you just might come out of the brush free of most lashes and scratches and without your eyes smarting.

Cue marching music. Let’s go a wandering, friends, with our hand at the level of our eyes

Character, Emotional Health

Humans of Hometown

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I stopped in at the grocery market on 12th Street and purchased a couple food items. It was Tuesday so the store was filled with Tuesday discount shoppers. In one checkout line four or five group home residents were lined up with an assortment of express lane items. In the lane I chose an older couple (as in, older than me) was slowly shuffling through the mechanics of buying groceries. The checker, a middle-aged high functioning special needs man, was cheerily and patiently providing customer assistance. A bottle blond and hairspray grandma a little younger than me approached with her six year old grandson. He flopped the purchases up on the belt. I reached for the divider bar and inserted it between orders, whereupon grandma said, “Oh. Sorry.” (“no problem”). And the odor of alcohol wafted on the air. Not too whiny and not too impatient, the little boy began to while away the time by singing:

Boy: Baa Baa black sheep have you any wool…”

Checker (as he begins to scan my items): Well all I have to say to that is, ‘yes sir, yes, sir three bags full.’

Grandma: ‘One for my master and dum dem dum, how’s that go? Lives down the lane.

Checker: sings the lines again and gets stuck in the same phrase.

The line has now been joined by a white female of approximately 35 in a tank top and tattoo looking like a muscle builder who needs to loose 50 pounds fast.

Grandma and Boy: Baa Baa black sheep have you any wool, yes sir, yes sir, three bags full. One for my master and one ….????

Newcomer: One for my master and one……dum de dum…lives in the lane. How does that go?

Me (having completed payment): One for my master and one for my dame and one for the little boy that lives down the lane.

Where upon the pleased cashier spins and high fives me jubilantly.

We all slept well that night.

 

 

Emotional Health, Uncategorized

Morning Matins

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It’s like morning matins, I said. And she, thinking I said morning maintenance, nodded in agreement.

The early church had some set times for daily prayers, meditations, observances. Some were referred to as matins and others as vespers.

My early years within the bounds of evangelicalism stressed the discipline of morning prayers – don’t leave home without them.

Contemporary thinking gives credence to meditation in many forms, looking inward, quieting the thoughts.

“This,” I clarified, “This morning walk in solitude, this is morning matins for me. I can’t live without it.”

I have adopted a few healthful morning rituals mentioned in Gretchen Rubin’s book, The Happiness Project (2009):

Take a drink of water before you rise

Get out of doors as soon as possible

Engage in at least 20 minutes of rigorous exercise

That morning walk or hike is beyond helpful. It is essential to a clear head and a stable emotional life. I suspect it supports good physical and spiritual health as well.

Morning Maintenance, Morning Matins

Potato, Potahto

No matter how you say it. Do it.

 

 

Emotional Health

Living the dream albeit frugally

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The life I live does not make my mother jealous at all – except that she would love to see me more often. She wasn’t jealous when I lived in the primitive cabin either.

But Dad liked it. His can-do pioneer spirit revived. He could see all the possibilities and he pitched in with a will to help make the dream come true. Mom pitched in too, went over and above, but to her it was only hard work, extra duty. “I could never live like this,” she said. No, Mom and Dad are not at all jealous of the life I now lead.

To an erstwhile spouse, the cabin was a dream-come-true. He caught it, got a grip on it and will never let go. Once upon a time, he had other dreams, outdoor dreams, naturalist dreams, travel dreams, but his grasp of possession on the cabin obliterates the vision of other possibilities. He is trapped.

I alone get to live out the rest of the dream.

My ex-husband is no longer along for the ride. Sometimes that makes me feel guilty when I enjoy the great outdoors, the rocks and trees and solitude. But it was my dream too. I got here responsibly. I worked hard. I provided for my children. So I keep putting one foot in front of the other. Solo. I probably feel guilty less often than he feels covetous.

Wilderness lovers and supporters to the max, my brother and SIL work duty-bound jobs to support themselves with a six-figure income. Their love of travel and their gifts evocative of everything Nature speak to their love of the great outdoors. Yet they are tethered to a university and an edifice; to the whim of grants and administrators.

My brother and SIL are living the dream in their way; well-planned, itineraried and funded by secure savings accounts. They wonder at me living it frugally and surviving on less than a shoestring – a thing many are not willing to do. Admittedly, I still have to find a way to pay a couple residual bills and I don’t see any overseas travel in the near future. Once in awhile that stresses me.

But most of the time I am abundantly grateful for a roof over my head at night, a vast sky and wilderness during the day, hot and cold running water, the nurture of nature’s beauty and the solitude that brings inspiration and understanding.

 

 

Emotional Health

Taking a meander through life

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How often had she said it? “I don’t like to walk for transportation. 15822841_10154008704191891_2897296190757686136_nWhen you walk to get there, you have a set goal, a deadline. There is no pondering, no exploring. You have to walk fast, be punctual.”

Granted, she usually had some direction in mind when she hiked. She was seldom without preparation and a good plan. It’s just that she reserved the right to alter her course, take a different side path, experience something new. She hiked to see new things. To think. To ponder. To assimilate new insights. To make connections between the physical world and the spiritual; the mental world and the earthy. In short, she hiked for recreation. And, in putting one foot in front of the other, she reaped all kinds of health: Physical health. Mental health. Spiritual health. Emotional health.

How like a river is the journey of life, she thought. A river meanders. Often, instead of taking the straightaway through a meadow or valley, the river pushes its boundaries ever outward toward the side, taking a longer route and then making a leisurely switchback. But, when a river gets between a rock and a hard place, where geologically the sides are slumping and closing in, it crashes forward in a cataract. Sometimes a flash flood stirs up the calm meander of the river and it pelts rocks and twigs and throws debris against rock walls. Eventually, the river punches a new hole, a shortcut through the rock wall making a natural bridge. Water flows swiftly under. Or maybe the river, growing impatient, just floods over the neck of the earth peninsula outcropping between two switchbacks and cuts a new course, a shorter route to the goal.

A good meditative meander may result in some active chipping away, some erosion, a new shortcut, maybe a dramatic change of course, less often a roller coaster ride down a cataract. Keep putting one foot in front of the other. Explore all options in your journey. Be strong like the water, and do a good deal of thoughtful meandering.

dscn5233trailercard

 

Emotional Health

The memories we lost in 2016

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Nineteen years since I have seen him, yet the face in the photos is so real I can hear his voice, remember his manners, sense his body heat emanating from the mixing board, read his language. Harvey has been dead for three years, but I didn’t find out about it until 2016, so it’s been a shock getting used to his absence these past few months. Harvey was nine years younger than me. He is not supposed to be dead and me alive. The last time I talked to him was by phone. Dallas to Denver, long distance. He was getting married, he said. Honeymooning in Colorado, he said. Did he need to rent a four-wheel drive to make it to Georgetown safely? That was 18 years ago. His eulogy said he was married for 15 years before his death. I found the video of his funeral online. I recognized several of the photos in the section titled early years – the ones taken during the brief years we worked together. Wrote music. Recorded music. Wrote musicals. Directed children’s musicals. Those years are still real to me. Moments of success and fulfillment. And that is how I found out Harvey had passed. I went looking for him via Google one night. My musical life had taken yet another U-turn, I was playing in a band, reconnecting with a musical acquaintance from 1984 and I found myself wanting to reconnect with Harvey of 1996. I left contact information on the website of the DJ service he used to run. His former business partner got back with me and broke the news. Harvey is gone. Who will validate my memories? Harvey’s widow had barely entered the scene when I exited for Colorado in 1997. She knows nothing of those years we spent as musical colleagues in shared studio space, though pictures of his individual musical successes proliferate.  2016 has been a year of loss for so many. When you lose someone, you lose a part of your memories. I am aging, increasingly losing more extended family members and high school peers. Who would have thought learning of the loss of a cowriter with whom I had lost contact would come as such a jolt? But it does. We are all intrinsically connected – especially those with whom we have made music. There is no going back. There is only forward. Treasure the music you make today. Treasure the people with whom you make music. Sing a new song every day.

 

 

Character, co-dependence, Emotional Health, Uncategorized

What would you give to be loved?

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She was single. At an adult time in life when most would assume and presume to be married. Or is that true? Many of her friends were also alone. Grown children. Estranged spouses. Sometimes more than one. In some cases, a deceased spouse. A lifetime of anticipated marriage and a dream of growing old together had certainly taken an unexpected and unwelcome turn for each of them.

Once in awhile, she and her single friends might discuss loneliness – the dream of actually finding a soul mate. Often, they iterated the good; how really nice it was to be single and independent, to arrange life without regard to the strong opinion of another. Some joined singles groups online or in person in an active bid to find a partner. One or two friends were openly desperate, chasing a string of lovers. Others quietly waited and pined.

Secure in her singleness, outwardly content, with a measure of independence, she still found herself one day in deep longing and yearning.

She was out walking (although it could have been any legitimate hobby or activity beloved by an individual; knitting, painting, golfing, yoga). Minding her own business. Steadily moving forward. Putting one foot in front of the other. She was suddenly overcome by longing and yearning. Articulating the feeling, she said, “I would give anything to be loved!” She sighed and coddled the pangs of longing for a few moments.

“Really?” asked her brain. “Have you not done this before with less than satisfactory result? Would you repeat the past? Hold on to someone who didn’t want to stay? Help someone who didn’t want your help?”

Love is not a thing you can barter and get a guaranteed return. Love cannot be enforced. It is ineffective to say, “Look how much I gave up for you! Now you are obligated to love me unconditionally.”

There is such a thing as strong, healthy self-respecting, other-respecting self- sacrificial love. There are things you give up, willingly out of your love for others. For family you love. You self-sacrifice willingly your goods, your desires, even your life to directly love someone else. But, when you give, or give up, in a bid to get that other person to love you because you so desperately need love, that is unhealthy.

So. What would you give for love? Would you give up your writing? Your music? Your goals? Your successes? For a time, yes, to care for a dearly loved one. But for life? For the whims of others?

“Love,” said wise counsel, “is not 50 / 50. It is 100% / 100%. You bring 100% of who you are into a relationship. But if you give up all you are, you no longer have 100% to give. You have nothing to give.”

She reconsidered the ancient parable of the 7 foolish and 7 wise virgins. Be wise. Be always prepared. She got that part loud and clear. For decades she was perplexed by the fact that the wise virgins did not share with the foolish – did not give up their provisions self sacrificially. And Jesus, who was telling the story, thought that was okay? Yes.

Why? Because to split their oil would, a few miles down the road, cast everyone into darkness and make all 14 of them the loser. How much better for the seven wise to hold their torches high, full of oil, and spread light on everyone – even the seven foolish. In this way the wise, the prepared multiplied their effectiveness and shared light with everyone.

“So. Be it known,” she said, “I will not again sacrifice who I am and who I am designed to be in a bid to get someone to love me enough. I will bring my 100% and shed all my light on the relationship until my oil is spent and my light extinguished.”

 

 

Character, Emotional Health, Uncategorized

What are you really worth?

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“Am I qualified for this job?” she asked as she read through the requirements. Yes. Abundantly so. Every last detail. The education. The experience. The demeanor. The personality. The work ethic. The mission. The dress code.
It seems like a lot of work, she thought. I am accustomed to work. I do not want to be idle. I like to rise to the occasion. I am analytical. I am resourceful. I can put the right people and the right programs in the right places.
Do I want this job? Perhaps that is a better question.
Enough to pursue it wholeheartedly?
Remember, we are not called to do everything we are qualified to do.
Perhaps the purpose in writing a résumé is not so much the goal of receiving a job offer. Perhaps the purpose is to remind yourself  who you are, where you have been, and just what you are capable of. Don’t just get by, aim high.
What are you really worth?