Today

Today

I will sit with
  Today.

I will be present with
   Today.

I will notice all of
   Today.

I will listen to
   Today.

I will not hurry through
   Today.

I will breathe with
   Today.

I will live with
   Today.

I will create with
   Today.

I will love with
   Today.

Today.

Full Heart, Deep Breaths

I'm sitting on the couch listening to my daughter learn a new song on the piano.  Life doesn't get much better than this.  I realized it's been a little over a month since I last wrote on my blog.  It's fascinating to me how life can simultaneously speed by and drag all at the same time. 

This same child recently realized that she will be able to graduate a year early from high school and she is beyond thrilled at this option.  It's like her sentence has been reduced from three years to two, and suddenly there is a light at the end of the dark tunnel that is high school.  :)

I'm thrilled for her and wonderfully optimistic about her future.  She has the next four years all planned out and she's excited and happy about her future prospects.  Makes this momma's heart happy to see her baby girl feeling so hopeful and alive with anticipation for her future life.

There have been many times over the past few years when I struggled to see even a glimpse of this happiness, but today my heart is light and my breathing is deep.  It feels wonderful, and I will not take it for granted.  If I've learned anything from my mindfulness practice, I've learned to be present.  This was not always something I felt like doing.  Sitting with all the difficult emotions over the last few years and not running or escaping often took monumental effort.

But today, I sit with joy, peace, happiness, and light.  I'll take it. 

I'm not gonna worry about how long it will last, or what could happen to change these feelings.  I'm not the worrying type.  The anxiety I struggle with at times has not reared it's ugly head in a while and for that I'm extremely grateful.

Today I sit with music, cool fall weather, a snuggly cat, a warm cup of coffee, a couple of creative projects underway, a new friendship, a cozy blanket, long shadows from a southern sun, and joy.

Teen Depression: Find Your Tools

The post below was written by my middle daughter. She is a fifteen. She wrote this for a high school class. I'm sharing it in my blog with her permission. She read it to me after she had written it and asked if she should share it with the class or write something else. I told her she should definitely turn it in. Depression and mental health is an extremely important topic and one that, especially among teens, does not get enough attention.

I am more proud than words can express when I see all the struggles that my baby has dealt with and the courage it took for her to keep struggling and find her way through.

She's got a bigger tool box at fifteen than I had at forty!

Find Your Tools

Dark shades of gray, and bleak, dull, green were everywhere I looked. Numbness existed in every part of my body, and a dazed and somewhat detached sense lay in my brain. There was a lack of emotions, neither positive nor negative, regardless of the events occurring around me. What am I doing? Where am I going? Questions about my existence and what point it could possibly have came and went, and with them the pull to continue living. Feeling this way- well, more like practically not feeling anything at all- for the rest of my life seemed pointlessly tedious.

I lived with the dull pain and the absence of excitement for life for what felt like centuries. Nothing anybody said would ever make it better. The same advice flooded into my ears until it felt like the words, “it’s going to be okay,” were flowing through my veins. These words were intended to give me hope, but they continually left me laying in bed, staring at the ceiling, feeling forlorn and beyond recall. I wouldn’t say ‘sad’ is an accurate description of these sensations. With sadness comes tears, but with this sentiment I was unceasingly experiencing, tears never came. Instead, everything was drearily monotonous, as if I was watching my life through a dull filter, in which the colors consisted only of bleak shades of gray and green.

There was a point in time where I was confident, almost completely sure, that I wouldn’t be here by the day of my intended high school graduation. This thought seemed inevitable, and that scared me. I wanted to change how I felt, so I made a few seemingly small modifications in my life. I began writing out everything that I was feeling, or not feeling. I wrote all of the details about that day’s numbness and uncertainties that made me question why I was still alive. I never limited the amount I wrote. Some days the words flowed through four, maybe five pages. Other days I wrote three sentences and felt as though I had nothing else to say.

However, regardless of the amount I wrote, at the end of each daily entry I would write three things that I was thankful for. Three things that made me smile or simply made me appreciate being here, alive and breathing. I found the little things that I enjoyed, even if they meant absolutely nothing. Watching candles burn, listening to the sound of wilderness at night, looking at the passing cars, observing ants as they traveled across a concrete sidewalk, waking up to watch the sunrise every morning. Small things that had no real meaning yet things I realized made me appreciate the world around me.

I did all of those things and hundreds more to distract my mind from the numbness and the constant dull pain. Creating art of all mediums, singing songs of all genres, dancing freely to music with all sorts of sounds. I continued to add onto the list of simple things I could do to make me feel alive. I call this imaginary list ‘my tools’. I attempted to steadily increase the amount of tools that I had found. I expanded my toolbox by finding new small aspects of life to enjoy and appreciate about the world around me.

I refer to depression sometimes as a cloud. Some days the cloud is wispy and thin, the sun is shining through, and life doesn’t seem quite so impossible. Other days it’s as if the cloud is tremendously heavy, dense, and dark and won’t go away no matter how much you try to see the sun rays hidden behind it. On those days, life seemed absolutely insurmountable. It’s also on those days when I would contemplate what the results would be on the people around me if I were gone. When these difficult, dark-cloud days would happen, instead of sitting in silence and and staring off in a sort of numbed daze, I began to go outside. I would go and listen to the bugs and the birds and the blowing of the wind, and I’d try to let the wind blow that dark, enveloping cloud of numbness away too.

Using all of these newly discovered ‘tools’ enough created a habit. It became second nature to go outside and watch the trees sway in the cool breeze of a beautiful fall day. It became ordinary to find me sitting by a creek listening to the rush of the water. Colors began appearing again, quite possibly more vibrant than before. The beauty in life had surfaced in my eyes once again. Now, I can say that I have found my passion, and it makes sense why I push through all the dark-cloud days. Although nothing is set in stone and I sometimes still feel like I have a million dark-cloud days a week, I can envision myself in a happy place somewhere in the future. I think- no, I know- that with my toolbox by my side and my “three things a day,” I can make it. I know you can too.

Look for those tools.

To My Tribe-THANK YOU!

Sitting here drinking a cup of coffee.  The house is quite.  My teenager is still asleep and my youngest is enjoying a surprise visit from her dad.

T-shirt yarn at the ready, with table to be refinished beneath.  Projects just keep coming! :)

I'm getting ready to weave a bit more on my rug but I took a moment to check yesterday's blog for comments and respond if necessary.  While at my blog, I glanced over at the links for all my past blogs, and I clicked through a couple of them.

I've made progress in someways and in others I'm still working through the same old shit.  I guess it's really just life I'm working through, and the sunshine and the shit are just regular participants in my journey.

What I wanted to say today, before I get up off my duff and do some actual work, is THANK YOU! Thank you to each of you who read my blog and walk with me. Life is messy and beautiful and difficult and amazing and exhilarating and exhausting and wonderful and trying and so much more. Some days I'm on top of the world and others I'm looking up from the bottom.  But regardless of where I may be, I know that I am not alone.

I have an amazing tribe of people who love me, support me, encourage me, inspire me, and walk beside me.  Some of you are right around the corner. Others are on the other side of the planet.  Many are somewhere in between.  The distance between us means nothing.  I can feel your love every day in my life, and I am eternally grateful.

So I lift my coffee cup to each and everyone of you today. I hope and pray you feel my love and eternal gratitude for your presence in my life.

Looming and Learning and Life: Creativity Cures!

The loom creation project was wonderfully enjoyable!  I spent a few minutes rummaging around inside and outside of my dad's shop and luckily I was able to gather all of the necessary supplies:  wood (from the frame around PCV pipe delivered for water wells), metal poles (cut from the flower display stands from my Grandpa's funeral in '09), nails (probably left over from when my dad was building their house in the late '80's), and wood screws (my dad had these on his service truck).

With the supplies ready to go, my dad helped me get the project started.  The first thing he did was show me all of the splendiferous power tools he had to help make this process easy and FUN! And, since he's a rather decent collector of tools, he had everything I needed and more!

Frame and poles laid out during frame design brainstorming.

Then we took a few minutes and laid out our design.  I was using pictures I had found on the interwebs and ballparked our measurements since this isn't an exact science.  The size of the loom can vary depending on how large a rug you want to produce.  We decided to go with a three ft horizontal piece and a four ft-ish vertical piece (just used the boards the length they were, cause I liked the length).

My newest love, the power miter saw!

Next we cut the horizontal pieces down to three ft using this lovely little tool. It's a power miter saw, and I'm in love.

Then we began the process of actually putting the frame together.  We pre-drilled holes for the wood screws to prevent the boards from splitting (they weren't the newest boards).

Pre-drilling for wood screws.

Makita makes my heart melt!

After drilling, we put the frame together with the wood screws.  Dad headed off to check his deer feeder and left me to work out the rest.

I cut the metal rods down to the right size, using my dad's Makita metal cutting saw, and my heart fluttered once again!  After cutting the rods, I polished the sharp edges with my dad's buffer/grinder, and sparks flew (literally and figuratively)!  ;)  Have I mentioned I my affinity for power tools?

With the frame together and the rods cut and polished, I moved on to hammering in the nails for the warp of the rug.  I placed the nails one inch apart and hammered them in across the top and bottom of the frame.

Nails one inch apart

The only thing I did not find in my dad's shop was eye bolts.  I needed them to hold the rods in place along the sides of the frame (to keep the tension, when weaving, from accidentally causing the to rug hour-glass in).  I was able to purchase a set of eye bolts for the whopping price of $1.00 at Fred's in town.  Once I added the eye bolts, the loom was done!

Pre-eye bolts,  the rods are just hanging on one of the nails.

Warping the loom.

T-shirt yarn!

I used some yarn my friend Amy gave me for the warp (the material wrapped vertically from nail to nail).  After I put the warp on the loom, I began weaving with the t-shirt yarn I had made (I'll post about this process soon).  I'm not sure how many shirts I'll need or what color combination I'll use, but I am thoroughly enjoying the process.  It's definitely a learning process.  I'll blog about the finished product once it's complete.

But, what I have learned so far in this process is that creativity keeps my soul alive.  Life is shit sometimes, and there are days when all you can do is breathe and endure.  It's in the midst of these moments that a project like this helps keep me going.  At times, life can feel utterly exhausting and almost pointless.  When the dark cloud settles in, I need something that's gonna bring a ray of sunshine into my soul.

That's when this loom helps me the most.  I look forward to seeing how the rug will turn out.  I enjoy the process of repurposing old t-shirts into something that puts a smile on my face. I love learning how to do something new and envisioning ways to make the next rug.  My mind and my soul are creatively engaged, the dark cloud begins to life, and the world looks a little brighter.

Come walk with me (on my new rug, soon) and we'll see what excitement the next project holds!

My daddy and I in his shop,
 working on this project.

Green, light gray, blue-gray, orange, navy blue . . .

Raw

Yesterday I killed it and made my rug loom.  I'll put some pictures up soon.  I felt like a rock star.

Today I'm not feeling it at all.  There's a bad tape playing in my head and I can't seem to find the pause button.  I get irritated that my headspace can spin so quickly.  I breathe.  I pause.  I try not to get irritated. I feel irritated.  I attempt to sit with the irritation and all the other shitty feelings.  I try not to run from them.  I try not to judge them as shitty.  I sit and work with what comes up.  I try not to judge how well I'm sitting.

This is me. You're welcome.

I just decided to sit and type exactly how I was feeling.  It's kind of scary knowing that if I actually share this post then y'all will see me.  Like really see me.  I don't particularly try to hide.  Honestly I feel like I'm a pretty open gal.  But there are times when I don't write something or share exactly how raw I feel because I don't know that everyone should see me as clearly as they could.  Or better yet, I'm not sure anyone wants to see me that clearly.

I don't want to be rescued.  I don't need to be rescued.  I just feel like being real is worth something in the world today.

So yesterday rocked.  Today I'm dragging and picking myself up very slowly.  Not sure how to explain the change.  Every now and then I still feel like I'm back on that roller coaster, in the dark, that never repeats.  Suddenly there was a drop I wasn't expecting or a turn that jerked me in a direction I wasn't ready for, and I'm off balance and trying to recover.

Today I can't say that there was a sudden drop or unexpected turn.  And I can't even blame it on being a Monday.  Today I feel shitty, and raw, and kind of worthless, and a bit lost, and very tired of all these stupid feelings.  But today is today, and I'll keep breathing through it.

And I'm going to go to a thrift store and look for old t-shirts to turn into t-shirt yarn so I can start working on my rug loom. 

The Future Looms 😉

Good morning.  I'm sitting here waiting on the coffee to finish brewing and listening to my youngest play Toy Story 3 on the wii in the next room.  I have been researching rug looms and trying to get myself motivated enough to actually get up and find the necessary materials to build one rather than just keep looking at all the ones on Pinterest or the interwebs.

We've started a new school year here with my oldest in college in Philly, my middle in the 10th grade and my youngest in 2nd grade.  This is the first year my youngest has gone to public school, and the first year I have not had a child with me 24/7 in 18 years!  It's a bit surreal.

I am working on getting to know myself again as a person rather than just "mom," and honestly, I'm a bit confused and at times mildly terrified, but in an exciting way. I had been a wife for 21+ years at the time of my divorce a couple years ago and a full time at-home mom for 18 years. Now I'm embarking on a strange little journey at mid-life trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.

My girls live with me (their dad is off to England shortly for a job thing), so I'm still a full time single mom, but now I have 8 hours each weekday that I need to fill. And what I'd like to do with those hours is, hands down, the biggest question looming in the back of my mind.

Currently I'm working from home for my dad's water well business, and that keeps me busy.  However, my dad turned 70 yesterday and I know he won't be drilling wells forever.  So the question becomes, what will I do next?  I am a certified teacher so I could go back into the classroom.  That is a very real possibility.  I'm going to be subbing in local schools this year so that will give me a good idea of what being back in the classroom would feel like.

But there are other possibilities.

When I think about what I enjoy doing (that whole finding your passion thing you hear about) I come up with a few things:

• being with people-extrovert here
• helping people complete a task or project-great worker bee/encourager
• organizing and de-cluttering, and helping people do the same-again great worker bee
• crochet and crafty/creative things-creativity makes my soul smile
• making/building stuff-I love power tools!
• yoga and mindfulness-cause I gotta stay sane
• maybe more, but I've drawn a blank and want more coffee!

So my journey continues.  I'm learning to listen, search, trust, breathe, be . . . I love having my tribe walking with me.  For me, life together is the only way this world makes sense.   So feel free to pop in occasionally and catch up.

And when I actually get a loom done, there will be pictures!



(The title is corny, I know. 😉  But I'm a goober, so I thought it was funny!)







   

I am not lonely

I'll be forty-four next month, and I'm single.  I've been single for almost three years. Prior to that, I was married for over twenty-one years. If you are any good at math you'll quickly notice that I was very young when I got married.

I did not have to get married, there were no shotguns involved. My ex and I thought we had a pretty good thing going and decided marriage was the perfect next step.  We were married almost seven years before we had our first child.  We both finished college and my ex went on to complete a master's and a Ph.D.  I became a stay-at-home homeschooling mom to three amazing kiddos.  He became a professor. We did not go through life all willy nilly.  We were thinkers and planners.  I thought we were doing a pretty decent job of making a nice little life for ourselves and our family.

Obviously, my ex had other ideas, since he later decided that "our" life was not what he desired, and he proceeded to end our marriage.

So here I sit, almost mid-forties, single, and starting over.

I am not lonely being single.  I have my youngest living with me and she is an absolute firecracker. After the divorce, I relocated back near my family so my parents are right around the corner.  My sisters and their families are all within a two-hour radius. I have several close friends in the area, and I've made a couple new friends.  My days are full of life, work, family, and friends.

I am not lonely.

Which is why I'm confused by the thoughts and feelings clunking around in my head. The feeling that I'm trying to find words to explain is a strange one.  It's a feeling that I don't ever remember having before.  And I'm not certain that I can fully articulate it.  Thinking back to my pre-marriage self (which means to my late teens, I know!) I do not recall ever experiencing this.

I realize that what I'm working with is the question as to whether or not I should be seeking out a new relationship. The words seem to get all garbled up, even as I type them, and sound rather silly.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't remember ever contemplating the deeper purpose or reasons for getting into a relationship. I dated in high school. I dated my ex in college. We got along great, so getting married was just the next step. Of course, I was nineteen and he was twenty, so we weren't exactly shrewd thinkers at the time. I guess I shouldn't fault my teenage self for not pondering these ideas more thoroughly.

But try as I might, I cannot remember ruminating over this question at all.

In high school and college, dating was a normal part of life.  I didn't have to try to meet people, I was surrounded with other people my age and socialization always came easily to me. Now, I live outside of a very small town with a population of less than 1300. I work from home.  And I'm a full-time single mom (my ex lives 1500 miles away).

So the question arises.  Do I want to be in a relationship? And when I look to myself for an answer I draw a huge blank. And then the clunking I mentioned earlier starts up again.

How do I feel about dating? Do I want to date?  Why would I want to date? Do I have the emotional energy to try to meet someone? Where in the world would I meet someone? Do I want to be in a relationship? Why would I want to be in a relationship? Where would I find the time for a new relationship? What is the purpose of a relationship anyways?

It's like a bouncy ball of questions and non-answers, and my head is a set of steel drums stacked one on top of the other.  The sound is musical and often pretty, but loud enough to be wonderfully distracting and after a while you just long for quiet.

I will continue to sit and listen. I will sit with the music and I will try to pay attention. I will be mindful.

I am learning to recognize things in myself. Through the sitting and listening, I have learned that I have a lot of love to give, that I am a caregiver and a cheerleader. I love doing things for the people in my life, and I love to see them succeed.

I have a lot of people in my life. Is this enough? Should there be one more? Should I be seeking out a significant other?

The music begins again. I will sit and listen.