Reclaim Your Joy

My grandchildren saved my life; it is a lot of pressure to put on newborns, but this is the truth of what happened. Their births awakened within me a profound joy. I remembered. I remembered that life was not all work and no play. I remembered that babies grow like weeds and I would only have them for a few short years before I either descend into senility or they get a hankering for their own kind - their peers.

I realized that I was slogging through my one wild and precious life as if someone had attached heavy weights to all my positive emotions, hopes and dreams. I felt stale and stiff and used up. I looked around and recognized that some of the patterns from my childhood were being replayed in my current day reality. This was not good. I was disgusted with these patterns. I was lonely and hopeless. I was sinking fast. I dreaded trying to go to sleep and dreaded waking up to the chaos, confusion, and conflict that infused not only our world, but my community. I read somewhere that dread is anxiety on steroids. That sounds about right. But what could I do? I did not know and so I did nothing.

I believe that I am responsible for every moment of my life. There is no one to blame or pawn my work off on. My life. My work. I needed to get some help but part of being depressed is that we feel helpless. I knew I had a problem - the loss of joy. That did not turn out to be the problem but it was my starting place and although I did not know what to do next, I did know that I wanted to reclaim my joy. Or maybe find it for the first time.

As you pay attention to yourself, notice if you are receiving any clues that something needs to change in order for you to grow and thrive.

Are You Owning It?

I want to have the kind of life where all sorts of people have keys to my house. Unlike the lady I met on vacation, I do not feel intruded upon when handing over a spare key to someone I trust...and most likely need. In fact, I am lucky to have family and friends who will receive my key and all that it symbolizes.

Our annual lake vacation delights Pete and I; it is predictable and convenient. It is relaxing and fun for us. While others dream of exotic locations and new sights, we are pretty boring but blessedly happy. It's no wonder, what with our anticipation of the arrival day of our departure, that I was more than a little disappointed when, poised to depart for vacation, water landed on my head when I walked under a smoke detector positioned outside my bedroom. Then the alarm began to blare.

It turns out that we had a roof leak and it would take awhile to figure out how to solve the problems we could solve on that rainy Saturday...when we SHOULD have been headed out for our long anticipated retreat. Initially I feared that vacation would be delayed, but quickly realized I had keys and people willing to use them.

Our kids and neighbors all agreed to help us leave. Roofers returned calls, our insurance company was amazing. Vacation was not delayed.

This is why I do not want to move to Delaware even as I admire the moxie of a woman, whose age is certainly north of mine by miles, willing to pull up stakes and set out on a new life...even at an advanced age. But this is not for me. I want "roots that grow deep". My life is not Facebook sexy but it is the one I choose. My responsibility. My way.

What's your way? Are you owning it? Are you willing to take so much responsibility for your life that you can also enjoy all the different ways other people choose to craft their own stories?

Go For It!

"It's gonna be hot down there, drink plenty of fluids!" The two courts that we practically had to give blood to pay to use are covered and they are...toasty.

"Oh, we will!" We assure the helpful team of women who have assembled to give us the once over and make sure we are not going to cause any harm to the facility.

My new friend is not quite ready to let us go.

"You play pickleball?" She asks, hands on hips.

"We do, in fact, my husband made a pickle ball court in our driveway!" I reply.

"Yeah? Well, you know, they invited me to play pickleball with them here, and I try to be a good sport, so I came over and played in one of their shindigs...but they told me I was too AGGRESSIVE and they never invited me back."

"Wow!" I am well and truly impressed. We're not talking a spring chicken here - this grand lady is in her 80's at least! And look at her agreeing to take up a new sport with so much energy that she does not get invited back!

I am plenty inspired by this bright yellow phenom standing here holding court and waving her tennis racket around to illustrate her perspective. She is strong and confident and clearly large and in-charge of her life. This is a woman who looks like she takes responsibility for herself and expects others to do likewise.

Life can really wear us down, can't it? Thanks to a long line and a lot of red tape, I had the privilege of seeing the possibility for my own future in the presence of an older, wiser woman. Mary Oliver, beloved poet to many, asks THE question, "What do you want to do with your one wild and precious life?" Go for it!

You are NOT the Problem

Remember my friend from yesterday's post who felt her problems were too unique for anyone else to possibly understand? I feel her. I understand, maybe not perfectly, but I do have some experience with a problem or two that has been statistically unique and complex. I do not happen to have that kind of problem today, maybe tomorrow a problem like that will pop up. But today, my brain is not on high alert trying to make something complicated simple. My brain is relaxed and more able to fire on all its cylinders, not just the survival instinct part of my brain.

When I can have a "whole brain" experience, I can ponder and remember and learn and consider new ways of seeing an issue. One hypothesis I have about my friend, because I've history with the same issue, is fear. I don't know about her, but when I have one of those big hairy problems that feels like it might swallow me, my last nerve resists MORE problems. And, I am deathly afraid someone will tell me that a problem this big is all my fault. I am bad. I am wrong. I am to blame. Who wants to add THAT to an already over-heated brain trying to survive?

Let me just say one more personal thing, to give you, dear reader, a bit of context. I have survived big problems in the past. Not the biggest, not the most unique, not BIG T trauma (well, maybe a couple of BIG T traumas), but I have survived problems. But my brain, for reasons I have some clarity on at this point in my life, has always believed that if I were good enough (not bad), smart enough (not dumb), worked hard enough (not lazy), then I WOULD HAVE NO PROBLEMS. So every problem, no matter how big or small, was in some way MY FAULT. See the reasoning? This kind of belief, will, eventually, say after your mother dies, a pandemic strikes, you live through a politically tumultuous time... cause your brain to short-circuit and explode.

And when that happened to me, I carried on, because isn't that what you're supposed to do? And...I got help. Lots of help. Lots of different kinds of help. And to my utter amazement, whether I was learning how to dead lift more weight than I believed I could lift, or zooming with my therapist, or talking with my physician, or taking a tennis lesson... I learned that mistakes are not big deal. Problems are inevitable and that you can have a multitude of problems without ever having to point a finger and assign blame or declare a winner of who is at fault. If my mind were not already blown, this would have surely resulted in the same outcome.

I did not know this. I could explain to you why I think I did not know this, but the whys no longer interest me. What has captivated my attention, energized my mind and body and spirit, is this idea that having a problem is inevitable and normal. Our work is NOT to avoid problems; our work is to take responsibility for our problems.

Mind blown. How about you?

Go Solve Some New Problems!

For a variety of reasons, I grew up thinking it was my job to solve and even eliminate problems. My brother Bob was working on a project for scouts that involved staining wood. He was working in his bedroom for some reason that no one's brain can understand and accidentally spilled the stain on his bedspread. His brain knew that to go to mom for help would be disastrous, so he came to me. I solved the problem with my middle school brain.

I quickly sopped up what I could, ran the bedspread down to the utility room, threw in in the washer with extra detergent and then marched up to my parents' bedroom for affirmation for a job well done. I did a job alright - on the washer. Who knew varnish was NOT good for washing machines? My mistake was so BIG that I'm not sure anyone ever got around to asking Bob why he was staining a hunk of wood on his bedspread.

Today, I am happy to go back in time and report back to that little girl that she was doing the best she could with the information she had in her brain at that time. I would remind her that helping her brother is and will forever be her core value and that there is nothing wrong with that - ever. But I would also reassure her that over the course of her life, her experiences and situations will teach her how to "help" better. I would also give her some very key information - problems never go away.

Life is full of problems. Life will always be full of problems. Problems for the curious are not bad, they are opportunities to grow and learn. A rich and wonderful life can be crafted by ending up with better problems as we learn and grow.

I have spent way too much time judging myself and fearing problems. I believed that problems were MY FAULT. But mostly, problems are about responsibility. "Fault" is just a word we use to describe the consequences of a solution that is going to teach us something. It's not pleasant, but it is fully human and we can learn how to take full responsibility for that too.

I wonder what I will take full responsibility for today. I wonder what I will learn from it. I hope if I discover something today that I am at "fault" for from the past that I will be as gentle and kind to myself as I was to my brother all those years ago. It was easy for me to see that this cute kid made an honest mistake and try to protect him from an inappropriately (maybe understandable) harsh parental reaction. Why do we struggle so much to recognize that this is also true for ourselves?

Go solve some new problems!