well...it has been 9 days since i began my weight "management" program at uci...and this week has yielded a loss of 6.2 pounds. yes.... ".2"....i am grabbing it..holding on to it as part of my total... and not rounding down...although rounding down is the objective of this journey~
i have to admit i am feeling more energized, all my blood pressure meds have already been cut in half, and i am now walking more and taking stairs..proceeding up ramps, and even standing without feeling as though i need to pridefully pretend that i am not embarrassingly short of breath...so this is a very good thing.
i have had a few remarkable and relevant epiphanies ....newly cleansed of so much excess fat and sugar.... which is the surprise that of all foods the one i continue to deeply crave...is bread. i am nearly obsessed with the lack of it....and i am not sure i could be trusted to be alone in a room with a fresh loaf....that and a reeses.....who would have thought that my highly cultivated gourmet pallet would have such pedestrian yearnings....
the other interesting phenomena during this past week on the regime, has been the fact that i feel...vacant. i can consume ounces upon ounces of liquid, veggies, fruit and the small entrees the program provides, and be more vacant feeling at the end of the "meal"...than when i started. it is a gnawing sort of vacant that churns and grows and becomes a glaring neon light inside me until i find a distraction from it in some activity or conversation ~ i am wondering if this vacant feeling is the place that i have been filling up with addictive food....and perhaps is in my spirit..... more than in my gut?....?
i have received an outpouring of support and encouragement..in openly spoken ways and small quiet ways that have contributed to my success in surviving this first week.....even from some unexpected sources for which i am so grateful and humbled..although i admit,i am a little sobered when i realize that not one person with whom i have shared that i am doing a program quite this drastic...has asked.."why?" lol ....
and so i willingly endure and leave up my vacancy sign....and wonder what and who might come to reside to fill the space with love and light...rather than sugar and fat.... ~<3 more to follow....~
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
let us too surrender.....~
today, i am especially pensive about the subject of human love. my being pensive, and my thinking about love, are not at all uncommon obsessions for me, but today the energy of it just seems quietly deeply intensely introspective.
over 25 years ago i first read the book "The Road Less Traveled" by Dr. M Scott Peck ( have read it several times since), and was immediately drawn to his wisdom regarding the spiritual quality of a life well lived, in balance with the undeniable realities of human existence and relating, and intrinsic angst.
one of the most enduring and useful statements from his book which i have retained for all these years popped into my brain this morning as i awakened with an uncomfortable undefined anxiety...and i have been mulling around it all day...... and that is his definition of "love".....and Dr. Peck states it in the following manner:
"I define love thus: "The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth. "
the complexities of emotion and thought and visceral feeling relative to love are so vast, i have found this statement through the years a beautifully succinct and accurate barometer of all that i call "love". today especially, for a myriad of reasons that are not relevant to this sharing, i am reflective in measuring myself against those words, and scoring an "epic fail".
granted, there is an inherent subjective quality to what is spiritual and what is "spiritual growth"....i can only speak to what those two words combined mean to me, and i think they simply mean....facilitating the beloved to find their own way...their own truth...in confidence and peace and know that doing so will not jeopardize the love between the us, even though it might need to eventually (or immediately) change, alter, become more intense, or more remote, depending upon multiple and varied factors through time~
the word "extend" is interesting to me in this definition. loving in an extending way is not comfy. it is terribly painful and difficult a lot of the time to push through my tendency to be as i have always been. recently someone i respect stated to me that i cannot change, cannot really change, and perhaps this is true~ but i can keep trying to extend to the limits of what my true self will allow, knock down my own walls, extend my vision, extend my comfort level, extend my vision to see beyond my own visceral sensations. extend out of what i want for myself or what i even want for or with them. i can and want to do this for those i love. i feel it is what God expects of me, it's part of why i am on the planet ..... and i have to remember it is only to have a willingness, that is the magick key to unlock my capacity~
i think i am feeling ouchie and anxious and pensive today because it's just sooooo very damn difficult to keep this focus on "love"...and not confuse it with feelings of possessiveness, or self gratification/actualization/ego et. al~............, be it through my eyes as a child toward my parents,(even though they are dead) my daughters, (even though they are now grown and on their own...in fact perhaps especially so because they are!)...my brother, certain friends, and the exquisitely thorn-bird style intense in the way i experience romantic love, and the way that is complicated by sexual feelings.
i have found it can be equally difficult to keep the awareness that love, when articulated by this definition, is not about some strong feeling i have for the person i love, it isn't that lovely heady delicious intensity junkie elixir of swept away feeling, or even agape care/concern.....nor the things to which i am compelled because of those strong feelings...but the truth is, nonetheless...i am tempted to want it to be both the feelings and the compelling~
the nurturing part is easy for me, sometimes nearly neurotically so, but i know at the highest proper form nurturing does not mean it's ok for me to want to create and offer provision as a manner to control or impose, even if i truly do feel what i see, sense or think is important to the well being of the person i love~and it is just tragically wrong for me to nurture because i want to solicit or secure someone having loving feelings....for me~
i think in it's pure form "nurturing" in love, is about offering gracefully, and not pressuring....certain tangible things. nurturing is also about providing an emotional environment between two where there is peace and no contention and everything is held and offered lightly without strings to bind anything in any way....and sometimes...nurturing is just about standing back..with a willingness to not speak my thoughts or opinions or issue my caveats....or speaking my own feelings or need.
and so.......my mind and heart...spin on....and as i write there is no conclusion to this conundrum of the ages....<3 ...undoubtedly ,more to follow on all this...although i know not, when.<3
over 25 years ago i first read the book "The Road Less Traveled" by Dr. M Scott Peck ( have read it several times since), and was immediately drawn to his wisdom regarding the spiritual quality of a life well lived, in balance with the undeniable realities of human existence and relating, and intrinsic angst.
one of the most enduring and useful statements from his book which i have retained for all these years popped into my brain this morning as i awakened with an uncomfortable undefined anxiety...and i have been mulling around it all day...... and that is his definition of "love".....and Dr. Peck states it in the following manner:
"I define love thus: "The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth. "
the complexities of emotion and thought and visceral feeling relative to love are so vast, i have found this statement through the years a beautifully succinct and accurate barometer of all that i call "love". today especially, for a myriad of reasons that are not relevant to this sharing, i am reflective in measuring myself against those words, and scoring an "epic fail".
granted, there is an inherent subjective quality to what is spiritual and what is "spiritual growth"....i can only speak to what those two words combined mean to me, and i think they simply mean....facilitating the beloved to find their own way...their own truth...in confidence and peace and know that doing so will not jeopardize the love between the us, even though it might need to eventually (or immediately) change, alter, become more intense, or more remote, depending upon multiple and varied factors through time~
the word "extend" is interesting to me in this definition. loving in an extending way is not comfy. it is terribly painful and difficult a lot of the time to push through my tendency to be as i have always been. recently someone i respect stated to me that i cannot change, cannot really change, and perhaps this is true~ but i can keep trying to extend to the limits of what my true self will allow, knock down my own walls, extend my vision, extend my comfort level, extend my vision to see beyond my own visceral sensations. extend out of what i want for myself or what i even want for or with them. i can and want to do this for those i love. i feel it is what God expects of me, it's part of why i am on the planet ..... and i have to remember it is only to have a willingness, that is the magick key to unlock my capacity~
i think i am feeling ouchie and anxious and pensive today because it's just sooooo very damn difficult to keep this focus on "love"...and not confuse it with feelings of possessiveness, or self gratification/actualization/ego et. al~............, be it through my eyes as a child toward my parents,(even though they are dead) my daughters, (even though they are now grown and on their own...in fact perhaps especially so because they are!)...my brother, certain friends, and the exquisitely thorn-bird style intense in the way i experience romantic love, and the way that is complicated by sexual feelings.
i have found it can be equally difficult to keep the awareness that love, when articulated by this definition, is not about some strong feeling i have for the person i love, it isn't that lovely heady delicious intensity junkie elixir of swept away feeling, or even agape care/concern.....nor the things to which i am compelled because of those strong feelings...but the truth is, nonetheless...i am tempted to want it to be both the feelings and the compelling~
the nurturing part is easy for me, sometimes nearly neurotically so, but i know at the highest proper form nurturing does not mean it's ok for me to want to create and offer provision as a manner to control or impose, even if i truly do feel what i see, sense or think is important to the well being of the person i love~and it is just tragically wrong for me to nurture because i want to solicit or secure someone having loving feelings....for me~
i think in it's pure form "nurturing" in love, is about offering gracefully, and not pressuring....certain tangible things. nurturing is also about providing an emotional environment between two where there is peace and no contention and everything is held and offered lightly without strings to bind anything in any way....and sometimes...nurturing is just about standing back..with a willingness to not speak my thoughts or opinions or issue my caveats....or speaking my own feelings or need.
and so.......my mind and heart...spin on....and as i write there is no conclusion to this conundrum of the ages....<3 ...undoubtedly ,more to follow on all this...although i know not, when.<3
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
observance of an anniversary~
april 17th...a day that will live in infamy..perhaps i over state...as it was not nearly as destructive as Pearl Harbor but "infamous' in a personal manner of speaking this was the day, that 57 years ago, my parents wed. reflecting upon their union is nearly the only space where my negative, sarcastic and hopeless aspects of self...flourish. it was truly a match made in hell...and there is a certain camaraderie in "hell"..i would imagine by it's inhabitants...and that did too exist between my mother and father...but it was not at all "light" based...but in nearly every aspect was an offspring of darkness.
it's true...i was not privy to whatever moments they shared that might have been genuinely loving or tender or supportive and reflective of "love" ...and i am certain there were a few...i was witness to more than several times where they strove to make the other "happy"...but usually this was in the provision of material things or other tangible measurements. and in the times in between their bond was profoundly destructive and long suffering...the operative word being "suffering"...
i had the good fortune, and misfortune, of having a very adult type relationship with my father from the time i was a very little girl. this arose mostly from his complete lack of companionship from my mother due to her mental illness. nothing commonly known as inappropriate ever occurred...but he did tap into my sensitivities and intuitive gifts to draw me close...and i knew far too much of his agony and angst in his marriage with my mother....i never did just get to be a "child"....observing and feeling safe within their marriage...but rather a pawn who they both moved deftly on the chess board of our family dynamic~ and i played my part well and willingly to be my fathers sacred confidant....dangerous dangerous emotional stuff...
i have never in all my observances, known two individuals who were so poorly suited to one another. my father was a devout man of honor in his way....but weak and grossly unprepared from his own upbringing of neglect and abuse to cope with the likes of my mother and her Machiavellian pathological proclivities..born of what i am sure was her own experiences of abuse......tortured souls....both. so so so very sad.
i'll spare any reader here the grim details of their life together....but suffice it to say they lived within misery, and called it normal. what misery they did not create, was perpetuated upon them by some unknown but deeply felt malevolent energy source.......and left both their children reeling into adulthood with a sole similar mission to never ever duplicate that which we had known of "marriage" and "family"....
and fortunately, divinely so, truly by the grace of The Lord God Almighty....we were both led to our place within the palm of God's hand....and i would chose my destiny again with all it's horrors, and i know my brother would too....to find in the Father and Blessed Mother of Jesus...the parental figures, and abiding examples of true love we lacked as children....ultra idealistic and examples of immaculate perfection...but they drew us out of our upbringing and onto the potential of living on a higher plane....
....
i guess in this way i do thank my parents for their unwitting sacrifice for our eventual salvation...i do not know why God plucked me up as He did...but He did....and my beloved brother too...incredibly loving and generous people have been brought into both our lives since we were small, and as someone i was conversing with recently said to me..and he was very correct...in these ways i have led a "charmed" life~ ...Heaven illuminating our path out of the darkness and symbiotic agony of our parents' bond.... ...i do hope with my deepest heart that wherever the awareness of their souls do now reside, they know i am grateful they did have a union and although i don't understand why either of them chose to exist in that union until death they did part...i am grateful in my way....and.i have certainly had my own failures when it comes to love and marriage and life in general.....so in this way i do have an empathy i once lacked....
i hope ..they feel my sincere heartache for them....and my prayer for their eternal "rest" in peace....on this their anniversary...and every day~
it's true...i was not privy to whatever moments they shared that might have been genuinely loving or tender or supportive and reflective of "love" ...and i am certain there were a few...i was witness to more than several times where they strove to make the other "happy"...but usually this was in the provision of material things or other tangible measurements. and in the times in between their bond was profoundly destructive and long suffering...the operative word being "suffering"...
i had the good fortune, and misfortune, of having a very adult type relationship with my father from the time i was a very little girl. this arose mostly from his complete lack of companionship from my mother due to her mental illness. nothing commonly known as inappropriate ever occurred...but he did tap into my sensitivities and intuitive gifts to draw me close...and i knew far too much of his agony and angst in his marriage with my mother....i never did just get to be a "child"....observing and feeling safe within their marriage...but rather a pawn who they both moved deftly on the chess board of our family dynamic~ and i played my part well and willingly to be my fathers sacred confidant....dangerous dangerous emotional stuff...
i have never in all my observances, known two individuals who were so poorly suited to one another. my father was a devout man of honor in his way....but weak and grossly unprepared from his own upbringing of neglect and abuse to cope with the likes of my mother and her Machiavellian pathological proclivities..born of what i am sure was her own experiences of abuse......tortured souls....both. so so so very sad.
i'll spare any reader here the grim details of their life together....but suffice it to say they lived within misery, and called it normal. what misery they did not create, was perpetuated upon them by some unknown but deeply felt malevolent energy source.......and left both their children reeling into adulthood with a sole similar mission to never ever duplicate that which we had known of "marriage" and "family"....
and fortunately, divinely so, truly by the grace of The Lord God Almighty....we were both led to our place within the palm of God's hand....and i would chose my destiny again with all it's horrors, and i know my brother would too....to find in the Father and Blessed Mother of Jesus...the parental figures, and abiding examples of true love we lacked as children....ultra idealistic and examples of immaculate perfection...but they drew us out of our upbringing and onto the potential of living on a higher plane....
....
i guess in this way i do thank my parents for their unwitting sacrifice for our eventual salvation...i do not know why God plucked me up as He did...but He did....and my beloved brother too...incredibly loving and generous people have been brought into both our lives since we were small, and as someone i was conversing with recently said to me..and he was very correct...in these ways i have led a "charmed" life~ ...Heaven illuminating our path out of the darkness and symbiotic agony of our parents' bond.... ...i do hope with my deepest heart that wherever the awareness of their souls do now reside, they know i am grateful they did have a union and although i don't understand why either of them chose to exist in that union until death they did part...i am grateful in my way....and.i have certainly had my own failures when it comes to love and marriage and life in general.....so in this way i do have an empathy i once lacked....
i hope ..they feel my sincere heartache for them....and my prayer for their eternal "rest" in peace....on this their anniversary...and every day~
new wanderings...
months and months have passed....and i am now on the other side of what felt as though it would be the endless purge, sort, relocate, anguish, adjust, accept and dwell in the past interval of these recent times of my life~ perhaps i can now start chronicling my thoughts and experiences and lessons and eternal conundrums...here?.....just very possibly~ <3
Sunday, July 31, 2011
sunday~
i am much too young and much too old to be where i find myself today within my life. i am sorting and purging and organizing my personal effects, and with my usual dramatic flare, i hear the voice within my head articulate that it rather feels as though i am prematurely starting the digging of my own grave~and end...to life in the common way it feels to all of we mortals~
i have moved 19 times in 32 years...and many times prior to the start of that chronicling~.and there have even been times in my journey where i have been "homeless"......but this time...it is different. this time it feels more like "dismantling" than just regular moving preparation. so much has changed in my life in the last year and in the lives of the people i love. i am terrible at ending things...and now the day has come to roost where endings are inevitable and now i am clear as to why i avoid ending at all cost.
simply....they hurt.
and although i always pride myself on the level of physical discomfort i can tolerate...i am obviously a complete wimp when it comes to emotional pain. this fact, as i just realized today, is most especially intriguing to me from an intellectual perspective because i feel i have spent most of my conscious life since i was a very small child IN...emotional pain. One would think i would have a tolerance for that sort of pain as well...did the Refiners fire not temper met at all??? but it is instead, the antithesis.
as instead i feel inside myself i am always at a saturation point...and just one more stab to my heart, or worry, of concern, or feeling of failure and it will be the proverbial "straw" that sends me falling head first from the camel's back....... and so i hold onto EVERYTHING for dear life...even when the ride is bumpy, uncomfortable, and goes nowhere but in circles of lack of personal growth...the same mistakes over and over... and sometimes..... misery~
i am not at all proud of a significant portion of my life journey thus far....there is quite a lot upon which i can and must improve when it comes to the way i live and love~ i don't want to just live out the rest of my life as i have lived the last score of years~.....the thought of that...fills me with the most profound sense of squandering of the blessings which i have been, by grace, given........ and dread~
today, is a day i knew would feel like a sad day, that i have procrastinated for a long time from an emotional perspective, and for a month or two from a tangible/logistical perspective. i finally mustered the courage to begin to "dig in"....go through clothing that no longer fits or no longer fits my life... ...photos, mementos, trinkets....that are tarnished both in their metal and their memory.....not only my own accumulation of "stuff".......but some of it belonging to those who have been my "family" as i have known it...~
never has my past felt so sad....my future felt so uncertain....
even so i can feel God near...and His eyes of love over me as i venture forth.....~
back to work for me...more...to follow~
i have moved 19 times in 32 years...and many times prior to the start of that chronicling~.and there have even been times in my journey where i have been "homeless"......but this time...it is different. this time it feels more like "dismantling" than just regular moving preparation. so much has changed in my life in the last year and in the lives of the people i love. i am terrible at ending things...and now the day has come to roost where endings are inevitable and now i am clear as to why i avoid ending at all cost.
simply....they hurt.
and although i always pride myself on the level of physical discomfort i can tolerate...i am obviously a complete wimp when it comes to emotional pain. this fact, as i just realized today, is most especially intriguing to me from an intellectual perspective because i feel i have spent most of my conscious life since i was a very small child IN...emotional pain. One would think i would have a tolerance for that sort of pain as well...did the Refiners fire not temper met at all??? but it is instead, the antithesis.
as instead i feel inside myself i am always at a saturation point...and just one more stab to my heart, or worry, of concern, or feeling of failure and it will be the proverbial "straw" that sends me falling head first from the camel's back....... and so i hold onto EVERYTHING for dear life...even when the ride is bumpy, uncomfortable, and goes nowhere but in circles of lack of personal growth...the same mistakes over and over... and sometimes..... misery~
i am not at all proud of a significant portion of my life journey thus far....there is quite a lot upon which i can and must improve when it comes to the way i live and love~ i don't want to just live out the rest of my life as i have lived the last score of years~.....the thought of that...fills me with the most profound sense of squandering of the blessings which i have been, by grace, given........ and dread~
today, is a day i knew would feel like a sad day, that i have procrastinated for a long time from an emotional perspective, and for a month or two from a tangible/logistical perspective. i finally mustered the courage to begin to "dig in"....go through clothing that no longer fits or no longer fits my life... ...photos, mementos, trinkets....that are tarnished both in their metal and their memory.....not only my own accumulation of "stuff".......but some of it belonging to those who have been my "family" as i have known it...~
never has my past felt so sad....my future felt so uncertain....
even so i can feel God near...and His eyes of love over me as i venture forth.....~
back to work for me...more...to follow~
to begin yet again....
a year or so ago i set up this blog...well..not actually this one...it was another one...but in any event~ i began a blog and never once posted to it. a bit of laziness perhaps...and it has been so much easier to use facebook status posts as a way to state what i might be feeling, experiencing, thinking...at any given moment~ but my thoughts there are confined by space and decorum...(although sometimes i know i cross over the edge of "sensitive"...to "dark and troubled")...so truth is this is a far better venue for heart spill, struggle, enlightenment, articulated confusion, confessed depression, personal thrill, and angst~
to all who enter~ i am blessed by your interest~ and thank you for peeking in to wander with me~* Godspeed...to us all~* <3
to all who enter~ i am blessed by your interest~ and thank you for peeking in to wander with me~* Godspeed...to us all~* <3
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