This is my seventh week of exercising! Not just the putting on my tennis shoes and going for a walk kind of exercise, where I can slow my pace whenever I'm distracted by the thoughts in my mind or the sights around me. No, this is a dedicated exercise program that gets my heart rate up and my sweat glands working. The kind of routine that requires a shower afterwards, and a cool down period so my breathing and my heart rate can come back to normal.
So what's the big deal? There are lots of folks who exercise on a regular basis. Problem is, I've never been one of them. I've never liked exercise. Even riding a bike when I was a kid wasn't fun to me. I did it because the rest of the kids in the neighborhood were doing it and I didn't want to be left behind when they took off to explore, but I couldn't wait to get back home and bury my nose in my favorite book. (And probably eat a bowl of ice cream or a piece of pie while I did so.)
I've tried exercising like this before, I really have. And each time I make it for about three weeks, and then I get sick. No kidding! Every time I've tried to change my eating habits and get into a regular exercise program, I've gotten sick. Usually it's bronchitis that hits, and I have to get an antibiotic and I'm pretty much out of it for at least 3-4 days, and it takes a lot longer to be able to breathe normally. And of course, by that time, I've gotten out of my routine and lost any and all interest in trying to exercise again. Until the next time my clothes don't fit and I decide it's time to try again. And no lie, I get sick again and it all goes down the tubes.
So what's different this time? For one thing, I'm not looking at this as something I need to do just until I can lose weight. I'm finally realizing that my body works better when it's exercised! With a long history of arthritis in my family, and strong evidence that it didn't miss my DNA, I know that exercise helps lubricate my joints and makes it easier for me to move, once I get moving. So if I want to continue to be able to keep up with my granddaughter (and I do!), then I need to do this for myself.
And I think that's the biggest difference: doing it for myself. I'm not doing it to look better in my clothes, although I can already tell a difference in my jeans. They don't feel like sausage casings anymore when I have them on! I'm not doing it to have a better chance of attracting a mate. I'm not doing it because someone else said I should. I'm doing it because I've finally come to realize that exercising is a way of loving my body, loving myself. It's a self-loving activity, rather than a self-soothing behavior.
What's the difference? A self-soothing behavior is something that helps lower your stress/anxiety level, which is also what exercise does, but a self-soothing behavior often started as a spontaneous reaction (as opposed to a well thought out response) to a stressful situation when we don't have more positive behaviors available to us. For instance, a baby will cry when it's hungry, but if it doesn't get fed, might attempt to sooth itself by sucking its thumb. It doesn't have the ability to get itself something to eat. So it does the best that it can to make itself feel better.
When things became uncomfortable for me in my home when I was growing up (Dad was an alcoholic. Mom had a lot of emotional baggage and took her anger at dad's drinking out on me in a variety of forms of abuse.), I never thought to ride my bike or go out for a walk. I'd never been encouraged to do anything physical, and sports programs for girls were just beginning to become popular in school curriculum programs, so I didn't have any experience of seeing how physical exertion could help with my stress. What I did have were excellent role models for using food and alcohol as coping mechanisms (self-soothing behaviors), and when people overeat and drink copious amounts of alcohol, they're not prone to exercise while they're doing it!
Okay, I've known for a long time that exercise was good for me. But that never made me want to stick to it. Something is different this time. And I know that, because, believe it or not, three weeks after I started exercising, guess what happened. I got sick! This time it was a head cold, and I felt miserable, but I kept on exercising! Every day. Every single day. I just told myself I'd do it for as long as I could and when I couldn't do it anymore, I'd quit. But I finished the routine each day.
And my mind set is different this time. I'm not telling myself I have to do it every day, and do it perfectly. If I miss a day, I don't beat myself up because I did. And when I'm finished, instead of all the negative self-talk I used to have going on in my head about how much I hate doing this, and how tired I am and how much my body hurts, I thank my body for making it through and I congratulate myself for making the time and finishing the routine. And I'm really proud of myself for doing it! I also notice that when I'm done, the stiffness and pain in my body has diminished considerably. My mood seems brighter; I have more energy; and I find myself thinking about the next day's schedule and when I'll make time to exercise again!
WHOA!!! Who is this person? Where did she come from? And why has it taken me so long to find her?
Good questions, all of them. I've been doing a lot of work on myself for a lot of years, trying to heal the wounds from the past. Perhaps I've finally dug deeply enough through the layers to remember who I really am, and to recognize the difference between, and the importance of, loving myself into wholeness rather than soothing myself into complacence.
Seven weeks isn't really a long time, but it's longer than I've ever managed before, and so to me, it's miraculous. Something is definitely different. I think I'm going to quit counting the weeks now and just relax into the routine. I'm also going to find some other ways I can love myself better and see where they take me. I'll let you know what I find.
Friday, March 7, 2014
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Making Amends
Watching Twelve Years a Slave and writing my last post have really caused me to think about how I live my life, and how I might be able to live it better in regards to others. So over the last week or so, I've been reviewing the past few years of my life and taking stock of how I could have acted differently, better, more appropriately, more compassionately, and who I might have harmed in some way along the way because my actions, or inaction, didn't really serve my highest good.
I have to say that I was fairly pleased with what I found, although I did find a couple of instances where I hadn't done my best, and in fact, may have caused harm, or at least discomfort to someone. Nothing that I discovered was anything really awful, but, still, I knew, in considering the situations (and one in particular) that I wanted to be accountable and take responsibility. I decided to make amends.
Making amends (compensation for a loss or injury) is a big part of the recovery process in all of the 12 step programs. Step 8 requires the person working the steps to make a list of all persons she/he harmed and to become willing to make amends to them all. Step 9 requires that direct amends be made to each person wherever possible, except when doing so would injure them or others. In other words, it's not acceptable to tell a third party to offer the apology to the injured party for someone else. The person working the steps has to make the amends personally, directly. They're not easy steps to take, because in doing so, the person making amends has to allow himself/herself to be vulnerable, and has no control over how his/her actions will be received.
During my trip to Alaska in 2012, I met a lot of truly good people. One was a woman who had a profound effect on me (and whose identity I will keep private just to protect her privacy), and who I had promised to keep in touch with after I said my goodbyes and continued on my journey.
For whatever reason, I never did. At first I was just too caught up in the excitement of being on the road, exploring new places and being on my own in such a novel way. Later, when I'd think about calling, it always seemed to be the wrong time: I was too tired, it was during her work day, etc. There was always some reason (excuse!). And then, as more time went by, as the trip ended and I was back at home, I felt guilty and embarrassed that I'd waited so long, and that made it even harder to pick up the phone.
But I never forgot her, and certainly couldn't forget that I hadn't kept in touch. Her name would come to mind at the strangest times, and I'd find myself wondering what she was doing, how she was doing, and, yes, probably most often, wondering what she was thinking about me! (I imagined they weren't very good thoughts if she was thinking about me at all.)
So last week I decided to right the wrong, and I sent her an email apologizing for not keeping in touch, asking her to let me know how she was doing and what she was up to, and even acknowledging that I'd understand if she didn't want to connect with me after all this time. I actually had a hard knot in my stomach when I hit the send button. But at least I did it.
Several days went by without a reply, and the self-talk in my head wasn't positive at all. I was convinced that she wasn't going to respond, and I didn't feel good about it. On Friday, as I was driving to Atlanta to do a healing circle, I heard that little voice in my head that I've come to recognize oh so well, say, "Really, after all this time, do you think a little email was enough? You need to make a direct effort. You need to call."
It was one thing to send an email. A phone call was a completely different ballgame, and I could feel the unease in my gut just from thinking about it. But I also knew it was the right thing to do. So a short time later I stopped for lunch, and before I got out of the car, I made the call. I got voice mail and my ego went to work! "She doesn't want to talk to you. She's got caller ID. She knows who's calling and she's not going to answer." Maybe not, I thought, but I could at least try, so when her greeting ended, I left a message with a very heartfelt and sincere apology. I really was sorry, and I did want to renew our connection. I was sorry I had lost it to begin with.
I was busy over the weekend, but I was also very aware that she didn't return my call. I knew when I sent the email that I didn't have any control over whether or not she responded, and I knew that was true of the voice mail message as well. I had done what I could do to make amends. It was time to let it go.
Making amends isn't easy, even when it's something as simple as just apologizing for not having followed through with my promise to stay connected. My ego was hard at work with negative self-talk and my emotions were quick to respond to the words it was speaking. And when the offense is something even more weighted, it goes without saying that the task of being accountable, of taking responsibility and making things right, is equally weighted in difficulty. I know because I've been there.
And having been there, I can honestly say that the weight and cost of carrying around that unfinished business is far greater than the temporary discomfort of making amends. The difficulty is, we don't realize that's the case until after we have the courage to own up. Until we do, that old stuff just sits in our guts, and in the buried recesses of our hearts and minds, festering, poking its way into our conscious awareness whenever it has the opportunity to do so.
It takes a lot of effort to keep it buried, a lot of energy to keep pushing it away, to keep reburying it each time it resurfaces. That's energy we could be using for other things, things that could help us move forward. (Not to mention the good it could be doing for the injured person when we own our screw-up!) That old stuff, that old unfinished business, is just helping us to stay stuck. And if we don't own up, there's no way that old stuff will heal. When we take responsibility for our actions and do our best to make things right, there's always the possibility we'll be forgiven, which makes room for even better things to come. And even if we aren't forgiven, even if the other person doesn't respond at all, taking responsibility, holding ourselves accountable, lightens the load that we carry in immeasurable and unimaginable ways, and it frees our energy to take us higher, further, and to allow us to do more good in other ways.
It's been four days since I placed that call, and I knew I'd be okay even if I didn't hear back. I can already feel a lightness in my gut and in my heart simply from having taken action. And that negative self-talk is gone. The results are well worth the discomfort I felt when I sent the email and made the call.
Figuring it was all behind me, I decided to check my email one last time before I started this post, just to make sure there were no last minute responses for tomorrow night's workshop. When I opened my inbox, there it was: her response! She thanked me for the voice mail, especially because she hadn't noticed my email, and assured me she wasn't angry, never had been. She wrote that she was delighted to hear from me, and had so much to share with me! She was overloaded with work but was on vacation next week and hoped to get in touch then when she had more time, so we could catch up.
For eighteen months I've been carrying this around with me, spending my energy worrying, hearing all that negative self-talk. I wish I'd had the courage to send that email and make that call sooner. It sure would have saved me a lot of unnecessary grief, and would have given me the extra benefit of having this like-minded soul as a friend and resource as I moved to Nashville and started this next part of my journey.
Isn't it interesting how much energy we spend resisting what we know we need to do to make things right, and how much power we lose, simply because we're afraid to take responsibility, to be accountable, to make amends?
I'm going to keep a closer eye on myself from now on, and when I make a mess of things (and I will, I'm human), I'm going to make every effort humanly possible to make amends sooner rather than later. I just don't want to waste energy anymore, mine or the other person's, when I have the power, and the responsibility, to fix them.
I have to say that I was fairly pleased with what I found, although I did find a couple of instances where I hadn't done my best, and in fact, may have caused harm, or at least discomfort to someone. Nothing that I discovered was anything really awful, but, still, I knew, in considering the situations (and one in particular) that I wanted to be accountable and take responsibility. I decided to make amends.
Making amends (compensation for a loss or injury) is a big part of the recovery process in all of the 12 step programs. Step 8 requires the person working the steps to make a list of all persons she/he harmed and to become willing to make amends to them all. Step 9 requires that direct amends be made to each person wherever possible, except when doing so would injure them or others. In other words, it's not acceptable to tell a third party to offer the apology to the injured party for someone else. The person working the steps has to make the amends personally, directly. They're not easy steps to take, because in doing so, the person making amends has to allow himself/herself to be vulnerable, and has no control over how his/her actions will be received.
During my trip to Alaska in 2012, I met a lot of truly good people. One was a woman who had a profound effect on me (and whose identity I will keep private just to protect her privacy), and who I had promised to keep in touch with after I said my goodbyes and continued on my journey.
For whatever reason, I never did. At first I was just too caught up in the excitement of being on the road, exploring new places and being on my own in such a novel way. Later, when I'd think about calling, it always seemed to be the wrong time: I was too tired, it was during her work day, etc. There was always some reason (excuse!). And then, as more time went by, as the trip ended and I was back at home, I felt guilty and embarrassed that I'd waited so long, and that made it even harder to pick up the phone.
But I never forgot her, and certainly couldn't forget that I hadn't kept in touch. Her name would come to mind at the strangest times, and I'd find myself wondering what she was doing, how she was doing, and, yes, probably most often, wondering what she was thinking about me! (I imagined they weren't very good thoughts if she was thinking about me at all.)
So last week I decided to right the wrong, and I sent her an email apologizing for not keeping in touch, asking her to let me know how she was doing and what she was up to, and even acknowledging that I'd understand if she didn't want to connect with me after all this time. I actually had a hard knot in my stomach when I hit the send button. But at least I did it.
Several days went by without a reply, and the self-talk in my head wasn't positive at all. I was convinced that she wasn't going to respond, and I didn't feel good about it. On Friday, as I was driving to Atlanta to do a healing circle, I heard that little voice in my head that I've come to recognize oh so well, say, "Really, after all this time, do you think a little email was enough? You need to make a direct effort. You need to call."
It was one thing to send an email. A phone call was a completely different ballgame, and I could feel the unease in my gut just from thinking about it. But I also knew it was the right thing to do. So a short time later I stopped for lunch, and before I got out of the car, I made the call. I got voice mail and my ego went to work! "She doesn't want to talk to you. She's got caller ID. She knows who's calling and she's not going to answer." Maybe not, I thought, but I could at least try, so when her greeting ended, I left a message with a very heartfelt and sincere apology. I really was sorry, and I did want to renew our connection. I was sorry I had lost it to begin with.
I was busy over the weekend, but I was also very aware that she didn't return my call. I knew when I sent the email that I didn't have any control over whether or not she responded, and I knew that was true of the voice mail message as well. I had done what I could do to make amends. It was time to let it go.
Making amends isn't easy, even when it's something as simple as just apologizing for not having followed through with my promise to stay connected. My ego was hard at work with negative self-talk and my emotions were quick to respond to the words it was speaking. And when the offense is something even more weighted, it goes without saying that the task of being accountable, of taking responsibility and making things right, is equally weighted in difficulty. I know because I've been there.
And having been there, I can honestly say that the weight and cost of carrying around that unfinished business is far greater than the temporary discomfort of making amends. The difficulty is, we don't realize that's the case until after we have the courage to own up. Until we do, that old stuff just sits in our guts, and in the buried recesses of our hearts and minds, festering, poking its way into our conscious awareness whenever it has the opportunity to do so.
It takes a lot of effort to keep it buried, a lot of energy to keep pushing it away, to keep reburying it each time it resurfaces. That's energy we could be using for other things, things that could help us move forward. (Not to mention the good it could be doing for the injured person when we own our screw-up!) That old stuff, that old unfinished business, is just helping us to stay stuck. And if we don't own up, there's no way that old stuff will heal. When we take responsibility for our actions and do our best to make things right, there's always the possibility we'll be forgiven, which makes room for even better things to come. And even if we aren't forgiven, even if the other person doesn't respond at all, taking responsibility, holding ourselves accountable, lightens the load that we carry in immeasurable and unimaginable ways, and it frees our energy to take us higher, further, and to allow us to do more good in other ways.
It's been four days since I placed that call, and I knew I'd be okay even if I didn't hear back. I can already feel a lightness in my gut and in my heart simply from having taken action. And that negative self-talk is gone. The results are well worth the discomfort I felt when I sent the email and made the call.
Figuring it was all behind me, I decided to check my email one last time before I started this post, just to make sure there were no last minute responses for tomorrow night's workshop. When I opened my inbox, there it was: her response! She thanked me for the voice mail, especially because she hadn't noticed my email, and assured me she wasn't angry, never had been. She wrote that she was delighted to hear from me, and had so much to share with me! She was overloaded with work but was on vacation next week and hoped to get in touch then when she had more time, so we could catch up.
For eighteen months I've been carrying this around with me, spending my energy worrying, hearing all that negative self-talk. I wish I'd had the courage to send that email and make that call sooner. It sure would have saved me a lot of unnecessary grief, and would have given me the extra benefit of having this like-minded soul as a friend and resource as I moved to Nashville and started this next part of my journey.
Isn't it interesting how much energy we spend resisting what we know we need to do to make things right, and how much power we lose, simply because we're afraid to take responsibility, to be accountable, to make amends?
I'm going to keep a closer eye on myself from now on, and when I make a mess of things (and I will, I'm human), I'm going to make every effort humanly possible to make amends sooner rather than later. I just don't want to waste energy anymore, mine or the other person's, when I have the power, and the responsibility, to fix them.
Saturday, January 25, 2014
A Heavy Heart
I have this heaviness in my heart tonight. I think the last time I felt like this was when I had to transfer my mother from her apartment in the assisted living facility where she had been living, to the Alzheimer's unit because she needed more care and assistance than they could provide where she had been living.
It wasn't the transfer so much that caused the heaviness, as it was my mother's response to the transfer. She stood in the hallway of the Alzheimer's unit, supported by her walker, and as they moved her furniture into her new room, she screamed at me, her face contorted into an agonized caricature of the mother I knew, tears pouring down her face, "What right do you have to do this to me? Who said you could make this decision without my permission? You're a horrible daughter and I hate you."
I knew my mother didn't really mean what she said; that her words and emotions were a result of her mental confusion and cognitive impairment. But it was a difficult experience nonetheless, for so many reasons and on so many levels. I rarely think of it anymore, but when I do, it's never without that heaviness in my heart.
So what happened today that left me feeling so much like I felt that night? Believe it or not, I went to the movies. I saw Twelve Years a Slave and when I left the theater, I was so overwhelmed by my feelings, I had difficulty speaking. It was quite a while before normal conversation wasn't an effort.
I knew the movie wouldn't be an easy one to watch, but I wasn't prepared for the depth of my response. In fact, it's because this feeling in my chest is still so strong, so palpable, so present, that I decided I had to write about it.
If you haven't seen the movie, it's based on a true story about a black man, a free man, who was kidnapped and sold into slavery ( I believe it was 1841.), and remained a slave for twelve years, before he was freed and was able to return to his family.
All I could think about as I watched the movie (and sometimes I had to cover my eyes, because I just couldn't watch), was how could one human being do that to another? And although slavery doesn't exist in this country anymore, atrocities just as terrible as what were enacted on that screen, take place every day somewhere on this planet.
I don't know why it took that movie to make me think about that, or why, now, that movie touched me at such a deep level of raw emotion. I've certainly seen similar depictions of inhumane treatment before, and been affected by what I saw, but I've never been this affected.
Maybe it's because I'm so much more aware now of how connected we each are to one another, and how each action that we take against or for another, impacts not only that one person, but all of us on some level, known or not. What I'm feeling tonight is making me reconsider my own way of being in the world, and whether or not I'm truly doing my best when it comes to my own interactions with others.
I can't personally stop the wars, or end hunger, or provide every person who needs a place to sleep a warm bed, but I can be more accountable, more responsible, for my own actions. I can make a bigger effort to come from a place of love, a place of caring, a place of recognizing the importance and value of every human being that crosses my path and do my best to treat each of them the way that I would like to be treated, with dignity and respect.
That doesn't seem like much in the grand scheme of things, does it? But if we all did that, just that, every one of us, every day? Wow! Just imagine what a different place this world would be!
It wasn't the transfer so much that caused the heaviness, as it was my mother's response to the transfer. She stood in the hallway of the Alzheimer's unit, supported by her walker, and as they moved her furniture into her new room, she screamed at me, her face contorted into an agonized caricature of the mother I knew, tears pouring down her face, "What right do you have to do this to me? Who said you could make this decision without my permission? You're a horrible daughter and I hate you."
I knew my mother didn't really mean what she said; that her words and emotions were a result of her mental confusion and cognitive impairment. But it was a difficult experience nonetheless, for so many reasons and on so many levels. I rarely think of it anymore, but when I do, it's never without that heaviness in my heart.
So what happened today that left me feeling so much like I felt that night? Believe it or not, I went to the movies. I saw Twelve Years a Slave and when I left the theater, I was so overwhelmed by my feelings, I had difficulty speaking. It was quite a while before normal conversation wasn't an effort.
I knew the movie wouldn't be an easy one to watch, but I wasn't prepared for the depth of my response. In fact, it's because this feeling in my chest is still so strong, so palpable, so present, that I decided I had to write about it.
If you haven't seen the movie, it's based on a true story about a black man, a free man, who was kidnapped and sold into slavery ( I believe it was 1841.), and remained a slave for twelve years, before he was freed and was able to return to his family.
All I could think about as I watched the movie (and sometimes I had to cover my eyes, because I just couldn't watch), was how could one human being do that to another? And although slavery doesn't exist in this country anymore, atrocities just as terrible as what were enacted on that screen, take place every day somewhere on this planet.
I don't know why it took that movie to make me think about that, or why, now, that movie touched me at such a deep level of raw emotion. I've certainly seen similar depictions of inhumane treatment before, and been affected by what I saw, but I've never been this affected.
Maybe it's because I'm so much more aware now of how connected we each are to one another, and how each action that we take against or for another, impacts not only that one person, but all of us on some level, known or not. What I'm feeling tonight is making me reconsider my own way of being in the world, and whether or not I'm truly doing my best when it comes to my own interactions with others.
I can't personally stop the wars, or end hunger, or provide every person who needs a place to sleep a warm bed, but I can be more accountable, more responsible, for my own actions. I can make a bigger effort to come from a place of love, a place of caring, a place of recognizing the importance and value of every human being that crosses my path and do my best to treat each of them the way that I would like to be treated, with dignity and respect.
That doesn't seem like much in the grand scheme of things, does it? But if we all did that, just that, every one of us, every day? Wow! Just imagine what a different place this world would be!
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