One of our worse fears as parents is that something may be wrong with our children. my children are great, healthy, wonderful kids. I wish this for their future. Sometimes, we don't know there is Something different about our children until they are older.
...it is happening... the signs are clear...i've been through this... now... what do i do?
I wanted to come home and have a good cry is what i wanted to do. instead.. i blog. maybe someone else is in a similar position or maybe i can help someone.
My son is showing signs of anxiety. for the last 2 years little things have happened, and over the last few months it has gotten worse. Boy, this is a familiar story. My mother "suffers" from anxiety, it pretty much runs in my family. well say that. i am anxious, i had horrible panic attacks in high school, and my very first real episode of panic i was about 12.
Brody has become extremely anxious about death. this is really familiar to me, because i really remember this happening to me also as a little girl, but not to the point it drives my son to. when i was a kid, i remember thinking to myself.. the world just goes on and on and on??? there's no end? i just could not comprehend it. my little boy.. this was his problem tonight, as many times this is what hes afraid of. perfectly normal for this age group i understand, but my son had a full blown anxiety attack. im self diagnosis that btw, but after having this for so many years, i know it when i see it. so what do i do??...
my husband just came home after being away for over 2 weeks, we just got back from having an afternoon full of activities.. each boy got their hair cut... mommy got some new makeup, took a trip to target to look at legos and Nintendo games... then to game stop... and off to dinner. it was good. on our way home the sun is just about set, we are sitting in the car... my husband and i are talking when out of absolutely nowhere my son starts to freak out.. screaming in the car...mark and i look at each other in the dark, and hes kind of confused as to what happened but i know exactly what has happened.. and think i know what to do. My boy is worried about the world and that it isn't ever going to end and him living forever and ever.. a concept even i do not fully understand myself and it just instantly takes me back to being a little girl... wondering these same things myself. "why is this happening to my kid?"...
For his sake, i hope this goes away, but i know all too well it just may not be. so what do i do? i start with what i know, i start with everything ive read about anxiety, everything thats worked for me. i use touch to keep him as calm as i can in the moving vehicle.. put my hand on his knee, and just rub his knee...i teach him to breath... several times, just breathing... in 1-2-3 out 1-2-3- lets do that 5 times.. lets do that 1 more time.. lets focus on breathing.. lets try to minimize this anxiety so we can talk.
its late for them, near bed time.. he gets like this especially around this time. Once he is semi-calm.. i try to talk about something else. not to minimize his feelings, but the timing is all wrong for an in-depth convo about this topic... i ask about his day at school.. and he tells me he is learning math. we get talking about fractions. "you know mommy just isn't that great with fractions.. did you learn more about fractions after the homework assignment we went over together." once hes a bit more calm, i get more in depth about the math.. give an example of a math problem... mark chimes in... this is all working. he doesn't seem like he is in panic mode.. hes voice calmer.. hes able to focus on the question being asked and give appropriate answers...
we are near home and as we get closer he is back to normal as if nothing has ever happened. i really want to cry.. i feel like this is the beginning of me giving my kid the bad gene of anxiety.. but i also know, that at this little age of his, and with us being so close, its the perfect opportunity to teach him techniques and maybe this thing will either go away or at least not ever consume him. i don't want my kid to feel like a freak of nature.
these days, it is so common, so (we) he is lucky for that. many people have this. as a boy, and some day a man, i see how this could potentially threaten him in the future.
As of right now, well just keep trucking along and hope it gets better and if not, down the road we can go to a dr. but at this point, he is ok. he is an outgoing boy, and sometimes he gets a little embarrassed and i try to ease that for him, teach him ways to deal with that feeling. hes a lot like me in that aspect too. i also feel he is too young to get too in depth about my problem with anxiety, and just how bad i used to have it. that i think could make him more anxious, but for him to know we all have feelings like this sometimes, and we just have to figure out a way to live in this world with it, to me, that is important at this point. anxiety is not always a terrible thing, but when it gets to panic mode where you cant function or it consumes your life, that is different. At another time, if he brings the issue up of the world going on and on we will talk about it, or during the day when hes in a good mood, maybe i will hint at it a bit to see if he is ready to talk about it. to never bring it up again though would send a negative message to him i feel. "we brush things under the rug that we don't understand or that brings out an emotion in us that we don't want to deal with." not healthy.
we are also getting him into karate classes. He is a confident boy, but for more reasons than one, i feel activities like this, will build him up more, make him feel better about himself, and leave a hell of a lot less room for anxiety or anything that may be negative to him.
...one day at a time, well just work through it.
Showing posts with label self help. Show all posts
Showing posts with label self help. Show all posts
Monday, March 11, 2013
Monday, April 16, 2012
Mental health
Its no secret that i love mental health. Ive taken so many classes for mental health/psychology and it never gets old to me. I have to say my absolute favorite part of nursing school (ok my top 3) is mental health. several reasons for this. number one being that i come from an interesting family and as i explain it, thanks to them they helped me pass pretty much any psych class ive ever taken especially my psychiatric mental health nursing class.
Heres the thing...i have anxiety. ive had it since i was about 12 that i knew of, before i even knew what it was. i remember the first experience i really had was when i was in the car with one of my best friends and remember describing to her that i felt fake. now if youve never experienced this feeling it can be pretty scary and it can put you into a fight or flight mode and escalate to panic sometimes.
I talk pretty openly about my anxiety. infact, i welcome anyone to talk to me about it. to me, it is what it is, it is a part of who i am and im ok with it. ive also noticed since moving to cali people seem to not talk about issues like this openly. not sure if it is the area im in or if i am misreading this.. who knows. but i know back home and among the people i met east coast.. people are pretty open about it.
when i was in middle school i was pretty embarrassed about it. i felt like i was the only one with this weird thing..why the hell couldn't i do a presentation without feeling ill, or worrying about what anyone thinks.. ugh...so frustrating.
this blog can get pretty lengthy but ill keep it to a minimum :) ill try...
so back to middle school. now that was just an awkward time in life anyways and just everyones eyes on me...gah! i wanted to run. but i went through with my presentations anyways. praying to god for it to end quickly. my best friend also had anxiety so we kind of bonded that way and joked about our anxiety even though it was very real, it helped make us feel better.
then in high school it was at its absolute WORSE. when i say worse i mean i would pay 10 bucks sometimes just so i didn't have to ride the bus. i avoided presenting at all cost, i wanted to cry trying to explain to the teacher that i just couldn't do it. i would skip class because of this sometimes. not because i didn't want to be there (not always anyways) but sometimes. i always thought this was just not normal. no one else seemed to act like this or felt like i did. what the hell was wrong with me?
i mean, i had moved from rhode island to maine and i was PISSED for...well, for ever it seemed lol. until i became an adult and realized what a good move it actually was for me. so that made my problem worse. i was the new kid, with a weird accent, had no time to prepare myself for the move (if you know me you know i like notice so i can mentally and physically prepare)i was a teenager and felt like my world as i knew it was crashing down on me. at the time i had a lot of issues with my parents and i was going through that weird teenage stuff like when you feel like your feet are too big or your arms are too long..your face breaks out lol... so i was just pissed at the world for a while. a good...looooonnng while.
ok i was digressing a bit.. back to the anxiety...
so i avoided really making friends then the friends i did eventually make, some of them were into some bad habits but we got along and i felt accepted and looking back it was what it was and i wouldn't have changed it. but i just flat out didn't give a shit in 9th grade.
10th grade is when i started to care more, and made friends and knew i was there in maine there was not much i could do about it. i started wanting to make better grades. i attended school more often and skipped classes less. now really my biggest problem was the presenting still.
one other story i will share with you is that in 10th grade i met my high school sweet heart and we were in the same english class. well, he was more outgoing and actually added to my anxiety. after about a month of dating i just had to get out of that class. i think because he was a distraction and people knew we dated...something about that atmosphere and attention being drawn to us.. i just had to get out of there. so i did. it was really hard to try to explain to my teacher why i had to switch my class. i really liked that teacher a lot too but my anxiety had won. i lied to her.. my reasoning for leaving that class because i thought it was pretty stupid that a boyfriend could honestly bring this much anxiety out in me...during class. what the hell. well, i didnt really lie, but sort of.
so 11th and 12 grade were pretty similar, im going to digress a bit here again so skip to the next paragraph if you are so over with my digressing...although i started to show my sweeter side of who i was and dropped some of my bitchy "city girl" attitude....i wasnt a bitch, i just had an attitude and actually most people would disagree with me but i felt bitchy. lol. probably in part to being a teenager and life was kind of competitive especially at work. me and a friend of mine at work were always pissing each other off. we had a love hate relationship, trying to be top dog, but really, we just weren't. but we did try! i mean, we could slap the hell out of pizza dough and multitask like no other but it was just pizza. we were both good workers...teenagers trying to gain control. ahhh those were the good old days :) If i was one of the elders working there i probably would've stuffed he and i in the freezer during shift :) and also, being called a bitch by the people who were supposed to help build my self esteem, amongst other names.. but thats a whole other story.
OK.. heres where we pick up the anxiety story again lol. :) so.. i started college and im pretty sure somewhere within this blog site theres a post about this, so i wont get much into it, but i wanted control of it, i had enough of the BS with anxiety taking over who i was and who i wanted to be. funny thing is out of school i was different. in school i was kind of quiet and just hung with my friends at lunch and stuff... i mean i had friends in classes too but i just kind of stayed quiet i think not to draw attention to myself so i wouldn't panic. in high school.. it was panic attacks i was dealing with. out of my classrooms is where i could be myself. in the lunch room.. during break time. etc. in class forget it. hide me. my best defense against drawing attention was hiding in my hoodie.
i went through a thing where i used to like to wear my jackets and hoodies because i guess maybe it was almost like a security blanket. i could hide. problem was... that hoodie would get hot thus resulting in panicking sometimes when attention was drawn on me. you see how this cycle works? it is so vicious when it is out of control.
now if you are reading this and have anxiety, maybe you are sitting there shaking your head in agree-ance with some of these things ive mentioned. if you haven't experienced it, you may think knowing all this now about me that maybe you didnt, that i was tapped lol! and i cant say i blame anyone for feelign like that because a person who hasn't dealt with it just doesn't know the feeling... just doesn't understand how this could happen. i know.. i know. and i especially know because my mother has/had anxiety bad...waaay back when it was kind of thought to be "crazy" and us kids made fun of her horribly. we did. then i got this and thought oh shit.. im turning into my crazy mother.
...the good thing about that though is i've seen how my mom dealt with her problem which really made me consider my own issues and how i would deal with them. i had a few options at this point in life. i could drop out of college and give into this anxiety.. i could get medication... go to counseling... read books to self educate about this... hide in my hoodie for the rest of my life... i mean the possibilities were really endless lol.
i decided to do a combination of things which again i know somewhere around here i've mentioned in detail before.. (i think!) so ill keep it brief but basically what i did was everything i could. counseling, medicine, self educate, talking openly about my problem etc... and it all worked! it took a little time but it worked.
my main thing is i didn't want to be like a particular person, on medication for the rest of my life. the good news was I didn't have to. the bad news for me was that sometimes people really need medication and i could have been one of them but my view was already tainted about meds. i wanted to avoid them like the plague. over the years my view has changed about that and no one should be ashamed for needing to take medicine for a mental health issue.
for me though, i had really wanted to try to stay off the medicine. long story short.. i decided my little rituals weren't working any more, i was getting older and needed to get over my fears. so what did i do? i took the meds LOL!! BUT...i used themt o help me and only used them as long as i felt i needed to.
what i did was my second year of college i remember sitting in a class and i had to speak from my chair. i knew my turn was coming to speak.. now im going to walk you though my feelings... "im sitting here in my chair... theres about 10 people that have to speak before i do.. i know my turn is coming up, my hands are sweating, im swallowing about 20 times, my throat is dry.. i need water... but now after if taken a few sips i have too much fluid in my mouth what if i spit... ok ok.. theres just 4 people left now.. i feel like im getting hot, im gonna pass out. let me take my jacket off. i need to touch something cool so i can put it on the back of my neck because im gonna pass out if i dont. ok theres 1 person in front of me now.. omg.. ok ok how am i gonna start this.. ok jacquie i just gotta do this and not think about feeling like a freak.. deep breath, another swallow, another palm check yup still clammy.. ok my turn.." then i speak and while im speaking i feel like everyone can see im having anxiety but really, they probably didnt at all. i dont think anyone ever noticed. i mean i didnt get to say all i wanted to saya dn i wasnt too confident but i did it and before i know it my fight or flight response has chilled out and things are ok.
SO soon after that episode (it was in an english class btw...another freakin english class lol) i decided to try the zoloft. nothing too high, just 50mg.. something to help me out so i could help myself.
i felt like things were getting better. i used it for maybe under a year, learned how to deal with this, then got off the medicine.
now my next challenge was interesting. now i went through the cna schooling ok i was pregnant with brody.. did fine. used all the skills i taught myself while i was on my medicine. enrolled into my medical assisting program an found out OH i HAVE to take a speach class! unfreaking believable. an entire semester dedicated to my anxiety trigger. you kidding me??
well, instead of freaking out and stamping my feet, i decided now was a perfect time to take advantage of this class, volunteer to take it sooner rather than wait until the last possible moment when i wouldn't have a choice (having a choice really helped me manage my anxiety) so i took the class, got an A in it, did great and that really opened some amazing doors for me!
the only way to get over a fear is to face it head on. now i know for some people, this can be debilitating and really hard to do, you have to do it when you're ready, and if you ever feel you are ready to do it. if you are never ready then to each his own. only we know our own bodies and what we are capable of trying.
for years i stayed off any medicine. about 4 years? and i did really well off of it. i started RN school and like they say in nursing school if you weren't on medication when you started, you will be LOL! so true!
so the goal is to manage anxiety. it is never ever going to go away. i no longer take the zoloft. im starting to go swimming now that the weather is nice. yoga helps, my gardening, and remembering to let loose everyone now and then. go to dinner with mark and live in that moment and worry about school when i get home and have to study. its important to take care of ourselves mentally as well as physically.
honestly, i could go on forever with this however i have to be at clinical tomorrow morning so i suppose now is a good time to stop. That and if you actually are still reading this...holy crap!:D have a good night.
Heres the thing...i have anxiety. ive had it since i was about 12 that i knew of, before i even knew what it was. i remember the first experience i really had was when i was in the car with one of my best friends and remember describing to her that i felt fake. now if youve never experienced this feeling it can be pretty scary and it can put you into a fight or flight mode and escalate to panic sometimes.
I talk pretty openly about my anxiety. infact, i welcome anyone to talk to me about it. to me, it is what it is, it is a part of who i am and im ok with it. ive also noticed since moving to cali people seem to not talk about issues like this openly. not sure if it is the area im in or if i am misreading this.. who knows. but i know back home and among the people i met east coast.. people are pretty open about it.
when i was in middle school i was pretty embarrassed about it. i felt like i was the only one with this weird thing..why the hell couldn't i do a presentation without feeling ill, or worrying about what anyone thinks.. ugh...so frustrating.
this blog can get pretty lengthy but ill keep it to a minimum :) ill try...
so back to middle school. now that was just an awkward time in life anyways and just everyones eyes on me...gah! i wanted to run. but i went through with my presentations anyways. praying to god for it to end quickly. my best friend also had anxiety so we kind of bonded that way and joked about our anxiety even though it was very real, it helped make us feel better.
then in high school it was at its absolute WORSE. when i say worse i mean i would pay 10 bucks sometimes just so i didn't have to ride the bus. i avoided presenting at all cost, i wanted to cry trying to explain to the teacher that i just couldn't do it. i would skip class because of this sometimes. not because i didn't want to be there (not always anyways) but sometimes. i always thought this was just not normal. no one else seemed to act like this or felt like i did. what the hell was wrong with me?
i mean, i had moved from rhode island to maine and i was PISSED for...well, for ever it seemed lol. until i became an adult and realized what a good move it actually was for me. so that made my problem worse. i was the new kid, with a weird accent, had no time to prepare myself for the move (if you know me you know i like notice so i can mentally and physically prepare)i was a teenager and felt like my world as i knew it was crashing down on me. at the time i had a lot of issues with my parents and i was going through that weird teenage stuff like when you feel like your feet are too big or your arms are too long..your face breaks out lol... so i was just pissed at the world for a while. a good...looooonnng while.
ok i was digressing a bit.. back to the anxiety...
so i avoided really making friends then the friends i did eventually make, some of them were into some bad habits but we got along and i felt accepted and looking back it was what it was and i wouldn't have changed it. but i just flat out didn't give a shit in 9th grade.
10th grade is when i started to care more, and made friends and knew i was there in maine there was not much i could do about it. i started wanting to make better grades. i attended school more often and skipped classes less. now really my biggest problem was the presenting still.
one other story i will share with you is that in 10th grade i met my high school sweet heart and we were in the same english class. well, he was more outgoing and actually added to my anxiety. after about a month of dating i just had to get out of that class. i think because he was a distraction and people knew we dated...something about that atmosphere and attention being drawn to us.. i just had to get out of there. so i did. it was really hard to try to explain to my teacher why i had to switch my class. i really liked that teacher a lot too but my anxiety had won. i lied to her.. my reasoning for leaving that class because i thought it was pretty stupid that a boyfriend could honestly bring this much anxiety out in me...during class. what the hell. well, i didnt really lie, but sort of.
so 11th and 12 grade were pretty similar, im going to digress a bit here again so skip to the next paragraph if you are so over with my digressing...although i started to show my sweeter side of who i was and dropped some of my bitchy "city girl" attitude....i wasnt a bitch, i just had an attitude and actually most people would disagree with me but i felt bitchy. lol. probably in part to being a teenager and life was kind of competitive especially at work. me and a friend of mine at work were always pissing each other off. we had a love hate relationship, trying to be top dog, but really, we just weren't. but we did try! i mean, we could slap the hell out of pizza dough and multitask like no other but it was just pizza. we were both good workers...teenagers trying to gain control. ahhh those were the good old days :) If i was one of the elders working there i probably would've stuffed he and i in the freezer during shift :) and also, being called a bitch by the people who were supposed to help build my self esteem, amongst other names.. but thats a whole other story.
OK.. heres where we pick up the anxiety story again lol. :) so.. i started college and im pretty sure somewhere within this blog site theres a post about this, so i wont get much into it, but i wanted control of it, i had enough of the BS with anxiety taking over who i was and who i wanted to be. funny thing is out of school i was different. in school i was kind of quiet and just hung with my friends at lunch and stuff... i mean i had friends in classes too but i just kind of stayed quiet i think not to draw attention to myself so i wouldn't panic. in high school.. it was panic attacks i was dealing with. out of my classrooms is where i could be myself. in the lunch room.. during break time. etc. in class forget it. hide me. my best defense against drawing attention was hiding in my hoodie.
i went through a thing where i used to like to wear my jackets and hoodies because i guess maybe it was almost like a security blanket. i could hide. problem was... that hoodie would get hot thus resulting in panicking sometimes when attention was drawn on me. you see how this cycle works? it is so vicious when it is out of control.
now if you are reading this and have anxiety, maybe you are sitting there shaking your head in agree-ance with some of these things ive mentioned. if you haven't experienced it, you may think knowing all this now about me that maybe you didnt, that i was tapped lol! and i cant say i blame anyone for feelign like that because a person who hasn't dealt with it just doesn't know the feeling... just doesn't understand how this could happen. i know.. i know. and i especially know because my mother has/had anxiety bad...waaay back when it was kind of thought to be "crazy" and us kids made fun of her horribly. we did. then i got this and thought oh shit.. im turning into my crazy mother.
...the good thing about that though is i've seen how my mom dealt with her problem which really made me consider my own issues and how i would deal with them. i had a few options at this point in life. i could drop out of college and give into this anxiety.. i could get medication... go to counseling... read books to self educate about this... hide in my hoodie for the rest of my life... i mean the possibilities were really endless lol.
i decided to do a combination of things which again i know somewhere around here i've mentioned in detail before.. (i think!) so ill keep it brief but basically what i did was everything i could. counseling, medicine, self educate, talking openly about my problem etc... and it all worked! it took a little time but it worked.
my main thing is i didn't want to be like a particular person, on medication for the rest of my life. the good news was I didn't have to. the bad news for me was that sometimes people really need medication and i could have been one of them but my view was already tainted about meds. i wanted to avoid them like the plague. over the years my view has changed about that and no one should be ashamed for needing to take medicine for a mental health issue.
for me though, i had really wanted to try to stay off the medicine. long story short.. i decided my little rituals weren't working any more, i was getting older and needed to get over my fears. so what did i do? i took the meds LOL!! BUT...i used themt o help me and only used them as long as i felt i needed to.
what i did was my second year of college i remember sitting in a class and i had to speak from my chair. i knew my turn was coming to speak.. now im going to walk you though my feelings... "im sitting here in my chair... theres about 10 people that have to speak before i do.. i know my turn is coming up, my hands are sweating, im swallowing about 20 times, my throat is dry.. i need water... but now after if taken a few sips i have too much fluid in my mouth what if i spit... ok ok.. theres just 4 people left now.. i feel like im getting hot, im gonna pass out. let me take my jacket off. i need to touch something cool so i can put it on the back of my neck because im gonna pass out if i dont. ok theres 1 person in front of me now.. omg.. ok ok how am i gonna start this.. ok jacquie i just gotta do this and not think about feeling like a freak.. deep breath, another swallow, another palm check yup still clammy.. ok my turn.." then i speak and while im speaking i feel like everyone can see im having anxiety but really, they probably didnt at all. i dont think anyone ever noticed. i mean i didnt get to say all i wanted to saya dn i wasnt too confident but i did it and before i know it my fight or flight response has chilled out and things are ok.
SO soon after that episode (it was in an english class btw...another freakin english class lol) i decided to try the zoloft. nothing too high, just 50mg.. something to help me out so i could help myself.
i felt like things were getting better. i used it for maybe under a year, learned how to deal with this, then got off the medicine.
now my next challenge was interesting. now i went through the cna schooling ok i was pregnant with brody.. did fine. used all the skills i taught myself while i was on my medicine. enrolled into my medical assisting program an found out OH i HAVE to take a speach class! unfreaking believable. an entire semester dedicated to my anxiety trigger. you kidding me??
well, instead of freaking out and stamping my feet, i decided now was a perfect time to take advantage of this class, volunteer to take it sooner rather than wait until the last possible moment when i wouldn't have a choice (having a choice really helped me manage my anxiety) so i took the class, got an A in it, did great and that really opened some amazing doors for me!
the only way to get over a fear is to face it head on. now i know for some people, this can be debilitating and really hard to do, you have to do it when you're ready, and if you ever feel you are ready to do it. if you are never ready then to each his own. only we know our own bodies and what we are capable of trying.
for years i stayed off any medicine. about 4 years? and i did really well off of it. i started RN school and like they say in nursing school if you weren't on medication when you started, you will be LOL! so true!
so the goal is to manage anxiety. it is never ever going to go away. i no longer take the zoloft. im starting to go swimming now that the weather is nice. yoga helps, my gardening, and remembering to let loose everyone now and then. go to dinner with mark and live in that moment and worry about school when i get home and have to study. its important to take care of ourselves mentally as well as physically.
honestly, i could go on forever with this however i have to be at clinical tomorrow morning so i suppose now is a good time to stop. That and if you actually are still reading this...holy crap!:D have a good night.
Friday, March 2, 2012
the simplest things
For the last maybe 4 days ive been really kind of obsessing about life and my appreciation for mine and what i have and who i have in it. As some know, ive been following the journal of a family whose son had a horrible car accident back in November. I knew him from church when i was a teenager. Once in a while a situation comes along unexpectedly and kind of knocks me off my feet and makes me think ya know.. it could be me.. it could be my brother, it could be my kid.. my husband, my best friend etc...
Along with this, I have been going to church more often, and i feel it has been a realyl great move for me and my family, AND my relationship with Mark. We dont have too many times in a day when it is just he and I, and his work schedule hours are random as far as when he comes home sometimes. i usually dont even ask when he will be home. i just know if hes not home by 8, i should call to check that he is ok. brody is in school, so its just me and ethan together a lot. and even then, i had gotten so wrapped up in my own stuff, including spending way too much time bumming around. in previous blogs, i wrote some about that... this place has just taken away some of that drive to do anything that i had in me. but im getting it back :)
So over the last maybe 2 months weve been going to church and life's been moving forward in a direction im liking, so ive really been enjoying it, however, not to the fullest, adn i want that full cup. then 4 days ago things started coming full circle for me and im liking it. life really is wonderful. for some, maybe not so much but you gotta figure out a way to get back onto that path and sometimes, it takes someone elses story to make you realize this. sometimes even a total stranger.
ive been in these situations before where ive been so moved by another story its helped me get back on my own track of where i want to be in life. i thank god for those opportunities. I woke up this morning, and as soon as i sent Brody off to school (hes been riding his bike again because the weathers been nice and he is SOOOOO excited about that btw!) before i even got my cup of coffee, something came over me to write on my little pink wipe board top 10 reasons why my husband rocks lol. so i did, and i ran out of room. hes amazing! see thsi chain reaction happens when someone elses story touches your heart... and it extends to the world around you... its like a smile.. its contagious. so hopefully that made marks night.. which i believe it did, because in return, we spent some much needed time just snuggling on the couch, watching alton brown with the kids. we also decided not to go out tonight, just stay in and enjoy the night together. i made us each a nice drink and chocolate covered strawberries for dessert. it was a great night. tomorrow is going to be another great day. were taking the boys to the movies which we havent all done together in a while.
anyhow... i just felt the need to blog because ive had so much on my mind and ive been feeling really good. we have a great life here. i may not where physically where i want to be, some days are tough being out here 'alone', my schooling has extended way beyond what i ever though it wouldve been.. in addition my upbringing, some of it, wasnt a fairy tale although far from being down right awful... but all of this is trivial compared to other possibilities. eventually i will complete school and i will be home with my family and who knows..maybe i wont like it being back home after all lol!! my personal life with my family members is in a good place, for everyone i want to be close to and im happy about that. even long distance i feel loved :) I have one life, thats it, and I am really enjoying it despite the obstacles.
Along with this, I have been going to church more often, and i feel it has been a realyl great move for me and my family, AND my relationship with Mark. We dont have too many times in a day when it is just he and I, and his work schedule hours are random as far as when he comes home sometimes. i usually dont even ask when he will be home. i just know if hes not home by 8, i should call to check that he is ok. brody is in school, so its just me and ethan together a lot. and even then, i had gotten so wrapped up in my own stuff, including spending way too much time bumming around. in previous blogs, i wrote some about that... this place has just taken away some of that drive to do anything that i had in me. but im getting it back :)
So over the last maybe 2 months weve been going to church and life's been moving forward in a direction im liking, so ive really been enjoying it, however, not to the fullest, adn i want that full cup. then 4 days ago things started coming full circle for me and im liking it. life really is wonderful. for some, maybe not so much but you gotta figure out a way to get back onto that path and sometimes, it takes someone elses story to make you realize this. sometimes even a total stranger.
ive been in these situations before where ive been so moved by another story its helped me get back on my own track of where i want to be in life. i thank god for those opportunities. I woke up this morning, and as soon as i sent Brody off to school (hes been riding his bike again because the weathers been nice and he is SOOOOO excited about that btw!) before i even got my cup of coffee, something came over me to write on my little pink wipe board top 10 reasons why my husband rocks lol. so i did, and i ran out of room. hes amazing! see thsi chain reaction happens when someone elses story touches your heart... and it extends to the world around you... its like a smile.. its contagious. so hopefully that made marks night.. which i believe it did, because in return, we spent some much needed time just snuggling on the couch, watching alton brown with the kids. we also decided not to go out tonight, just stay in and enjoy the night together. i made us each a nice drink and chocolate covered strawberries for dessert. it was a great night. tomorrow is going to be another great day. were taking the boys to the movies which we havent all done together in a while.
anyhow... i just felt the need to blog because ive had so much on my mind and ive been feeling really good. we have a great life here. i may not where physically where i want to be, some days are tough being out here 'alone', my schooling has extended way beyond what i ever though it wouldve been.. in addition my upbringing, some of it, wasnt a fairy tale although far from being down right awful... but all of this is trivial compared to other possibilities. eventually i will complete school and i will be home with my family and who knows..maybe i wont like it being back home after all lol!! my personal life with my family members is in a good place, for everyone i want to be close to and im happy about that. even long distance i feel loved :) I have one life, thats it, and I am really enjoying it despite the obstacles.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
A military wifes (thats me) top ten
I can NOT sleep, and ive been looking up the most random things online and i think that is why my brain will not allow me to sleep. that and fighting off a major migraine a few hours ago. IN ADVANCE.. PLEASE forgive the typos. i probably will not edit this once i write it. im hoping this will make me feel tired. its been a while since ive typed up anything like this :)
I decided to come up with a top ten list of things you miss and exchange them for as a military wife.. and really as a family. you know how hard it is for me to think of JUST 10 THINGS? very.... i already have a slew coming to me which is why i had to jump up out of bed and type them out before i forgot.
You know, choosing to be an active duty military family for a career to me is very different than i think anyone can imagine unless your husband (family) has decided to do this as a career. This is why as time goes on, i feel myself detaching a bit from my old life and settling ok into this life now and almost at a loss for what it will be like when we are done with this career. it is becoming all ive known as an adult, and raising my kids, and i kind of dont mind it, aside from missing on the stuff back home. there is not a person that can relate to my life style back home.. not from a career perspective and moving around like we have, so the other families i have met along the way that have become my family, i really cherish because they get it! :)
ON WITH THE COUNT DOWN! in NO particular order.. come on, it IS 2am here, way too late to care about ordering for this OCD chick... ;P
1. You MISS OUT on family dinners for holidays which can sometimes turn routine or result in feuds. you dont have moms traditional plate and your aunts home made pie she has every year. INSTEAD... you get to have a new face at the table or go to a new friends home for dinner and share fond memories of dinners back home, and really appreciate those memories. You share one of your family traditional dishes with others and have a dish you never had before. This make you appreciate family more because you cant be with them, and you think about the day when you will be able to have a nice family dinner with them again.
2. You MISS OUT of friends getting married and having children of their own and your friends kids growing up with yours and the dream you once had of living next door to your best friend doesnt happen. INSTEAD you get to meet a TON of new people, your kids have best friends all over the U.S. and maybe over seas, and every chance you get to talk to your best friend on the phone it puts a smile on your heart because had you lived so close to one another, you wouldnt appreciate your friend the way you do being away from them. with every visit back home, you realize just how much you miss your friend, but also just how special they are and unique from the military friends you now have... its something very special :)
3. you MISS OUT on feeling like any new place is home and just when you get used to being somewhere, your up and moving again! in EXCHANGE, you know you ALWAYS have a place to call home when you go visit your home town... you know someone will always let you crash at their place. You have memories of special events that took place at certain locations... you leave your foot prints and will always have places to go back and visit once you settle down. like for us, Florida is where we really became a family. i will always remember florida for that. it is our home away from home. California is where life changed again for us and Mark made chief and i will be finishing college. Some day, it will be nice to travel again to the places we had lived and say "remember when..."
4. you MISS OUT on nights out with your friends, and doing each others makeup and hair and asking them how do i look and them giving you an honest opinion..and going to the same little dive bar on the corner every so often where people know you.INSTEAD, you can have a new friend to go out with every time you go out. you dont have to love the person your hanging out with because in a few months maybe theyre moving... but for right now, theyre actually pretty cool to hang with, you havent known them that long so you havent had enough time to figure out what annoys you about them. Or maybe you really click with them and you know you will both be stationed here for 4 years, so you have 4 years to cram in everything you can without the BS because you dont have time to waste on BS!
5. You MISS OUT on your husband having a regular 9-5 job with weekends off. INSTEAD its pretty random at times, sometimes they do work weekends, but sometimes they get extra days off of work too. The unpredictable schedule gives you a chance to catch up on some house chores or treat yourself to a pedicure, or watch some really awful reality tv show your husband hates while you wait for him to get home.
6. you MISS OUT on being able to sleep next to your husband every night and sometimes for 6 months or more at a time. INSTEEEEAAADDD.... you get the ENTIRE BED to yourself, you can spread out, sleep witha light on, or the tv, have your kids snuggle with you on those nights, eat in bed, wear your footie jammies, ...whatever you wanna do because the entire bed is yours!
7. you MISS OUT on being able to eat at your favorite places that are 'back home' and even if you try to attempt to make your favorite food, you cant find all the ingredients you need at your local stores in your new town. INSTEAD... you learn to improvise, or try a new dish to cook for dinner, or get take out at a restaurant youve never heard of before then tell your friends back home all about it.
8. you MISS OUT on taking your kids to do things that you did as a kid unless you do some really careful planning and even then its just not enough time. INSTEAD, when you do get the chance to show your child where you grew up and played, its pretty special because its not a place down the road they can go to any time they want... you know they wouldnt.... how many times have you complained about not having a gym to go to then when you find one within walking distance how often have you gone? if youre like me, not that often!
9. you MISS OUT on bonding with your younger family members the way you imagined it would be when your brother told you he was having a child...and every time you see them it is almost like reintroducing yourself to them then you have to leave and it can be heart breaking. INSTEAD you can create a really special bond with them long distance in unique ways and when you come to town they are really excited that the coolest aunt in the world is coming to visit! ;P
10. you MISS OUT on tradition.. which isnt always a bad thing. trying to keep up with traditions when you are moving around and life is fairly rapidly changing can be a challenge. INSTEAD you choose a traditional cookie recipe to make for christmas or try a new way of exchanging gifts long distance and its not as stressful trying to keep up with all these traditions and no one is looking over your shoulder making sure you are doing the traditions or even doing them correct! can you imagine if your mother knew you werent using grandmas china for christmas dinner that year... the same dish set thats been used every thanksgiving for the last 50 years!? and you wanted to use a new, much cooler dish set you just bought? she may just pass out! but its YOUR house, YOUR new tradition of not having much tradition... you pick and choose which traditions are important to you rather than doing all of the traditions because well.. youd just collapse trying to keep everything perfect as though life around you hadnt changed.
11. (yes 11, a bonus one.. arent you lucky!!) you "MISS OUT" on getting family member hand me downs you dont have room for. shucks. All those damn dishes from all 4 of your grandparents that mom dug out of their attics in 1976 cant POSSIBLY survive a move across the country! whatever shall you do? INSTEAD you can buy a new dish set :) you can pick and choose what you will and can not/will not accept because you may not have room or it could break etc...
and THAT my friends is my 'top ten' things you miss out on and exchange for something else. its a good life, enjoy it while you can. the good, the bad AND yes the ugly because some day it will be all over. ive been in this life style for 8 years and not everything gets easier, but you just adjust and make things work, and become stronger and learn things you never would have known had you stayed "home" all your life and not ventured past the mississippi lol. :) HOWEVER, i WILL be very happy to move back to new england some day or at least within a few hours drive of my friends and family who i adore so much <3
I decided to come up with a top ten list of things you miss and exchange them for as a military wife.. and really as a family. you know how hard it is for me to think of JUST 10 THINGS? very.... i already have a slew coming to me which is why i had to jump up out of bed and type them out before i forgot.
You know, choosing to be an active duty military family for a career to me is very different than i think anyone can imagine unless your husband (family) has decided to do this as a career. This is why as time goes on, i feel myself detaching a bit from my old life and settling ok into this life now and almost at a loss for what it will be like when we are done with this career. it is becoming all ive known as an adult, and raising my kids, and i kind of dont mind it, aside from missing on the stuff back home. there is not a person that can relate to my life style back home.. not from a career perspective and moving around like we have, so the other families i have met along the way that have become my family, i really cherish because they get it! :)
ON WITH THE COUNT DOWN! in NO particular order.. come on, it IS 2am here, way too late to care about ordering for this OCD chick... ;P
1. You MISS OUT on family dinners for holidays which can sometimes turn routine or result in feuds. you dont have moms traditional plate and your aunts home made pie she has every year. INSTEAD... you get to have a new face at the table or go to a new friends home for dinner and share fond memories of dinners back home, and really appreciate those memories. You share one of your family traditional dishes with others and have a dish you never had before. This make you appreciate family more because you cant be with them, and you think about the day when you will be able to have a nice family dinner with them again.
2. You MISS OUT of friends getting married and having children of their own and your friends kids growing up with yours and the dream you once had of living next door to your best friend doesnt happen. INSTEAD you get to meet a TON of new people, your kids have best friends all over the U.S. and maybe over seas, and every chance you get to talk to your best friend on the phone it puts a smile on your heart because had you lived so close to one another, you wouldnt appreciate your friend the way you do being away from them. with every visit back home, you realize just how much you miss your friend, but also just how special they are and unique from the military friends you now have... its something very special :)
3. you MISS OUT on feeling like any new place is home and just when you get used to being somewhere, your up and moving again! in EXCHANGE, you know you ALWAYS have a place to call home when you go visit your home town... you know someone will always let you crash at their place. You have memories of special events that took place at certain locations... you leave your foot prints and will always have places to go back and visit once you settle down. like for us, Florida is where we really became a family. i will always remember florida for that. it is our home away from home. California is where life changed again for us and Mark made chief and i will be finishing college. Some day, it will be nice to travel again to the places we had lived and say "remember when..."
4. you MISS OUT on nights out with your friends, and doing each others makeup and hair and asking them how do i look and them giving you an honest opinion..and going to the same little dive bar on the corner every so often where people know you.INSTEAD, you can have a new friend to go out with every time you go out. you dont have to love the person your hanging out with because in a few months maybe theyre moving... but for right now, theyre actually pretty cool to hang with, you havent known them that long so you havent had enough time to figure out what annoys you about them. Or maybe you really click with them and you know you will both be stationed here for 4 years, so you have 4 years to cram in everything you can without the BS because you dont have time to waste on BS!
5. You MISS OUT on your husband having a regular 9-5 job with weekends off. INSTEAD its pretty random at times, sometimes they do work weekends, but sometimes they get extra days off of work too. The unpredictable schedule gives you a chance to catch up on some house chores or treat yourself to a pedicure, or watch some really awful reality tv show your husband hates while you wait for him to get home.
6. you MISS OUT on being able to sleep next to your husband every night and sometimes for 6 months or more at a time. INSTEEEEAAADDD.... you get the ENTIRE BED to yourself, you can spread out, sleep witha light on, or the tv, have your kids snuggle with you on those nights, eat in bed, wear your footie jammies, ...whatever you wanna do because the entire bed is yours!
7. you MISS OUT on being able to eat at your favorite places that are 'back home' and even if you try to attempt to make your favorite food, you cant find all the ingredients you need at your local stores in your new town. INSTEAD... you learn to improvise, or try a new dish to cook for dinner, or get take out at a restaurant youve never heard of before then tell your friends back home all about it.
8. you MISS OUT on taking your kids to do things that you did as a kid unless you do some really careful planning and even then its just not enough time. INSTEAD, when you do get the chance to show your child where you grew up and played, its pretty special because its not a place down the road they can go to any time they want... you know they wouldnt.... how many times have you complained about not having a gym to go to then when you find one within walking distance how often have you gone? if youre like me, not that often!
9. you MISS OUT on bonding with your younger family members the way you imagined it would be when your brother told you he was having a child...and every time you see them it is almost like reintroducing yourself to them then you have to leave and it can be heart breaking. INSTEAD you can create a really special bond with them long distance in unique ways and when you come to town they are really excited that the coolest aunt in the world is coming to visit! ;P
10. you MISS OUT on tradition.. which isnt always a bad thing. trying to keep up with traditions when you are moving around and life is fairly rapidly changing can be a challenge. INSTEAD you choose a traditional cookie recipe to make for christmas or try a new way of exchanging gifts long distance and its not as stressful trying to keep up with all these traditions and no one is looking over your shoulder making sure you are doing the traditions or even doing them correct! can you imagine if your mother knew you werent using grandmas china for christmas dinner that year... the same dish set thats been used every thanksgiving for the last 50 years!? and you wanted to use a new, much cooler dish set you just bought? she may just pass out! but its YOUR house, YOUR new tradition of not having much tradition... you pick and choose which traditions are important to you rather than doing all of the traditions because well.. youd just collapse trying to keep everything perfect as though life around you hadnt changed.
11. (yes 11, a bonus one.. arent you lucky!!) you "MISS OUT" on getting family member hand me downs you dont have room for. shucks. All those damn dishes from all 4 of your grandparents that mom dug out of their attics in 1976 cant POSSIBLY survive a move across the country! whatever shall you do? INSTEAD you can buy a new dish set :) you can pick and choose what you will and can not/will not accept because you may not have room or it could break etc...
and THAT my friends is my 'top ten' things you miss out on and exchange for something else. its a good life, enjoy it while you can. the good, the bad AND yes the ugly because some day it will be all over. ive been in this life style for 8 years and not everything gets easier, but you just adjust and make things work, and become stronger and learn things you never would have known had you stayed "home" all your life and not ventured past the mississippi lol. :) HOWEVER, i WILL be very happy to move back to new england some day or at least within a few hours drive of my friends and family who i adore so much <3
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
The greatest things in life
again, im sorry if there are typos. im not fixing them. i have some homework to do but felt the need to write...
:)
I am not incredibly religious, but i do believe in god, and many things related to Christianity. i consider myself a christian. One thing that my grandmother who is religious and has a very close relationship to god.. always tells me 'let go and let god.' and 95% of the time i do listen to her. ive been noticing a trend lately and i think it is related to that.
I am the type of person who likes to have control of everything going on in my life, i do not like the unknown, or change, although over the last 3 years id say, ive done better with change and sort of welcome it now. The reason is kind of simple, but it came with a few lessons, and lessons i dont think ill ever forget because they changed my life, and for the better, and im so thankful.
It started around the time i broke up with my long term boyfriend in high school. ill spare all the fine details because it is kind of boring, and a bit repetitive if youve known me for a while, then you probably know what happened over the year or so after he and i broke up. it was a friendly breakup. we just werent compatible anymore. i wish him well always.
I moved out of my moms house, i was a pissed off teenager. her and i at the time werent getting along. live with my dad. planned to stay for a few months then return to maine. i had a car that i was paying way too much money for, dated a guy i normally wouldnt choose for myself although while it lasted it was fun, and moved on a whim... all these things werent like me to do.. but i did them. theres the short version of what happened.
when i moved back to maine i met mark and things REALLY changed for the better. you (most of you) know my family's past. specifically, my parents... my dad dropped out of school in 8th grade, my mother became a mom at 16 and had 4 kids and had a few abusive relationships, and we were ok even though at times struggling. theres the short version of that if you didnt know. although, my mother did end up getting her diploma eventually after becoming a mother, and even went to college for a little while. my dad got his GED a few years ago, and im proud of both of my parents for picking up their education.
so education has always been important to me in my adult life. most of you know and see this. so recently, ive been thinking so much about my live over the last 7 years with mark, and how much it has changed, adn how when i am in control, or think im in control,things dont always seem to go the way i planned for it. i planned to go to nursing school when i was a mom of two babies and it didnt work out. i tried again in sc and was told we had to move to cali. i never ever wanted to move to cali, never wanted to go to FL...etc..etc... i could go on with my list of things i DIDNT want to do. my grammy as i said always tells me 'let go and let god...jesus is your best friend.' so the more i did let go and let god, things started happening for me. ok ok i didnt want to go to florida.. but i did. i didnt have a choice if i wanted to be with my husband and raise our family together. it was one of the highlights in my life that i would say was the toughest decision. i just had this baby (ethan) and i left behind a good job, all my friends and family, i had anxiety, i felt like i was not ready and i never imagined if leave new england. but i did and i made new friends. i learned how to get by on my own.. things i had always done for myself but with protection around me 'just in-case'...i had my safety net of friends, family, and things i knew.. so i was still doing the same things in FL but without my safety net and it scared me.
so fast forward... after FL we got to go to SC wehre i felt i was closer to my safety net. then we were told we had to move to cali.. i think this is where i finally threw in the towel adn said 'ok god.. you win.. YOU WIN! what am i suposed to do now?' so basically, god dragged my by the ear, had me drive across country feel nervous and anxious.. and i got here and thigns started to happen. I am getting everything i want but on gods time... gods plan for me, not mine.
so heres a list of other things i didnt want to do.. i did not want to move to cali, didnt want to drive across country, didnt want to pay 30,000 for school, didnt want to drive to fresno for school, didnt want to have ethan home with me (i wanted him in school) didnt want to work at home on my associates degree in something i didnt want, didnt want.... didnt want...didnt ant.. you get my point. well all the things i didnt want i ended up doing anyways because at this point, 'gods pla' for me just seemed to make me happier. i was kind of lost in my direction.
dear god, you know i tried to get out of going to fresno and choosing a school closer to me.. so god said 'ok jacquie.. im gonna let you go to that meeting at the other school, but im telling you, thats not where you belong'. so i went to that meeting at the other school, and of course, god was right lol. that school wouldve been closer, and in what i felt a safer area, the only downfall was it was a thousand or so more expensive, but i got everything else I WANTED in that school. but something told me to stick with gurnick and i did. so im on this streak of good things here now...
... now i have certain classes approved for that anywhere else i ried, they would not approve my classes. this brought tuition down, and i only have 8 months of school befor eim an LPN...which is amazing.. I DIDNT WANT to be an LPN.. i wanted to be an RN! but.. thats not my plan. right now i have 2 years here thats it. i think about RN school and i get a nausea feeling because my time limit here and the stress i had at PJC when i started the RN program there... i just didnt have enough time here and id be pressuring myself way too much so this LPN school fell into my lap and seemed more for me. the other thing with the school thats closer to me is that they kept trying to pressure me into doing the RN program because i had so many classes done already. it was tempting ill tell you, but it wasnt the plan for me... i could just hear god and my grandmother saying no... no.. no.. youre doing what you want again and not following with what would make life easier and your goal more attainable... so i stopped myself and just stuck with gurnick which has been really a helpful school so far! so im hoping now that things will continue to go well for me here. also, childcare fell into place. never, ever has it been this easy for me with getting things together for school. also, i got my day time classes. i was placed on an alternate list.. a list I DIDNT WANT to be on, but my gut (and god) told me to get on that alternate list and i listened and the counselor told me that morning before my enrollment appointment a spot opened up for me and i was first on her list. so the spot was mine. theres only 22 spots in the program so i made it! i made it by letting go and letting god as my grandmother would say adn i do believe it. im not preachy about god or religion. im spiritual, and i leave it at that and rarely share my beliefs with other people. This blog is about what worked for me and whether you believe in god or not, i am not trying to persuade... so dont think that. my experience however, has been much more smooth when i listened to my grandmother.
another great thing that has happened to my family since we just did what we had to do and not necessarily what we wanted to was that my husband made chief. it is 6 weeks of tough training but i have no doubt in him or my ability to pull through. again, it is NOT what i WANT to be doing, but no one gets served on a silver platter... no one in this family anyways, and i like it this way. theres lessons to be learned in life and plenty of good advice out there from people have have lived through situations we are going through and theres a bigger picture as to why things are the way they are. so we shut up, and get the job done. in south carolina my family was tested big time. i thought it wouldve been a better experience for us and was so happy to be closer to family and I CHOSE to go to SC. i pushed for it hard. we got there and things started to fall apart. at times,it seemed we were on the right track but of course when you are getting your way it seems that way.
it took for us to let go of things for our family to have what it needs and yes i am a believer that if you just have faith in a higher power that you will be put on the right track it will happen. of course, not with work on your end though. It doesnt just happen. and you will fall off that track at some point because there are other lessons you have to learn.. adn once you learn that lesson and get the bigger picture, youll get back on track again. how boring would it be if we stayed on this strait, predictable path our entire lives? quite boring!
:)
I am not incredibly religious, but i do believe in god, and many things related to Christianity. i consider myself a christian. One thing that my grandmother who is religious and has a very close relationship to god.. always tells me 'let go and let god.' and 95% of the time i do listen to her. ive been noticing a trend lately and i think it is related to that.
I am the type of person who likes to have control of everything going on in my life, i do not like the unknown, or change, although over the last 3 years id say, ive done better with change and sort of welcome it now. The reason is kind of simple, but it came with a few lessons, and lessons i dont think ill ever forget because they changed my life, and for the better, and im so thankful.
It started around the time i broke up with my long term boyfriend in high school. ill spare all the fine details because it is kind of boring, and a bit repetitive if youve known me for a while, then you probably know what happened over the year or so after he and i broke up. it was a friendly breakup. we just werent compatible anymore. i wish him well always.
I moved out of my moms house, i was a pissed off teenager. her and i at the time werent getting along. live with my dad. planned to stay for a few months then return to maine. i had a car that i was paying way too much money for, dated a guy i normally wouldnt choose for myself although while it lasted it was fun, and moved on a whim... all these things werent like me to do.. but i did them. theres the short version of what happened.
when i moved back to maine i met mark and things REALLY changed for the better. you (most of you) know my family's past. specifically, my parents... my dad dropped out of school in 8th grade, my mother became a mom at 16 and had 4 kids and had a few abusive relationships, and we were ok even though at times struggling. theres the short version of that if you didnt know. although, my mother did end up getting her diploma eventually after becoming a mother, and even went to college for a little while. my dad got his GED a few years ago, and im proud of both of my parents for picking up their education.
so education has always been important to me in my adult life. most of you know and see this. so recently, ive been thinking so much about my live over the last 7 years with mark, and how much it has changed, adn how when i am in control, or think im in control,things dont always seem to go the way i planned for it. i planned to go to nursing school when i was a mom of two babies and it didnt work out. i tried again in sc and was told we had to move to cali. i never ever wanted to move to cali, never wanted to go to FL...etc..etc... i could go on with my list of things i DIDNT want to do. my grammy as i said always tells me 'let go and let god...jesus is your best friend.' so the more i did let go and let god, things started happening for me. ok ok i didnt want to go to florida.. but i did. i didnt have a choice if i wanted to be with my husband and raise our family together. it was one of the highlights in my life that i would say was the toughest decision. i just had this baby (ethan) and i left behind a good job, all my friends and family, i had anxiety, i felt like i was not ready and i never imagined if leave new england. but i did and i made new friends. i learned how to get by on my own.. things i had always done for myself but with protection around me 'just in-case'...i had my safety net of friends, family, and things i knew.. so i was still doing the same things in FL but without my safety net and it scared me.
so fast forward... after FL we got to go to SC wehre i felt i was closer to my safety net. then we were told we had to move to cali.. i think this is where i finally threw in the towel adn said 'ok god.. you win.. YOU WIN! what am i suposed to do now?' so basically, god dragged my by the ear, had me drive across country feel nervous and anxious.. and i got here and thigns started to happen. I am getting everything i want but on gods time... gods plan for me, not mine.
so heres a list of other things i didnt want to do.. i did not want to move to cali, didnt want to drive across country, didnt want to pay 30,000 for school, didnt want to drive to fresno for school, didnt want to have ethan home with me (i wanted him in school) didnt want to work at home on my associates degree in something i didnt want, didnt want.... didnt want...didnt ant.. you get my point. well all the things i didnt want i ended up doing anyways because at this point, 'gods pla' for me just seemed to make me happier. i was kind of lost in my direction.
dear god, you know i tried to get out of going to fresno and choosing a school closer to me.. so god said 'ok jacquie.. im gonna let you go to that meeting at the other school, but im telling you, thats not where you belong'. so i went to that meeting at the other school, and of course, god was right lol. that school wouldve been closer, and in what i felt a safer area, the only downfall was it was a thousand or so more expensive, but i got everything else I WANTED in that school. but something told me to stick with gurnick and i did. so im on this streak of good things here now...
... now i have certain classes approved for that anywhere else i ried, they would not approve my classes. this brought tuition down, and i only have 8 months of school befor eim an LPN...which is amazing.. I DIDNT WANT to be an LPN.. i wanted to be an RN! but.. thats not my plan. right now i have 2 years here thats it. i think about RN school and i get a nausea feeling because my time limit here and the stress i had at PJC when i started the RN program there... i just didnt have enough time here and id be pressuring myself way too much so this LPN school fell into my lap and seemed more for me. the other thing with the school thats closer to me is that they kept trying to pressure me into doing the RN program because i had so many classes done already. it was tempting ill tell you, but it wasnt the plan for me... i could just hear god and my grandmother saying no... no.. no.. youre doing what you want again and not following with what would make life easier and your goal more attainable... so i stopped myself and just stuck with gurnick which has been really a helpful school so far! so im hoping now that things will continue to go well for me here. also, childcare fell into place. never, ever has it been this easy for me with getting things together for school. also, i got my day time classes. i was placed on an alternate list.. a list I DIDNT WANT to be on, but my gut (and god) told me to get on that alternate list and i listened and the counselor told me that morning before my enrollment appointment a spot opened up for me and i was first on her list. so the spot was mine. theres only 22 spots in the program so i made it! i made it by letting go and letting god as my grandmother would say adn i do believe it. im not preachy about god or religion. im spiritual, and i leave it at that and rarely share my beliefs with other people. This blog is about what worked for me and whether you believe in god or not, i am not trying to persuade... so dont think that. my experience however, has been much more smooth when i listened to my grandmother.
another great thing that has happened to my family since we just did what we had to do and not necessarily what we wanted to was that my husband made chief. it is 6 weeks of tough training but i have no doubt in him or my ability to pull through. again, it is NOT what i WANT to be doing, but no one gets served on a silver platter... no one in this family anyways, and i like it this way. theres lessons to be learned in life and plenty of good advice out there from people have have lived through situations we are going through and theres a bigger picture as to why things are the way they are. so we shut up, and get the job done. in south carolina my family was tested big time. i thought it wouldve been a better experience for us and was so happy to be closer to family and I CHOSE to go to SC. i pushed for it hard. we got there and things started to fall apart. at times,it seemed we were on the right track but of course when you are getting your way it seems that way.
it took for us to let go of things for our family to have what it needs and yes i am a believer that if you just have faith in a higher power that you will be put on the right track it will happen. of course, not with work on your end though. It doesnt just happen. and you will fall off that track at some point because there are other lessons you have to learn.. adn once you learn that lesson and get the bigger picture, youll get back on track again. how boring would it be if we stayed on this strait, predictable path our entire lives? quite boring!
Monday, August 2, 2010
EEEhhhh
So mark is getting ready to leave bright and early tomorrow. He will be gone for about 6 weeks. There is no one that can tell me 'thats the life style' i hate that.. yes, it is, yes i knew these things would happen, but no matter how many notifications you get about a loved one leaving for any length of time or how well you think you have prepared, you cant tell your feelings and mind to shutup... its like having a baby.. you can read all the books and get all the knick knacks, but your still not ever really ready...
i know for sure if i was near loved ones this would be so much easier to deal with. but then again i just dont feel like i really belong anywhere. we havent had time to settle here all together yet, so i feel like part of me is still scattered. i dont feel like home is RI, maine, or here. if anywhere, florida is where i feel i left a lot behind because thats where we spend the majority of our lives as a family..
im trying to get brody ready for school and soccer and im glad he will be very occupied. i am trying to start school again in january and im not sure how im going to do all of this and if mark will be leaving again for weeks at a time, if the school will be flexible with my schedule... and i doubt it. its a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach and im going to have to deal with that when the time comes...all i do know is i have to get my ass in school and finish even if it mentally kills me. its 18 months of hell i had started to do before, and i will and can do it again.
..but for now, i have mark leaving tomorrow. i have to look at things in chunks. this is the 6 week chunk.. so for 6 weeks i have to figure out what im going to do, how im going to deal with it... then when he gets home, thats another chunk, then school in january, thats another chunk...etc... so these 6 weeks....eh...
ive been feeling a little depressed now and then just because im lonely and here by myself without much to do or anywhere to go. and if i do go somewhere, its no fun being alone, or just with the kids.. all the time. so if i do go anywhere or do anything, its because im making myself because i know if i dont ill get even more depressed and the kids need to get out and do things. i dont even know that i really want to meet people around here right now. if i had it my way, i would just hang around the house all day and not get dressed, watch tv, sleep, eat... lol.. but i cant... thats not a good idea.
so instead ive been exercising lately, and trying to get out atleast 3 times a week, even if its just to a store to look around. i enjoy my glass of wine at night, and taking care of the yard as needed, painting my nails, getting dressed, doing my daily routine stuff to keep that habbit going... and when i need to talk to adults, i have FB, my phone, and my good neighbor.
im just going to hope i can get through these next 6 weeks, and actually, the next 7 days... ill start with that. after 7 days, things should start feeling ok again... once the newness of mark being away again wears off. then ill deal with brodys school, soccer... etc...
so my goal is to get through the next 7 days, keeping everyone happy, cooking meals, living as if mark was right here in the other room. playing my music, watching funny tv shows, playing games with the boys, things like that...
im definitely not cut out to be a military wife lol. well, i am, because i dont have a choice but im not. it takes a lot of self discipline for me to do what i do. i hate being alone, sleeping alone, the dark, i like having mark do certain things for me... but along the way i have learned to do a lot more for myself than i had before... like loading that stinking dish washer, putting away the laundry not just folding it, mow the grass even when its hot out, take the trash to the end of the road etc... idk if other wives are like me and they just dont talk about their feelings like i do, i know i cant be the only one to have these things runnign through my mind.
and the kids.. they actually help keep me more sane than insane, because i have them here, i have to do certain things for them to be happy and live 'normal'... they depend on me to get up every day and put a smile on my face and make life happen.
well i guess this i should go do something else. writting is really a good therapy for me. always has been... and i know i will be just fine.. just need to get my feelings out and on 'paper'
<3
Monday, March 8, 2010
Spoiling...family.. moving.. a little of everything...
I remember my opinion of military kids used to be that they were spoiled. Well, my opinion as to why has changed a little bit.. for some... Dealing with brody and having to move has been a little tough for me just because i know that he is a lot like me and family and good friends is very important to him, however, he is really good at making new friends and adjusting, and he is not shy like i remember myself being. but he is a lot like me, so i know he feels pretty bad about leaving his friends. he has made 2 REALLY good friends here, and even though he is only 5, he cries about having to leave them and pretty much everything HE knows.. i can relate. i had to move to maine when i was 13, then to FL 3 years ago, and i know how much it can hurt leaving everything youve ever known. i know he is just a kid, but brody is different...
SO, i look at spoiling now, as a way to overcompensate i guess. Brody would have been graduating preschool with his friends the first week of june. with mark having to do training, and a few other things, we have to leave earlier. this means everyone else in brodys class talks about graduation and many of the kids will go to kindergarten together, and they get to celebrate. brody isnt going to be able to do those things, and he is a little sad about it. ive been feeling lately like i just want to give him stuff to make him feel better...
military is bitter sweet.. a piece of the bitter end of it is for some kids the ones that like having a best friend (like i did) who they do everything with and grow together and then look back and say 'ive known so and so since i was 4' (like i can)isnt going to happen for brody. for me when i was a kid i LOVED that. granted he will only be about 10 by the time were done with the military but still... right now it makes me feel bad. ill feel better later lol.
the other thing is the sense of belonging. Rhode island is where i was raised, New england is my home, specifically maine, i love going back 'home' home has kind of been more like... wherever the majority of my family is in new england, and im ok with that. for brody, he doesnt have a place where he was raised.. hes just here and there and everywhere. when i talk about home to him, im talking about new england where our family is. idk if he feels that is home to him though, like i do because i was born and raised there.
SO i have planned for brody a birthday party at his school if it is approved, so since he cant graduate with his friends, he can have his very own special moment, focused on him, at school, and this way he wont feel too bad about missing the graduation. also, i keep stressing to him that we can go back home to see our family and that makes him happy. i overcompensate with my love too and feel i have to tell my babies every day, multiple times, what good boys they are and how much i love them etc... i want them to feel ok about this life style. it isnt a bad one, im not particularly comfortable with it, but this is the choice mark and i made and there are a lot of other good things about it too... so we have to work with what we have and eventually we will have a place that is OUR home, where we stay, and the kids wont be too old, and then they can start making good long lasting friendships.
Family is extremely important for me, and that is not just including the people living under my roof..and in a way moving away from them has grown me closer to them than they probably understand unless they leave everyone behind like i did. or unless i mean THAT much to them that they feel equally as close to me. I come off as a nut sometimes, i know, and emotional, but that is because i do care so much about them and time and life is precious. i dont want the people i love to ever wonder if i do care about them because im very open about my love for them :) its important if you love someone to tell them because as cliche as it sounds, you never know if something could happen.
SO, i look at spoiling now, as a way to overcompensate i guess. Brody would have been graduating preschool with his friends the first week of june. with mark having to do training, and a few other things, we have to leave earlier. this means everyone else in brodys class talks about graduation and many of the kids will go to kindergarten together, and they get to celebrate. brody isnt going to be able to do those things, and he is a little sad about it. ive been feeling lately like i just want to give him stuff to make him feel better...
military is bitter sweet.. a piece of the bitter end of it is for some kids the ones that like having a best friend (like i did) who they do everything with and grow together and then look back and say 'ive known so and so since i was 4' (like i can)isnt going to happen for brody. for me when i was a kid i LOVED that. granted he will only be about 10 by the time were done with the military but still... right now it makes me feel bad. ill feel better later lol.
the other thing is the sense of belonging. Rhode island is where i was raised, New england is my home, specifically maine, i love going back 'home' home has kind of been more like... wherever the majority of my family is in new england, and im ok with that. for brody, he doesnt have a place where he was raised.. hes just here and there and everywhere. when i talk about home to him, im talking about new england where our family is. idk if he feels that is home to him though, like i do because i was born and raised there.
SO i have planned for brody a birthday party at his school if it is approved, so since he cant graduate with his friends, he can have his very own special moment, focused on him, at school, and this way he wont feel too bad about missing the graduation. also, i keep stressing to him that we can go back home to see our family and that makes him happy. i overcompensate with my love too and feel i have to tell my babies every day, multiple times, what good boys they are and how much i love them etc... i want them to feel ok about this life style. it isnt a bad one, im not particularly comfortable with it, but this is the choice mark and i made and there are a lot of other good things about it too... so we have to work with what we have and eventually we will have a place that is OUR home, where we stay, and the kids wont be too old, and then they can start making good long lasting friendships.
Family is extremely important for me, and that is not just including the people living under my roof..and in a way moving away from them has grown me closer to them than they probably understand unless they leave everyone behind like i did. or unless i mean THAT much to them that they feel equally as close to me. I come off as a nut sometimes, i know, and emotional, but that is because i do care so much about them and time and life is precious. i dont want the people i love to ever wonder if i do care about them because im very open about my love for them :) its important if you love someone to tell them because as cliche as it sounds, you never know if something could happen.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Breaking the chain-family (you WILL relate)
Another old post worth sharing:
Monday, June 23, 2008
"an original wounding"
Current mood: calm
I was talking to my friend jenny tonight and religion came up..and lack of also..
and she found this unitarian church in pensacola so i thought i would check out the home page, then i came across somethign i felt like sharing. the title was "Breaking the Chain" and i say that a lot when i talk about my own parents and myself..so i felt like sharing this with everyone who would be interested. its a bit long though, but its interesting.
it does give some light to why i feel the way i do sometimes. especially with this move to FL, and old friends, and myself feeling like people just dont care sometimes. i know its probably not the case, but still.. i get discouraged because every good friend i meet, it is very hard for me to let go when i need to. i hate having relationships end.. its very hard for me, and if its worth it, ill fight 'til the bitter end to save my friendships/relationships. ..and with my mother..this does apply. i get angry with her for some things she couldnt help, others she probably couldve.. and im sure someday my kids will feel the same if theyre like me.
i see so much of brody in me, he needs extra mommy time..extra attention to know that he is loved and cared about... he needs me to TELL him im proud of him and hes a good boy...much like what i feel i needed..and not for any reason at all..just because, and maybe my mom didnt see that? idk... but hopefully i can give my children what they need based on what they need individually (emotionally, physically.mentally..etc..) not every person responds in the same way.
so ...happy reading :)
"Breaking the Chain"
March 9, 2008
Rev. Julie Kain
Unitarian Universalist Church of Pensacola
Every person in this room today and every person outside of this room has experienced early in our lives what I am going to refer to as "an original wounding." This means that somewhere and sometime when we were young, every one of us was presented with one particular situation that caused us to feel deeply hurt. Some particular situation in our early life caused some kind of original wounding in the very heart of our psyche or being.
It could have arisen from a variety of situations, but most often this original wounding happens in the context of our family dynamics. That is, some kind of difficult and challenging habit of interaction into which we were born by destiny of fate. You know some people say –"we don't pick our parents in life." But a few other people say that "even though we don't pick our parents in life, there is something within each of us where our greatest learning in life comes from the challenge we are presented by some part of our relationship with our parents, or whoever was our primary caregiver in,what we can refer to as, our family of origin.
This "original wounding" has such a distinctive impact on the fabric of our personal being, that we often and most unknowingly will frame subsequent difficulties and challenges we encounter in our lives through a perceptual lens that is tainted, you might say, with the original wounding.
For example, perhaps when you were young your mother was compelled by circumstance to be unavailable to you. Perhaps she had to work outside of the home for instance, or maybe it was a relationship in her life that demanded primary attention from her, and left you with a mother who was not involved primarily with you. She was perhaps both physically and emotionally distant from you at a time in your life when she was one of your primary relationships.
And so to continue with this example, if your particular "original wounding" in life came from this kind of being hurt, what you might call a sense of abandonment or even rejection in your relationship with your mother, later in your life whenever you get close to someone, perhaps a good friend or maybe your first love relationship, if something difficult happens in that later relationship, you are likely to experience it in a similar way to this original wounding with your mother. The outside circumstances may be totally different but your internal perception of them will be filtered through the lens of your experience with abandonment or rejection. You will perceive this other person as behaving in a way which is familiar to you because you feel this sense of being hurt. This particular kind of loss. You may even unconsciously anticipate being hurt like this in your next closest relationship and have what we often hear called "trust issues." That is you are hesitant to trust another person for fear of being hurt, like you were hurt before.
This is an example of "original wounding" and somehow until we are able to work through consciously how we came to cope with this original situation, we tend to find it as a repeating pattern in our lives. we will see it occurring in other relationships and situations.
We may see it happening actually even in situations where it may not be warranted. For example, your first best friend disappoints you by choosing to do something with someone else rather than going to a movie with you. You respond by feeling that your best friend is going to leave you or abandon your friendship, or that they are somehow rejecting you. You take it perhaps too personally that they are going to do something with someone else. You make it mean something big about you when your best friend may simply be making a small decision that actually has no bearing on their feelings of affection and appreciation of you.
We naturally and unconsciously tend to re-experience an earlier painful situation, in our attempts to come to terms with it, to understand or figure out why this happened. Was the pain you felt caused by something you did wrong or some bad quality in you that somehow deserves this rejection or abandonment?
It is incredibly common, especially in young people, that we tend to make sense of something that has happened by internalizing the responsibility for it. "It was my fault that this happened", we tell ourselves. Does this sound familiar to you? Can you recall a situation in your life when you were young when you felt you had somehow caused a mishap and it turned out that it didn't even have to do with you really?
And so one of the major ways we have found to overcome the challenges we carry in ourselves as a result of an original wounding, is to bring our conscious awareness to the pattern as it manifests in our lives. At some point along the way, the child whose mother had to work, or whose mother was preoccupied with a daunting and problematic relationship in her life, that child comes to realize that her behavior had more to do with these other circumstances than it had to do with him or her. What we thought and experienced as abandonment and rejection was not intended by the mother. It happened but it was not her intention to abandon or reject.
It's good to find a way to reflect on the original woundings in our lives. We are presented with a painful and difficult situation early in our loves and we find ways to cope with that. These coping mechanisms work in our loves to manage the difficult parts, but when we keep using them even in other kinds of situations that don't warrant them, we fall into a cycle which limits us. We can end up defining ourselves by this original sorrow and overusing the ways we found to cope with it. We can fall into a destructive cycle that repeats itself in different areas of our lives. In our attempts to protect ourselves from being hurt again, we cut ourselves off from other people and even from parts of ourselves. The cycle is a destructive one because it limits who we are and our interactions with other people. We inadvertently set ourselves up to actually be hurt in the same kinds of ways again and again like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Wayne Muller in his book Legacy of the Heart, the Spiritual Advantages of a Painful Childhood writes—
"When we are hurt as children, we can quickly learn to see ourselves as broken, handicapped, or defective in some essential way." Muller brings his background as a therapist and a Harvard Divinity school graduate to his writing. He continues in the introduction of his book by saying "you are not broken; childhood suffering is not a mortal wound, and it did not irrevocably shape your destiny. You need not remove, destroy or tear anything out of yourself in order to build something new. Your challenge is not to keep trying to repair what was damaged; your practice instead is to reawaken what is already wise, strong and whole within you, to cultivate those qualities of heart and spirit that are available to you in this very moment."
Whether the original wounding in our lives left us with invisible patterns such as the inability to easily trust another person, or with the more visible patterns of physical or substance abuse, we are all capable of growing beyond these difficult limitations.
In the same way that our individual sorrow and suffering is a universal human experience, we all have access to tools for healing old wounds. There is a love in our lives that will not let us go.
May we each have the courage to look honestly at our lives and to take the steps that loosen us from the limiting patters we have inherited from the past. May we cultivate compassionate patience with the other people who have touched our lives. May we learn that the scars of our past have the power to teach us great strength and true wisdom. May we maintain our sense of worth and dignity even in the face of thoughtless and pain-provoking behavior on the part of others.
May we break through the chains of our past to embrace the fullness of this moment and the bright possibility of tomorrow.
Amen and Blessed Be.
Monday, June 23, 2008
"an original wounding"
Current mood: calm
I was talking to my friend jenny tonight and religion came up..and lack of also..
and she found this unitarian church in pensacola so i thought i would check out the home page, then i came across somethign i felt like sharing. the title was "Breaking the Chain" and i say that a lot when i talk about my own parents and myself..so i felt like sharing this with everyone who would be interested. its a bit long though, but its interesting.
it does give some light to why i feel the way i do sometimes. especially with this move to FL, and old friends, and myself feeling like people just dont care sometimes. i know its probably not the case, but still.. i get discouraged because every good friend i meet, it is very hard for me to let go when i need to. i hate having relationships end.. its very hard for me, and if its worth it, ill fight 'til the bitter end to save my friendships/relationships. ..and with my mother..this does apply. i get angry with her for some things she couldnt help, others she probably couldve.. and im sure someday my kids will feel the same if theyre like me.
i see so much of brody in me, he needs extra mommy time..extra attention to know that he is loved and cared about... he needs me to TELL him im proud of him and hes a good boy...much like what i feel i needed..and not for any reason at all..just because, and maybe my mom didnt see that? idk... but hopefully i can give my children what they need based on what they need individually (emotionally, physically.mentally..etc..) not every person responds in the same way.
so ...happy reading :)
"Breaking the Chain"
March 9, 2008
Rev. Julie Kain
Unitarian Universalist Church of Pensacola
Every person in this room today and every person outside of this room has experienced early in our lives what I am going to refer to as "an original wounding." This means that somewhere and sometime when we were young, every one of us was presented with one particular situation that caused us to feel deeply hurt. Some particular situation in our early life caused some kind of original wounding in the very heart of our psyche or being.
It could have arisen from a variety of situations, but most often this original wounding happens in the context of our family dynamics. That is, some kind of difficult and challenging habit of interaction into which we were born by destiny of fate. You know some people say –"we don't pick our parents in life." But a few other people say that "even though we don't pick our parents in life, there is something within each of us where our greatest learning in life comes from the challenge we are presented by some part of our relationship with our parents, or whoever was our primary caregiver in,what we can refer to as, our family of origin.
This "original wounding" has such a distinctive impact on the fabric of our personal being, that we often and most unknowingly will frame subsequent difficulties and challenges we encounter in our lives through a perceptual lens that is tainted, you might say, with the original wounding.
For example, perhaps when you were young your mother was compelled by circumstance to be unavailable to you. Perhaps she had to work outside of the home for instance, or maybe it was a relationship in her life that demanded primary attention from her, and left you with a mother who was not involved primarily with you. She was perhaps both physically and emotionally distant from you at a time in your life when she was one of your primary relationships.
And so to continue with this example, if your particular "original wounding" in life came from this kind of being hurt, what you might call a sense of abandonment or even rejection in your relationship with your mother, later in your life whenever you get close to someone, perhaps a good friend or maybe your first love relationship, if something difficult happens in that later relationship, you are likely to experience it in a similar way to this original wounding with your mother. The outside circumstances may be totally different but your internal perception of them will be filtered through the lens of your experience with abandonment or rejection. You will perceive this other person as behaving in a way which is familiar to you because you feel this sense of being hurt. This particular kind of loss. You may even unconsciously anticipate being hurt like this in your next closest relationship and have what we often hear called "trust issues." That is you are hesitant to trust another person for fear of being hurt, like you were hurt before.
This is an example of "original wounding" and somehow until we are able to work through consciously how we came to cope with this original situation, we tend to find it as a repeating pattern in our lives. we will see it occurring in other relationships and situations.
We may see it happening actually even in situations where it may not be warranted. For example, your first best friend disappoints you by choosing to do something with someone else rather than going to a movie with you. You respond by feeling that your best friend is going to leave you or abandon your friendship, or that they are somehow rejecting you. You take it perhaps too personally that they are going to do something with someone else. You make it mean something big about you when your best friend may simply be making a small decision that actually has no bearing on their feelings of affection and appreciation of you.
We naturally and unconsciously tend to re-experience an earlier painful situation, in our attempts to come to terms with it, to understand or figure out why this happened. Was the pain you felt caused by something you did wrong or some bad quality in you that somehow deserves this rejection or abandonment?
It is incredibly common, especially in young people, that we tend to make sense of something that has happened by internalizing the responsibility for it. "It was my fault that this happened", we tell ourselves. Does this sound familiar to you? Can you recall a situation in your life when you were young when you felt you had somehow caused a mishap and it turned out that it didn't even have to do with you really?
And so one of the major ways we have found to overcome the challenges we carry in ourselves as a result of an original wounding, is to bring our conscious awareness to the pattern as it manifests in our lives. At some point along the way, the child whose mother had to work, or whose mother was preoccupied with a daunting and problematic relationship in her life, that child comes to realize that her behavior had more to do with these other circumstances than it had to do with him or her. What we thought and experienced as abandonment and rejection was not intended by the mother. It happened but it was not her intention to abandon or reject.
It's good to find a way to reflect on the original woundings in our lives. We are presented with a painful and difficult situation early in our loves and we find ways to cope with that. These coping mechanisms work in our loves to manage the difficult parts, but when we keep using them even in other kinds of situations that don't warrant them, we fall into a cycle which limits us. We can end up defining ourselves by this original sorrow and overusing the ways we found to cope with it. We can fall into a destructive cycle that repeats itself in different areas of our lives. In our attempts to protect ourselves from being hurt again, we cut ourselves off from other people and even from parts of ourselves. The cycle is a destructive one because it limits who we are and our interactions with other people. We inadvertently set ourselves up to actually be hurt in the same kinds of ways again and again like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Wayne Muller in his book Legacy of the Heart, the Spiritual Advantages of a Painful Childhood writes—
"When we are hurt as children, we can quickly learn to see ourselves as broken, handicapped, or defective in some essential way." Muller brings his background as a therapist and a Harvard Divinity school graduate to his writing. He continues in the introduction of his book by saying "you are not broken; childhood suffering is not a mortal wound, and it did not irrevocably shape your destiny. You need not remove, destroy or tear anything out of yourself in order to build something new. Your challenge is not to keep trying to repair what was damaged; your practice instead is to reawaken what is already wise, strong and whole within you, to cultivate those qualities of heart and spirit that are available to you in this very moment."
Whether the original wounding in our lives left us with invisible patterns such as the inability to easily trust another person, or with the more visible patterns of physical or substance abuse, we are all capable of growing beyond these difficult limitations.
In the same way that our individual sorrow and suffering is a universal human experience, we all have access to tools for healing old wounds. There is a love in our lives that will not let us go.
May we each have the courage to look honestly at our lives and to take the steps that loosen us from the limiting patters we have inherited from the past. May we cultivate compassionate patience with the other people who have touched our lives. May we learn that the scars of our past have the power to teach us great strength and true wisdom. May we maintain our sense of worth and dignity even in the face of thoughtless and pain-provoking behavior on the part of others.
May we break through the chains of our past to embrace the fullness of this moment and the bright possibility of tomorrow.
Amen and Blessed Be.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
'You Lost' ...and a baseball story
To get Brody and Ethan moving their bum-bums in the morning ill have them race to get dressed, but Brody is usually slower than Ethan just because Brody is just not paying attention. so I usually hear ethan say 'oh yeah I won!' and Brody feels sad... so anyways It has helped Brody to get dressed faster, adn pretty much anything I want them to do, if they are not doing it I make a game of it...
SO I did this to get them in the car too (get their belts on and stuff etc... just to get out the door and to school on time!) so anyways, lately i hear Brody saying 'Oh yeah I won, you lose!' Then Ethan would say the same thing...'You lose!' whenever he would win...well i didnt like that... 'you lose'?????
So i explained to my boys, ' you finished first, he finished second....everyone won because you didnt give up. you only lose when you give up' Brody seems to really understand this.
When Brody played baseball we were pretty srtict with him finishing a game. he decided he wanted to play he was going to finish the game even if that meant he just sat on the bench or stood in the outfield, he was going to be there with his team.. he was apart of that team. I dont want him to get used to giving up so easy and it being ok. if he really really hated baseball i wouldnt make him go, but he did like it. he just got side tracked here and there now and then especialyl in the beginning when they were all just learning...(well it was a little boring sometimes!)
i remember hearing one grandmother of another kid say 'that boy doesnt want to be here he should go home' talking about brody, not knowing i was his mom. i ignored it but i really wanted to give her a piece of my mind because hes just a kid.. he was having an off day...
funny thing though is that at next practice, her grandson was fussing, crying, whinning, not wanting to play and well he didnt go home. they had him stick it out... but the grandmother wasnt there that day...unfortunately! kinda wish she got to see that so she could see all kids have bad days!
ok so back to my story...
so i started thinking about that statement in the adult world and how true i feel that really is. we dont lose until we give up. we are not losers unless we giveup. I started thinking about some of the decisions i know others have made and if they are, by my statement well... a loser lol. and the outcome is YES because they gave up on something they could have worked harder on. Like Dr. Phil says (lol) dont give up until you have tried absolutely everything, everything in your power... mostly speaking on marriages and divorce, but i agree with this.
So then i started to think about my schooling, and replacing the word 'loser' with 'failure' i am not a failure until i give up, before all other options were tried. and im certainly not ready to do that. I havent tried everything yet. With everything i do i try to do it with all of me...all that is inside of me. Same goes for my close relationships and trying everything i can to salvage the important ones.. upkeep them, kind of like a spring cleaning...make a phone call if its been a while... send a note..whatever... you get my point...
with relationships they all need a little tweak now and then or a clean up... you part a little, get close again...etc... this is just the way it is and its ok.
I have a best friend who i have known for 22 years and not all of those 22 years did we get along, or were always hanging out, etc... mostly in middle school we kind of drifted a little bit, but we were still friends and friendly. we found other friends too, and then eventually we got closer again and now still she is one of the 3 people i consider my 'best' friend'. she definitely holds the number 1 spot though because weve known eachother SOOOOOOO long.
SO I did this to get them in the car too (get their belts on and stuff etc... just to get out the door and to school on time!) so anyways, lately i hear Brody saying 'Oh yeah I won, you lose!' Then Ethan would say the same thing...'You lose!' whenever he would win...well i didnt like that... 'you lose'?????
So i explained to my boys, ' you finished first, he finished second....everyone won because you didnt give up. you only lose when you give up' Brody seems to really understand this.
When Brody played baseball we were pretty srtict with him finishing a game. he decided he wanted to play he was going to finish the game even if that meant he just sat on the bench or stood in the outfield, he was going to be there with his team.. he was apart of that team. I dont want him to get used to giving up so easy and it being ok. if he really really hated baseball i wouldnt make him go, but he did like it. he just got side tracked here and there now and then especialyl in the beginning when they were all just learning...(well it was a little boring sometimes!)
i remember hearing one grandmother of another kid say 'that boy doesnt want to be here he should go home' talking about brody, not knowing i was his mom. i ignored it but i really wanted to give her a piece of my mind because hes just a kid.. he was having an off day...
funny thing though is that at next practice, her grandson was fussing, crying, whinning, not wanting to play and well he didnt go home. they had him stick it out... but the grandmother wasnt there that day...unfortunately! kinda wish she got to see that so she could see all kids have bad days!
ok so back to my story...
so i started thinking about that statement in the adult world and how true i feel that really is. we dont lose until we give up. we are not losers unless we giveup. I started thinking about some of the decisions i know others have made and if they are, by my statement well... a loser lol. and the outcome is YES because they gave up on something they could have worked harder on. Like Dr. Phil says (lol) dont give up until you have tried absolutely everything, everything in your power... mostly speaking on marriages and divorce, but i agree with this.
So then i started to think about my schooling, and replacing the word 'loser' with 'failure' i am not a failure until i give up, before all other options were tried. and im certainly not ready to do that. I havent tried everything yet. With everything i do i try to do it with all of me...all that is inside of me. Same goes for my close relationships and trying everything i can to salvage the important ones.. upkeep them, kind of like a spring cleaning...make a phone call if its been a while... send a note..whatever... you get my point...
with relationships they all need a little tweak now and then or a clean up... you part a little, get close again...etc... this is just the way it is and its ok.
I have a best friend who i have known for 22 years and not all of those 22 years did we get along, or were always hanging out, etc... mostly in middle school we kind of drifted a little bit, but we were still friends and friendly. we found other friends too, and then eventually we got closer again and now still she is one of the 3 people i consider my 'best' friend'. she definitely holds the number 1 spot though because weve known eachother SOOOOOOO long.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Avoidance
If there is anything i dislike, its avoidance.
I am a fixer... i like to think i can fix people, fix situations, make everything all better, find some kind of balance...etc.... i just want to help!!
If there is problem i want to solve it.
I can also understand how this could be annoying to some people who just dont like confrontation or just need a break and dont wanan talk about it at the time.
I like to repair my relationships with people and talk to people i havent talked to in 5, 10, 20 years. to me IT IS FUN! and yes i realise i run the risk of learning something about them i may not want to know or the possibility of me being hurt by them. im not blind to that, but it is a chance im willing to take in some cases. sometimes, however, things become too much and i just have to pull away from them. I dont just avoid them though usually theres an explanation, i just dont like to leave people hanging. and chances are things will change again, relationships change again because people changes... life changes... i dont give up on people too easily, BUT im also not stupid. i do think about the consequences of inviting someone in my life, i confide in my closest friends and some family... so when things go wrong yeahhhh they may say 'i told you so' or think it, but i also, i always knew i was taking that chance for things to go wrong and i was ok with that choice.
I am a fixer... i like to think i can fix people, fix situations, make everything all better, find some kind of balance...etc.... i just want to help!!
If there is problem i want to solve it.
I can also understand how this could be annoying to some people who just dont like confrontation or just need a break and dont wanan talk about it at the time.
I like to repair my relationships with people and talk to people i havent talked to in 5, 10, 20 years. to me IT IS FUN! and yes i realise i run the risk of learning something about them i may not want to know or the possibility of me being hurt by them. im not blind to that, but it is a chance im willing to take in some cases. sometimes, however, things become too much and i just have to pull away from them. I dont just avoid them though usually theres an explanation, i just dont like to leave people hanging. and chances are things will change again, relationships change again because people changes... life changes... i dont give up on people too easily, BUT im also not stupid. i do think about the consequences of inviting someone in my life, i confide in my closest friends and some family... so when things go wrong yeahhhh they may say 'i told you so' or think it, but i also, i always knew i was taking that chance for things to go wrong and i was ok with that choice.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
the power of LOYALTY (and how to become a loyal person)
Some of this i am just going to copy and paste to use from another website, because it is so great. my promise to myself is that i will strive to be a loyal person. At times, i feel as though i give and give myself, especially my heart and ear, to my friends and family, and this can be taken advantage of. I dont want to be mistaken for being a push over, because im not
so as mentioned in the previous post... i discovered loyalty... the word that defines what i have been striving to work towards without putting a word to it until now. I have good days and bad days, and days where i have so much built up inside of me i just want to explode on some people... my way to redirect that explosion is to frankly.. bitch about it to my best friend, or write about it and usually 9 out of 10 times i delete it after ive chilled out...
So anyways here it is:
We live in a world where selfishness seems to be the rule of the day, and personal gain the objective of most relationships and endeavors. One of the most honorable character traits a person can develop is the ability to be loyal, whether to family, friends, an employer, or clubs and organizations to which we may belong.
1. Understand what being loyal means. You must be willing to allow your own interests to take second place to be truly loyal to another person or cause. Loyalty is simply the act of putting someone or something else ahead of one's self.
2. Be willing to sacrifice. Being loyal in a patriot sense, as in loyal to one's country, has placed millions in harm's way in wars throughout history. The people who serve in the modern military are loyal to their nation, its flag, and the purpose they serve for. Being loyal to a friend or your own family can also require sacrifice.
3. Take time to look at the needs of whomever will have your loyalty. To take steps of loyalty, you need to recognize that it is a deliberate effort, and to be truly loyal to someone, you have to be willing to invest yourself, your time and energy in them.
4. Ask yourself if what or who you are offering your loyalty to is worthy of the investment. Is the person or organization who asks for your loyalty worthwhile?
5. Consider the benefits of loyalty. This may be most obvious in the case of employment. Being a loyal employee often creates its own rewards, with increases in pay, job security, and respect from your employer. Being a loyal employer, who is willing to look after your employees, will give them incentive to be more dedicated and productive for you.
6. Weigh the costs of being loyal. You should always structure the hierarchy of your loyalties according to your valuation of their importance. If being loyal to a group or club creates negative influence in your family or other social circumstance, it may not be worthwhile to continue that loyalty.
7. Balance your loyalties with the day-to-day needs of your own life and your family Being loyal to a volunteer group or social organization at the expense of taking time for your family may result in suffering loss in your personal relationships.
8. Look for reward and appreciation in your efforts to be loyal. Being loyal to an unappreciative person or group is not very rewarding, and although this implies a selfish motivation for your loyalty, it is a practical thing to expect the person or group to which you give your loyalty to be loyal to you in return.
IMPORTANT
I write with the intent ((usually)) of not hurting anyone, but just as a way to get my feelings out so sometimes i will write about a situation to vent, then later on delete it because it makes me feel better. Also, i may write about a situation and leave names out just because, at the time, i am venting, and thats one of my main ways to release some of my feelings.
The other day, i had made a post about feeling pretty bad about misunderstandings, and i am very glad to say taht the most mportant relationship within that, has been fixed... it never was really 'broken' as i said before, things were being worked through and so i couldnt be happier.
I am a person that has heavy emotions when it comes to my friends and family i love so much, and with everything in me, that certain things to any other person that may not be a big deal, are huge to me. dont get me wrong though, i am still with a tough outer skin when i need it GRRRRR!!! lol!!
truth is i just want happiness for myself. ive gotten very good at managing my relationships with people and being honest with not only friends and family, but myself. honesty is huge for me and loyalty.
LOYALTY... i was watching Wendy Williams today (how you doiiiiinnn!!!) lol and there was some chit chat about loyalty and family loyalty especially. in the next post, im going to talk more about loyalty. it never really hit me until now, the word and the actual definition adn what it means to a family...and how little loyalty i feel much of my own family has, and how i feel i have been working on this for several years. i plan to continue.
.. actually...i guess i should say there are a good handful of people who are loyal to me in my family (and friends)... theres a small portion who isnt. (of the people i consider important to me) when i refer to feeling much of my whole family has little loyalty to me, im referring to people i usually dont talk to... some i dont talk to anymore at all.
The other day, i had made a post about feeling pretty bad about misunderstandings, and i am very glad to say taht the most mportant relationship within that, has been fixed... it never was really 'broken' as i said before, things were being worked through and so i couldnt be happier.
I am a person that has heavy emotions when it comes to my friends and family i love so much, and with everything in me, that certain things to any other person that may not be a big deal, are huge to me. dont get me wrong though, i am still with a tough outer skin when i need it GRRRRR!!! lol!!
truth is i just want happiness for myself. ive gotten very good at managing my relationships with people and being honest with not only friends and family, but myself. honesty is huge for me and loyalty.
LOYALTY... i was watching Wendy Williams today (how you doiiiiinnn!!!) lol and there was some chit chat about loyalty and family loyalty especially. in the next post, im going to talk more about loyalty. it never really hit me until now, the word and the actual definition adn what it means to a family...and how little loyalty i feel much of my own family has, and how i feel i have been working on this for several years. i plan to continue.
.. actually...i guess i should say there are a good handful of people who are loyal to me in my family (and friends)... theres a small portion who isnt. (of the people i consider important to me) when i refer to feeling much of my whole family has little loyalty to me, im referring to people i usually dont talk to... some i dont talk to anymore at all.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)