What makes the Hottentot so hot?

When I think of the word COURAGE I think of my best friend Bill Curby. We met in 6th grade and took acting classes through the 11th grade. In one of the plays we did together, our drama teacher revamped the Wizard of Oz and adapted it to the tiny stage of Santa Rita High School. He played the cowardly lion and I played the wicked witch. I appeared on stage, delivered my lines and then drove off on my electric broom. His rendition of the cowardly lion was spot on and to this day I can't watch the movie without thinking of Bill.


Back in January when my life as I knew it crashed around my ankles I remember hearing my Mom say how brave I was and how courageous I was. I used to think that she was going through the motions...trying to make soup out of stones. How much "bravery" did I have that I struggled for several months with thoughts of suicide? How much "courage" did I have that all I wanted to do was hide under the covers of my lonely bed and wait for the mess to fix itself. Courage????? Riiiiiiight! My basic attitude was that she was trying to help so humor her. I felt a little like someone you ask for help from and all the offer is prayer. Sound familiar?  How can anyone actually help us if they've never walked in our shoes? How can they believe the very best outcome when all around them and you is chaos?


I continued to struggle with the why's and what if's of my situation. I worked diligently at trying to kill myself, for me it was the only answer. The only way to end the pain and confusion I felt. I obviously was unsuccessful. When I realized that God was going to keep me alive no matter how hard I tried, I started the uphill climb. I slowly began to realize that I had so much more life to live, death was in fact end pain and suffering but it would ultimately end my chances to see my son's grow, marry and "spawn"...I would miss the chance to see my grandchildren. I started then on this incredible journey. I read and still read as much as I can get my hands on to learn something about who I really am. I read things about why men cheat and what they feel like when they feel the need to cheat. I started watching any thing  and everything Iyanla VanZandt. I dived in with both feet into meditation, yoga, spiritualism. And therein lies the courage part. It takes courage for anyone of us to walk this earth, to wake up and move forward rather than cower under the covers. It takes courage to speak the truth, to admit your weaknesses, courage to look at your scars, courage to admit when you're wrong and courage to begin all over again. It also takes a certain amount of bravery to continue moving through your journey even when you've looked into the face of darkness and despair.

I still have much more work to do....as I've said before I don't think we ever stop learning until we die and then we graduate to the next level of learning. But I have accepted that my Mom was right. I was and am quite brave. I do in fact have courage. It's not been easy learning who I am meant to be not who I think I "should" be.  It's not been easy to accept my faults and foibles but it takes courage to keep learning, facing fears, overcoming obstacles. Everything micro thought has a potential to create harm and knowledge and I have had the courage to review those thoughts in detail, to find the lesson, to see the good. Every emotion good or bad is a chance to learn, to recreate. I see now that all my depression, the divorce, and other troubles paved the road for me to get here. I can accept now that everything does in fact happen for a reason and every time I had to face a new challenge, whether successful or not, every time I I failed but never quit, every time I endured the pain of childhood, the failures of young adulthood and motherhood, it only prepared me for right now and what I do right now prepares for tomorrow and tomorrow. And as the Lion said:



"What makes a king out of a slave? Courage! What makes the flag on the mast to wave? Courage! What makes the elephant charge his tusk in the misty mist, or the dusky dusk? What makes the muskrat guard his musk? Courage! What makes the sphinx the seventh wonder? Courage! What makes the dawn come up like thunder? Courage! What makes the Hottentot so hot? What puts the "ape" in apricot? Courage!"

Secrets

We all keep them. Some are harmless like knowing your BFF will get engaged at tonights dinner party, or that theres no santa claus or easter bunny. Others can actually kill you in a slow painful way.
Each morning I do stretching yoga and then morning meditations. Lately I've been having "ah ha moments" during the meditation. This morning I realized my own secrets have caused me more than just spiritual death!  Being overweight has been my plague.  I used to tease that I was born weighing at least 100 lbs. And kept  going from there. As I got older I really had a hard time with inner/outer beauty. I cannot tell you how many times I heard  "you have such a  pretty face...".

I battled the social stigma that I had no will power or ability to stop eating, most overweight people suffer from this sterotype still. Just as we suffer fro   the "jolly" sterotype.  Speaking only for myself for myself, I always knew when I had had enough food and in order to be jolly I had to make fun of and laugh at myself. I decided that I wouldn't let anyone see my pain and sadness when they made fun of me by laughing with them at me. What I didn't know then was that my brain categorized those events as reality and used the increasing weight to act as a form of protection. Sounds familiar to some, I'm sure.
There begins the vicious cycle.

Back to secrets...... I've been including my body and its functions in my gratitudes. Rather than complain about what it doesn't do any more I have been thanking it for what it has already done. My legs feet and ankles for supporting me, my lungs for breathin....you get the idea. Many many years ago when I was becoming a sexual being, I made bad choices and ended up pregnant several times. The "cure" for my stupidity was several abortions. I've been pregnant 11 times; 3 ended in abortions, 2 resulted in live births and the rest were miscarriages. While that is disconcerting,  never sharing that secret actually added to my pain, my weight, and the false belief  that I've done such a horrible thing that I deserve to be miserable. I've been learning how to be compassiinate to all living things (spiders, snakes and other ghastly critters....well its taking a little longer). I imagine some random vision of any crowded New York street as I chant my mantra for all living beings. But I digress. Compassion for all living things...compassion for myself. I've carried the spititual, emotional and physical pain at carrying that secret, the stigma of being coldhearted, selfish, stupid, and what some might label a baby killer. My personal belief is that a woman should have the right to abortions without all that BS about when life begins or having it done only as the result of some vicious act. We are given free will and because of this we have only God to be accountable to.

Today I had to relive that pain, to feel the sadness and shame of what I did in my past. I had to realize that my weight was keeping the pain out but it also kept the pain firmly sealed inside! Yes, I shoukd have done things differently, I can't change what I did...but I can forgive myself for making poor choices in my life. I can thank my body, my temple, for protecting me and that I'm a much different person today than I was 30 yrs ago. I actually like myself! I'm optimìstic that I will be able shed my weight more easily as I peel layers of self abuse away. I no longer need the weight for protection, I no longer need to eat away my shame and guilt. How very zen! ♡♡

One tiny rain drop

I've been on my journey to bliss. Some call it enlightenment. Part of my journey is to learn to take time to "smell the roses"....also called mindfulness. I dabbled in this mindfulness a while back and thought I was doing really great. I know now that I was trying to put a tiny circle band aid on a gaping wound and hoping for a miracle. In theory it was a good idea but in practice it lacked motivation. I ended up allowing myself to be overwhelmed by life, my health, my failing marriage, my feeling lost.  The bell that chimed every 60 minutes became a reminder that I was overwhelmed and so I deleted it from my phone. Turns out it was the smartest thing I could have done!



As everyone knows my marriage has evolved into a new state of being. Neither my husband nor I were ever really ready for what it takes to be married AND be happy. I know for my part I looked to him for the happiness I craved. I looked for validation from him that I was a good person and worthy of his love.  In our brief encounters with each other, I am finding that he also feels the same way. And we both agree that our marriage was not a mistake.  What I have discovered in my journey (which will never end) is that the happiness we both craved was inside of ourselves. I used to be very pissed at Walter for saying I can't make you happy. To me it felt like a cop out, a way to get around showing me any affection. I can see now that he was right--though I may never tell him since it would go to his head--ha ha ha! But here's the thing I've learned or rather still learning.....we often look to others or bad habits to find the elusive happiness. The Constitution claims the pursuit of happiness as our inherent right. The counter-intuitive part is that happiness cannot be found until we stop looking for it. Weird, huh?

I've been reading and watching anything I can that has to do with what I call a clean mind clean body, meaning how to detox both my mind and body. Through CBT (cognitive behavioral training) I am learning that my thoughts really do become "things". A while back when I first discovered The Secret I thought that all that would be needed was a positive mindset, think happy get happy, think positive, get positive. While it is true is part, what I have since gathered is that if I don't clean the wheels of my mind they get gunked up with the negative BS like thick sludgy grease. The act of merely thinking positive is not enough to overcome years of negative self talk, and the false belief that I carried for others that I was not worthy. I'm pretty sure that we all do this is some way or another. It's almost hardwired into our brains to accept both good and bad as the only reality. Our brains are like our bodies.....we find a routine and then settle in to it. Better to be bored than have excitement which will only lead to catastrophe. Avoiding pain is the best course of action. When something bad happens to us, our brain validates that the event should teach us the lesson of being stagnate, bored, comfortable, etc. The brain says "see? I told you" and then begins to loop the sound track from childhood that we are not going to amount to anything anyway, or my boyfriend left me because I'm ugly or I won't ever be pretty enough to be a glamour or cover girl.....whatever is necessary to validate the negative crap and since our minds don't know the difference between real or fake it goes on autopilot and says it's all very much real!

We never stop to think, at least I didn't, that "this" was only a test. Had it been a real emergency....so we internalize the "lesson" which sometimes is a bad chess move on our part. The other day I had a huge argument with my 18 year old Aaron. We was pissed off that I had grounded him for 2 weeks for his nasty attitude. He felt that he had been severely "inconvenienced" by having to be home earlier than he wanted to, to help put groceries away that Walter was bringing in with him. He sat on the couch a fiddled and sighed heavily and loudly. By the time his day actually showed up he was thoroughly funky and everything around him screamed PISSED OFF. I grounded him because he was not taking time to be thankful that his dad was even bringing in food. I don't get my disability check until mid month and our fridge was scary empty. With each trip out to the car to gather more bags of food, his mood got worse and worse. When he refused to say thank you and instead complained that it was the "same old food he always gets", I grounded him.  He missed out of helping his bud fix a motor to a boat and subsequently $60. Needless to say this only fueled his haterade. During the argument I realized that he was fighting like his dad which triggered an autopilot in me so much so that I called him Walter a few times. I used to hate when I was compared to either one of my parents, as most kids do, and here I was doing the same thing to my own son. As soon as I calmed my inner spirit, and realized that while he has the right to feel any way he wants to, some of the fragmented anger is not doing any one any good. I changed my spirit to one of loving kindness and listened to his intention not his words. Soon the whole chaotic atmosphere began to calm.

I'm telling you this? I could have spun out of control and undone all the good I was doing. I changed my spirit and my thoughts and gave us both the freedom to be angry and still be safe and loved.

Back to the tiny drop of rain......mindfulness is a consciousness, a decision I have to make every single day and sometimes multiple times throughout the day. For me, it is being present in the NOW and not dwelling on the past or planning a future. What is happening around me right NOW, is the sun shining? The wind blowing? Or is a gentle breeze? How does my mind and body feel in this NOW place? What am I most grateful for right NOW?  It takes practice, learning to stop, lean over and sniff a rose, but the results are amazing! Just this morning I had my phone in the bathroom.....(don't judge ◔_◔) and my mindfulness bell chimed. I gazed through the window to see if I could see the birds I heard hanging out in the tree next to the window. What caught my eye instead was a cluster of clouds that had been pushed together by the gentle breeze into the shape of a heart. Have you seen Bruce Almighty? The part where he's sending signs to his girlfriend like two clouds kissing and merging into a heart...? That was what I saw....a perfect heart shaped cloud. I felt like a little kid who just got the best Christmas gift EVER! I cried and laughed at the same time! Later I hooked headphones to my laptop and began listening to some of my meditation music and the picture that loaded was a single leaf with one tiny drop of rain at the tip. That single drop holds a universe!When you stop to think about it, it has the power to create, nourish, and even end a life.Why bring this to your awareness? That rain drop is us. We stand at the tip of our lives every day deciding whether to drop to the ground beneath, dry in the sun, or stay on our leaf tip and just hang precariously while life around us goes on. What we decide is often a turning point not only in our lives but the lives around us as we are all connected. The question is do we connect to misery or to happiness and fulfillment? Our choice is the seed waiting on the ground for us to drop. That seed is the creation of our decisions (good or bad).  How very Zen.