If the body is a temple, then we need to be aware of  when we’ve let it fall into disrepair.  Nothing makes its normal upkeep more difficult than lack of sleep.

For the past three years or more, I’ve had chronic insomnia.  Rarely has there been a night when I’ve slept all the way through, and if I could get 4 to 6 hours straight on a workday’s night, then that was sheer heaven.  Often, I’d have trouble falling asleep and then I’d wake every few hours.  It became part of my natural sleep cycle…to not sleep.  My energy would flag at the office, and then I’d come home every single day and crash on the sofa for an hour or so.  No matter how tired I’d be at bedtime, even after a nap, I couldn’t sleep.

People gave me lots of advice.  Quit caffeine.  Yep, I did.  Exercise daily. Did that, too.  No difference, even when I was doing cardio and weights 5 to 7 times a week for over an hour each day. 

My favorite?  “You just need to learn to quiet the mind.”  Duh.  I learned to meditate years ago.  That was, at times, of some help in falling asleep but not in keeping myself asleep.  In most cases, it wasn’t a matter of quieting my mind at all or destressing before bedtime. I learned a long time ago not to read email immediately before bedtime or talk to anyone with a history of saying upsetting things to me.

Plenty of people, including doctors, shrugged it off as being perimenopausal and something I should just accept.  Well, I sure didn’t like that answer.  When I had a hot live-in boyfriend, I could overlook the insomnia somewhat and remind myself that he was going to keep me awake anyhow…but in the mornings, boy, was I dragging to work!

But for the past month, I have slept SOUNDLY, every single night but one…and that was a night with a relative who insisted on telling me a horrific and visually disturbing story right before bedtime.  Other than that, I have suddenly begun to sleep at least 6 hours a night (my normal need) without waking even once, and I fall asleep easily, too.  I’ve also stopped coming home every day and crashing on the sofa or feeling zonked after a workout. 

The one specific change I made was to add a protein supplement to my diet.

I’ve read recently that some whey protein powders actually cause insomnia, or at least certain brands do.  I don’t know about that, but I do know that the one change to increase my protein has made a big difference in how I sleep and therefore how I feel.  It’s been as stark as an on-off light switch. 

While chatting with a fitness coach, I realized that my protein intake has been too low.  I’ve been focusing on veggies more and eating healthy meals but I simply haven’t been eating enough protein.  Too often, I’m too busy to eat a full meal, get interrupted at work while grabbing lunch at my desk, or don’t get a chance to leave a meeting and eat until 3 or 4 in the afternoon.  Work can be crazy like that sometimes, especially if I’m in all-day meetings that don’t break for lunch and I look around and see everyone sneaking candy bars out of the vending machines and downing Coke after Coke all day.  I’ve resorted to a piece of fruit or crackers or something somewhat healthier but it’s still not enough fuel for my…temple.  By the end of the work day, the utilities are pretty dim!

After this conversation, I started keeping better logs of my meals so I could think more about nutritional values and my protein ratio.  I immediately began starting my days with a small glass of fat-free milk with whey protein powder and following up any workouts with the same.  I didn’t replace meals with protein shakes but simply added protein powder as a supplement to my normal meals, especially the skimpy ones where I couldn’t break free of work for a fresh, hot lunch.

The effect is that I now have an early morning boost of energy and stay boosted throughout the day.  I don’t feel as if I’ll fall asleep at mid-morning or mid-afternoon, and I don’t go home and nap.  I have the energy to go home and workout, and when I go to bed at night, the sheets feel yummy and I just fall right asleep.  If I sound like I’m gushing, well, sleep has eluded me for a long, long time!

I’ve used egg white protein in blender shakes before but it was recommended that I try whey protein powder. I  stopped by the most convenient grocery store I could find and bought a big tub of chocolate whey powder (Pure Protein) that has 25 grams of protein, 2 grams of sugar, and 140 calories.  I like chocolate so it seemed an easy answer.   I decided to go ahead and get something in vanilla, too, but my choices were limited.  I finally picked Designer Whey’s Biggest Loser Vanilla Bean Protein Powder, mainly because the grocery store had a special $3 off sale.  I was really turned off by the special branding of the product with TV’s Biggest Loser promotion.  I tend to dislike celebrity promotions of that sort, I don’t watch TV much at all, and I wasn’t using protein to lose weight.  It also had a lot less protein than the first tub of whey– 6 grams of protein, 6 grams of fiber (different), 1 gram of fat, and 50 calories.  However, I wanted to experiment a little.

As it turns out, I wasn’t that thrilled with the chocolate protein powder.  I liked the taste but I really dislike clumps of undissolved powder on top of my drink, and it takes a hand-blender to get Pure Protein as smooth as I like.  For that reason, I don’t use it as often and usually only after a really intense workout.  That said, my young college student often finds that she misses meals or doesn’t have time for a full meal between classes and she absolutely loves the chocolate protein shake when she’s on the run.

The Designer Whey vanilla bean was much better than I expected.  In fact, I think it’s delicious and I’m really picky about the taste of vitamins and supplements.  Most of the time, I complain that supplements taste like either cardboard (which this does in water) or swamp water.  I was extremely pleased with the taste in skim milk. 

Though I know whey protein is the cause of insomnia for some people,  it gives me the added fuel I need to run my temple on, and at night the lights are all on in the halls, it’s quiet and tranquil, and there’s nothing stirring but the rhythmic sound of deep sleep.

But the yoga teacher had another tip that goes beyond stress incontinence for new moms, menopausal women, and bedwetting children.  She recommended making that First Chakra connection during a squat, preferably alone and naked.  She recommended de-stressing ourselves by completely relaxing the bottom of the pelvis, almost to the point of urinating, while in a squatting position by squeezing  in a single Kegel and then letting it relax all the way.  We hold so much of our survival instinct and the stress of it at the base of our spine and in our pelvic floor that it can be tremendously relaxing to let go to that point. 

We don’t have to hold on so tightly to Life, she said, but instead, just let ourselves go.  What better place to relax and let go of stress than in the First Chakra?

Next time you’re in a health food store, ask the clerk to tell you his or her five favorite items.  Not what sells the best or what might help you with a particular problem—though you may ask about those as well—but which items have they tried that exceeded all expectations.  I did this several months ago and found several new items that  have resolved problems I didn’t even realize had become problems.

Here are my new favs that I recommend to you, either at your favorite local health food store or discount store or ordered online.

1. Elations liquid and powder supplements for healthier joints, containing 1500mg of Glucosamine and 1200mg of Chondroitin  (product review)

Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have bought this had I seen any commercials or advertising for it.  When I mentioned my find to my favorite college student, she made a face and said, “But that’s for old people, isn’t it?”  The commercials and website certainly do seem to market it to people 10 to 20 years my senior, so I guess it’s a good thing it was recommended to me without consideration for the primary market. I wish I’d had this in my early 20’s!

I’ve had several joint injuries in my life, the first when I was 18 and fell on my right wrist, damaging it too badly to play piano at a recital later that day.  It pained me throughout my college years and was excruciating when I was 28 and trying to haul my baby around and had no choice but to rely on my right wrist.  My doctor diagnosed the pain as osteo-arthritis, thanks to tripping over a block of cement that was buried not quite below the surface of the college cafeteria’s lawn.

“But don’t worry,” Dr. Terry Payne promised, “because by the time you’re, say, 45 and it’s really bothering you, they’ll have found a cure for arthritis.”

A few years later, I took up foil fencing and managed to injure my knees enough that I eventually had to undergo physical therapy.  I’m now on an exercise regimen that keeps my legs super-strong and in good shape, but my knees do occasionally bother me, especially if I don’t stay on top of the exercise due to my work schedule.  I stay very active but that doesn’t mean I’m staying active with the correct leg exercises if something blows up at work and I have to forgo gym time. At the time of my diagnosis, my then-physician, Dr. Matthew Dorman, was open-minded enough to recommend glucosamine, based on studies he’d read.

The health food store employee told me that I should feel the effects of one package of 30-calorie bottles in a week’s time, and to my surprise, she was right.  I’ve tried glucosamine “horse pills” and chewables over the years, but felt only minor improvement after a couple of months of steady use.  Elations—perhaps because the liquid is more absorbable—was a drastic improvement that I noticed within a week.

I normally drink one of the 8-ounce bottles a day, every day.  It tastes to me like very strong Hawaiian punch, even thought the several flavors of Elations vary somewhat. It’s definitely better for me than drinking a soft drink, at least a hundred calories less, and costs about the same.

I’ve also tried the powder version where you mix a packet of Elations powder with a 20-ounce bottle of water, but to me, it tastes a little less appealing.

On a recommendation from the older man who does house repairs for me, I’ve also tried their competitor, Joint Juice, but was less impressed with the results.

2. The Fiber35 Diet Sprinkle Fiber by Renew Life  (product review)

When I was 25, one of my best friends taught me the value of fiber, particularly for weight management.  Not that I paid much attention.  Most of the stuff she recommended was hideous.  No matter how good for me something might be, if it tastes like a cereal box, I’m probably not going to eat it.

When the health food store’s employee pulled a tall, narrow canister of Sprinkle Fiber off the shelf, I turned up my nose at it.  That’s when she explained what she liked about it.  She not only got her daily quota of fiber from it, but she got it easily, with no mess and no taste.  I took her recommendation and now this canister stays on my kitchen table, right beside the salt and pepper.  It mixes with any soft food, dissolving completely without any taste or grit.

3. Organic Essential Detox by Renew Life (product review)

My health food store was obviously a fan of the Renew Life product line and initially suggested several detoxes like their Heavy Metal Cleanse.  Their employee raved about the product but since it’s only in pill form and I have trouble swallowing pills, she recommended her favorite liquid cleanse, the Organic Essential Detox.

Though many of my fitness-minded friends do cleanses, or detoxes, several times a year, I’d always rejected the idea.  Frankly, I was afraid I would have to excuse myself too frequently from too many meetings to run to the bathroom—and that’s the main reason I refused to try them.

This one is supposed to be extremely gentle, and after a lengthy discussion with the employee, I decided to give it a try.  I measured out an amount just less than a capful and made a brew of green tea at least twice a day, sometimes three times.  Initially, I thought the tea tasted god-awful but I got used to it after about a week.  I drank the tea about 30 minutes before my meals and made sure to drink plenty of water throughout the day.

Problems?  None.  None of the gastric fears.

The perks?  Well, me. I got downright perky.  In a few days’ time, I began to feel sooooo much more energetic.   This was the only dietary change I made during this time, so I can safely attribute the perks to the product.  My thinking became clearer, my body less fatiqued, and I had a surge of energy.  Instead of coming home from a grueling day of work and wanting to nap for a couple of hours, I wanted to hop on the treadmill or jump into home repair projects.  The bottle lasted approximately 2 weeks, and the difference in energy was substantial.

4. Source of Life Liquid Vitamins by Nature’s Plus.

My favorite of these is the Mixed Berry “Red” version. Vitamins have always been a problem for me because they’ve generally come in pill form, which are hard for me to swallow.  Even as a child, I would ask the doctor if I could take a shot instead of having to swallow a pill or liquid with the consistency and taste of swamp water. Most chewable vitamins lack everything I need, so when the health food store employee recommended liquid vitamins, I was intrigued.  I decided I liked the ingredients and flavor of the Red version of the product better.

I’m still not crazy about the taste. Yes, it’s a 2-tablespoon dose (roughly one shot) but to cut the taste, I generally mix it with a glass of grape or pomegranate juice.  I’m getting used to it, but initially it was not the best tasting liquid.  However, it does really work for me.  Again, maybe it’s because the liquid has a better absorption rate, but I did get a huge surge of energy soon after my first dose, as the product promises.

5. DanActive Probiotic Dairy Drink by Dannon.

If you have frequent yeast/bacterial infections, here-to-forth referred to as “girl problems,” acidophilus pills and a daily helping of yogurt are well-known prevention strategies.  My problem is, I hate most of the yogurts that come in the plastic tubs. I don’t mind the taste, but I can’t abide the gloopy texture.

DanActive is basically a yogurt drink, and I personally find it quite tasty.  The bottles are tiny—not enough for a meal but perfect for either a dessert or to take other vitamins or medicines with.  Vanilla’s my fav, followed by strawberry.  One a day for me keeps girl-problems away!

One of my co-workers swears by DanActive but for different reasons.  Her digestive system is at its best on a daily bottle of DanActive, and she claims it’s the only thing that keeps her from feeling bloated.

So there you have it.  Five new products to give a whirl!

My point is, it seems so freaking silly that a girl the age of my younger daughter would fear a birthday.  And yet, how many grown women (and occasionally men) do I know who hide their birthdays, insist they won’t have any more, as if a birthday is something to fear or dread?  They insist on ignoring their birthdays, insist on no parties or acknowledgment.  The very idea of a birthday seems to give them stomach ulcers.  Shoot, pick whatever age you want to be and call the number a number and move on, but don’t not celebrate!

Birthdays are a time of assessment and celebration.  This year, it’s my best birthday ever and it’s going to be an even better year that last year or the year before.  Sure, I’d prefer to have the body I had when I was 32–svelte and sculpted– but honestly, I wasn’t as comfortable with my body, my sexuality, or myself then.  I was also on the fast track in my Federal career, had two small children, a blossoming writing career,  a husband, and all the things that were considered the American dream–but I was also stressed to the point of frequent chest pains.  Where I am now is comfortable, happy, healthy, and more in the moment than I have ever been in my life.  I don’t necessarily have all the things that some people think are indicators of happiness but that’s what other people need to be happy, not me.  Or feel they need.  Life is good.  Really good.  Not without occasional problems, but really good still.

I’ve never been one to be so much “in the moment” as I am now, but I am at peace with the past, enjoying the present, and looking forward to the future.  With this birthday, I am completely confident in who I am and what I want.  There is no ache to this year’s birthday because of what I’ve lost or whom I haven’t brought forward into the present with me.  This year, I celebrate myself for who I am and for being happy with myself and the life I’ve built, and I appreciate myself.

So I’m not hiding from my birthday this year (I never have).  Instead, I am enjoying it–just as I intend to enjoy every day of this coming year.

Besides, I’m already immortal.

Photo credit by satosphere; creative commons license.  Article originally published in Third Degree Tilt.

In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to my self in a dark wood where the straight way was lost.—Dante

I came across this quote today. I’d forgotten it.

Dante would have been about 35 at the time, so I guess maybe that was what he considered the middle of his life, but I think the quote applies to far more than impending middle age. We all have times when things are dark and we have no choice but to face Self and decide whether to acknowledge what we see or to run and hide.

Anyway, it reminded me very much of the difficult times that people I adore have been having, and I wanted to say that I’m with you, all of you, in heart and in Spirit.

What was it you just said?  “I’m getting old”?  Or maybe, “I must be getting old and decrepit”?  Rest assured, with that kind of self-talk, you’ll be feeling older than you are, faster than you can imagine.
How can I wake you up from giving yourself the polar opposite of affirmations so that you don’t fulfill your own prophecy long before your body, mind, and spirit are ready to decay and fade?  Oh, I know:

Thwap!

You’ve been slapped by the cold, wet salmon of self-fulfilling prophecy. Yes, you just attributed an inconvenience, twinge, or annoyance with becoming old and decrepit.

Am I saying that the human body doesn’t age, weaken, and wear down with time?  No, but I do believe that mindset can contribute to an early frailty and stagnation that, for some elderly folks I’ve known who have been upbeat and vibrant, didn’t happen until the very, very end of their long lives.  I’ve known too many people to go from being healthy and productive to fragile and apathetic, and the transition has been a steady stream of self-deprecating remarks on their age and the expectations they have of it.

When I was a teen, my middle-aged mom used to tell me that “Age is a state of mind.”  It is, but it’s more than that.  Age is a mindset, and if that mindset is tainted with constant, powerful phrases—incantations!—of how old and weak and damned we are becoming by the minute, then the negative mindset will shape our physical reality.

I’ve become very aware of men and women between 35 and 55 who tell themselves and others at least 5 or 6 times a day (that I know of) that “I’m getting old.”  Older, yes, but old? Many of the times, they tie the phrase to some minor health issue that isn’t necessarily a sign of aging.  For example….

-          A colleague of mine is having trouble thinking.  Every time I am in her presence, she makes a remark about getting old and that she can’t seem to focus.  I’ve known this woman for 20+ years and when she was 30,  I recall that she was under a lot of stress and complained to me frequently that she couldn’t seem to focus.  Every time in her career that the stress has been overwhelming, she’s become fragmented and unfocused because she’s been pulled in so many directions.  The difference now is that ever since she turned 50, she gives her age as the reason.  Over and  over and over.  Never mind the pressure, the stress, the fact that she needs to be cloned several times to do her job.

-          A guy friend of mine is in his early 40’s.  Every so often in his life, he does something stupid like go join a gym and kill himself working out the first day.  The next day, he can barely move because he’s so sore and stiff.  When he was in his 20’s, he complained that he’d overdone it at the gym—a valid point!–and then snoozed in his apartment for the next week while he recovered.  Now, it’s because he’s getting old, he says.  Not because he didn’t work up gradually to a tough routine.  It does take his body longer to recover, yes, but his entire focus is on his age as an excuse, not on taking care of himself properly.

-          A female friend of mine makes fun of me—as well as anyone else who has problems occasionally with their glasses prescriptions.  As the human eye ages, it loses its ability to accommodate near and far vision without help (readers, multi-focal contacts, laser eye surgery, etc).   I refuse to say, oh, I need glasses because I’m getting old.  I needed glasses when I was 13, and I’ve had a long history of all sorts of contacts and glasses and tweaked prescriptions.  I need glasses but I need them for slightly different reasons, and those reasons have changed many times over the years.  So what?  But this particular friend hates her glasses—which she’s always had, by the way—so she makes a huge point to ranting whenever anyone pulls out reading glasses or uses a  non-microscopic font.  “You must be getting old,” she says.  “Hell, I know I am!”

I’m afraid she’s going to be one of those old folks who spends all her time comparing notes and competing with other old folks to see who has the worst medical symptoms.  Sheesh!  Bring it to yourself as fast as possible, will you?  This is prime Law of Attraction stuff where a person can certainly fast-forward into that reality.   The elderly people who are the most vibrant don’t seem to be the ones talking incessantly about this little ache or that little pain—they focus on other stuff.  You look at them and see the deep wrinkles but still think of them as “young at heart.”  They are still lots of fun to be around.

If you remember the Carol Burnett skit that later became “Mama’s Family,” Vicki Lawrence played a woman decades older.  It always amused me how she could just become “Mama” so quickly, enough so that it was a little disturbing whenever she played her younger character, who was closer to her own age.  Good actors can easily morph into other realities of themselves–the characters they play–if they’re in the right mindset.  Most people don’t claim to be actors but too much time in that mindset of I’m old, I’m fat, I’m bald, I’m…whatever…when they are not physically those things yet will put them on the fastrack to making it reality.

Instead of hurting yourself with endless negative self-talk, try something new.  Wipe that cold, wet salmon off your face and the next time you have a scatterbrain moment, say, “Wow, I forgot what I was going to say.  Good thing I bounce back quickly!”  If your knee hurts, say something like, “My knee hurts.  It’s a good thing I’m healthy and my super-duper vitamins make me feel better every day!”  And hey, if you’re having a hot flash, just remember that not so long ago, most women didn’t survive to see menopause and that you are one lucky woman to be so vibrant and sexy and alive!

Photo Credit by the PhotoPhreak; creative commons license

As I write this, it is a Sunday afternoon  and I have a few friends coming over for dinner and an in-depth spiritual discussion.  Did I say a few?  I meant fifteen.  Or maybe ten because several just called and said they might not make it because of transportation problems.  Or maybe twenty because several just called to say they might bring a couple of friends. I had planned to make chicken cordon bleu but do I double the recipe?  What about glasses?   I don’t know why this particular gathering is so wavering in projected attendance but it is, and I could be a ball of nerves over everything being perfect, but I’m doing only a teensy bit of stress.

I finally understand what a cancer patient told me over a decade ago.

I met her only once, and I took an instant liking to her.  I was drawn to her in a way I can’t explain.  She seemed to radiate something I wanted, needed.  I know now that that something was serenity.

She had come to see me, actually, at a workshop or speech or some such I was giving in another town even though she lived about two miles from me.  She asked wonderfully contemplative questions during my gig, and afterward, the two of us and a few more women sat and talked for an hour or so.  That’s when I learned that this vibrant woman in her 40’s was a cancer patient in remission.  I didn’t know when I’d ever met someone who seemed so alive.  She had an amazing story to tell of how her illness had changed her life, though she really didn’t dwell on the past.  She talked mostly about a technique she’d developed that helped her to de-stress and promised to show the five of us gathered around her.  She invited us all to dinner at her house the following Sunday evening and told us to wear comfy clothes so she could teach us.

I went home excited.  Not  only was I going to learn a new stress reduction technique that might actually work, but I was going to spend two or three hours with this astonishing woman who was such an inspiration to the people she met.  My then-husband was markedly less excited.  He accepted that I might give lectures here and there but to him, this sounded more like a social occasion that wouldn’t include him.  It meant he would have to feed our children that night but I would still be home in time to tuck them in. I was going, regardless, but he’d let me know he wasn’t happy about it, and I knew I’d pay for it with a silent treatment.

About two hours before the get-together, I got a voice mail from the woman.  I don’t even remember what it was that had happened but something had popped up in our hostess’ life that made it far too stressful to have guests over.  Something had delayed her and she suggested we makes plans for another time. She said something else, too, but I was feeling sorry for myself and slightly betrayed at the time. I’d gone to a lot of trouble to make the get-together. Part of me felt that she was letting us down by choosing not to go ahead with the meeting.  I was mentally putting myself in her place and knowing that I’d be having a get-together regardless of what else had come up during the day.  And I was judging her by my own over-stressed expectations of how I would do it.

The thing she said that has stuck with me all these years is that she really made no apologies for canceling our event at the proverbial last minute.  I would have been on the phone begging forgiveness, but this serene woman was very matter-of-fact.  She said she knew we’d all understand that the little things in life weren’t worth adding unnecessary stress to our lives and that we could get together another time that wouldn’t be a burden on her.  True, but to me, I’d made a much bigger deal of our getting together and what she could teach me while, for her, it was simply having fun people over to talk and learn and eat.

That was lesson she taught me.  Not some intricate yoga-like technique but a mindset.  Don’t stress over what doesn’t matter.  She never said “Life is short” or anything self-defeating like that.  She said that life is important and deserving of being enjoyed rather than filled up with stress that didn’t need to be there.

So I’m having people over for dinner tonight and then afterward we’ll sprawl out for hours on the living room floor and discuss Life, Death, and the Universe.  I won’t stress over having enough matching glasses and fine china or whether we’ll have chicken cordon bleu.  It’ll either be mis-matched or we’ll have paper plates and plastic cups.  And instead of chicken cordon bleu, we’ll have a big chicken lasagna and sweet tea and soft drinks.  And it’ll be a relaxed, un-stressed evening full of laughter and good conversation.

I discovered multi-focus contact lenses by accident but began wearing them with great purpose. You’d think that as a professional in my 40’s, I’d be a good demographic for Bausch and Lomb advertising but I’m not, which is why it’s amazing to me that I found them, and found something that really works for me…after a little tweaking. So here’s the good and the bad of what I discovered for myself and how I traded in my reading glasses for a new vision of Me.

I don’t watch TV because I like to avoid all the fear-mongering of the news, so if there are TV commercials about multi-focus contact lenses, I’ve missed it. If there are radio ads, I’ve missed those, too, because I’m usually listening to an audiobook on quantum physics—not beauty tips or how to fight aging un-gracefully. I don’t read women’s magazines either, mainly because they’re filled with the type of marketing that ruins self-esteem. I had no idea that multi-focus contact lenses existed so that I could search the Internet far and wide for reviews on the contacts or even personal stories (like this one) of what made the process work and where I hit some bumps in the road. But multi-focus contact lenses found me, anyway…exactly 2 years after I finally gave in and started wearing reading glasses.

Why I wanted multi-focus contact lenses:

I’ve worn glasses and contacts since I was 13. I’m not afraid of either but I’ve always preferred the convenience factors of contacts. And then suddenly I was having to wear both my contacts and glasses for my up-close work. I was lucky, I suppose, that I didn’t have to have reading glasses until most of my peers had had them for several years.

Not that I didn’t make the best of reading glasses (aka the oh-so-youthfully nicknamed “readers”) when I started wearing them right after my 45th birthday. I bought funky animal prints, geometrically-skewed kaleidoscope prints, and rhinestone and pink Elton-John-ish “dating” glasses. At that time, I was dating men between 35 and 47, and they’d invariably laugh about my reading glasses when I pulled them out to scour a menu at a nice restaurant. Most of my dates had to try them on and look silly but cute in public…and use them just long enough to read the menu for themselves! Then at 46, I began dating a man half my age and have continued to date sexy, fantastic men in their 20’s ever since. The last thing I wanted to do was let the boy take me out to dinner and then find myself fumbling in my purse for my reading glasses while a dippy Ruby Tuesday’s waitress flirted with my “son.” The only thing worse was pulling out reading glasses to check the small print on my birth control—argh!

But hating my reading glasses was never about vanity. I mean, I can pull off the sexy librarian look just fine, thank you, but do I want to? All the time? Who cares if the guys like it—it’s annoying when it’s 24/7/365.

It took at least a year for me to learn to cope with my hatred of the sheer inconvenience of reading glasses. I eventually had a pair in every room of the house, in my car, in my purse, on my desk at work, and wherever else I might suddenly need to read .2 font on the back of a medicine bottle or on the bottom of a contract.

Reading became so inconvenient that I gave up printed books in favor of audio books and stopped reading newspapers altogether. The constant put-them-on-pull-them-off was annoying, and every day I had a dozen conversations with my boss where I pulled off my readers to look up from my computer and talk to my boss who handed me some kind of small print so that I had to put them back on to read it and then pull them off to talk to him again. Ugh.

After confirming that I was not and would never be a candidate for laser surgery, I had almost resigned myself to a lifetime of contact lenses with reading glasses playing a significant part of everyday life when I put the desire out (Law of Attraction, you know?) for some sort of better solution to come to me that would allow me to read whenever and whatever I wanted without the shackles of reading glasses (or the constant clink of them in my purse). At a visit to my dentist’s office, I was told NO CELL PHONES ALLOWED due to the landlines’ picking up the static of my Internet connection, even when my phone was on silent. I put my phone away, heaved a big sigh, and actually opened a magazine. I landed on a page that featured multi-focus contact lenses and how you can see both near and far with them (and in-between) and never put on another pair of reading glasses again. Wow. I was hooked. Multi-focus contact lenses — just what I’d been looking for!

Getting multi-focus contact lenses:

When I asked if my beloved optometrist prescribed multi-focus contact lenses, the receptionist looked at me as though I were crazy and said, “Of course! We sell lots of them!” Actually, I wanted to scream, “Then why haven’t I heard of multi-focus contact lenses in the past two years and four visits here?” But she was way too sweet and upbeat and I was simply happy to know that I might have found my answer.

My eye doctor had to perform an exam for a new prescription, which my usually mediocre vision insurance (Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Florida–Federal employees) covered because it was a new prescription, to my surprise. It was time for my annual exam anyway and to renew my old lenses—a 30-day brand that I admit I wore day and night for 30 days at a time, against my optometrist’s advice. The doc put in the new multi-focus contact lenses and told me to come back in a week.

In a week, he tweaked the power in the left one to make it a little stronger without losing the distance vision. He told me I’d tolerated the multi-focus contact lenses very well and that each person is different in how we respond to the lenses, the multiple powers in them, and the light around us. Because the eye may dilate past the up-close or distance powers (for lack of a more clinical description), sometimes the power we need for either up-close or distance vision might not be where we need it, resulting in problems such as not being able to see signage on highways at night or read books at the beach. Some people, I was told, have to turn their face just so, in order to change the position of the power in certain light.

For me, I didn’t notice any particular differences in the first week except having to look “down” through my multi-focus contact lenses in certain light—and that the compact fluorescent lights at my mom’s house made reading a book nearly impossible. The same went for the dimmed lights in the Olive Garden in Destin, Florida. Impossible to read the ecru-colored menu and tiny print. (“Er, could I have a flashlight with that menu, please?”)

At the beginning of week three, my doc tweaked the power in the other eye and asked me to test it for a week. By the fourth visit, I was happy with my new contacts and ready to order several months’ supply—and take advantage of a special rebate deal that Bausch and Lomb was offering. These multi-focus contact lenses, even without the rebate, were cheaper than my usual brand.

So what’s the good and the bad of my new multi-focus contact lenses after a month? It’s specific to my eyes, of course, but here’s my personal review of what works for me and what doesn’t:

The Bad (or at least, the I’m-not-that-fond-of this):

I cannot sleep in the lenses longer than a couple of hours (for a nap, perhaps). I certainly can’t sleep in them all night or wear them for a straight 30 days. These are a lot thicker than the 30-day lenses, which had the density of Saran Wrap. This was probably the most difficult for me to deal with. I like being able to see when I wake up in the middle of the night–an old habit from when my children were very young.

I had a mild headache with nausea for about 3 to 5 days when I was getting used to the stronger up-close power with the same distance vision as before. This was similar to the kind of headache you get when changing to a new glasses prescription. I almost gave up on this until I was told I’d get used to it, and I was mostly there by the next day.

I didn’t notice it until I did a lot of night driving about 3 weeks into the trial process, but my distance vision at night is blurry in the far distance. Very far distance. Maybe 20 cars ahead, the traffic lights will be…double vision. Six green lights instead of three. Closer than that is just fine, but a lot of night driving makes my eyes feel tired and I have a slight nausea-headache effect.

You know how when you have your eyes dilated for a glaucoma test and all the lamps look strangely bright? That’s been a noticeable difference at night, beginning about an hour before twilight when the light starts to shift. Headlights and traffic lights, as well as neon and digital signs, have an odd halogen-light shine to them. To me, at least. The vision is still perfect, but it makes my eyes a little tired.

Compact fluorescent and dim bulbs make my eyes feel tired, too. This is most often in certain businesses, like the Okaloosa County Tax Collector’s office in Niceville, Florida. However, I’m also one of those people who see flickering in fluorescent bulbs, even the expensive ones.

The Good

Most importantly, I can see out there and I can see up here! That’s simply put but the magnitude of difference for me is H*U*G*E.

I can’t wear the lenses overnight or for 30 days, but the extra thickness (comparatively) makes it easy for me to take them out and put them in without them “taco-ing” on my fingertips.

In summary

So far, so good. They do take some tweaking and getting used to, but thus far, I prefer the minor inconveniences to the major inconvenience of reading glasses. That’s just me, of course, but maybe something in my own experience will help you either decide if they’re right for you or to adjust to your new contacts.

Update: Seven months later!  I am still loving these lenses.  I have just now started to notice some changes so that I need to update my prescription, so I’m glad I didn’t buy a year’s worth, even for some of the nice discounts that were offered at the time.   I usually wear a pair for two weeks, never overnight, before changing to a new pair.  Driving in traffic at night is a chore after more than 30 minutes because it tires my eyes and I get a slight double-vision effect at a distance, still.  I can still see well enough to maneuver my way home, but the effect is similar to being in a 3-d movie without the special glasses.  I also still see a strange glare on lights at night, mainly headlights, tail lights, and neon signs that flash–and I still want to shoot out every halogen headlight within five miles.  That minor vision deficiency is a trade-off I’m willing to make because I can still easily drive to the grocery store two miles away or a nearby boyfriend’s house after dark, and if I plan any long-distance trips for a departure time early enough in the day that I arrive before sunset.  I knew when I started this that these lenses wouldn’t be a 100% solution for me, but they have been and still are the best solution for me.

He’s 23 and has the physique of a demi-god, but that’s not what attracted me to him.  It’s more the fact that he’s a firefighter with a wicked sense of humor.  I love it when a man can keep me laughing…in a good way.

Our first date is very casual–a cup of chai tea at a local establishment–to see if anything clicks between us.  Like most first dates, there’s a degree of sizing each other up and, like most guys, he tries to impress me with tales of his heroics or hard times he’s overcome.  I smile as I recognize the mating ritual in full play, and he’s made it quite clear that he’s interested.

Sitting across the narrow table from me, he confesses that he’s always adored older women but he can’t pin down the reason why.  He promises that whatever I might be interested in with him, he will not disappoint me.  That makes me laugh, even though he didn’t mean for it to be funny.  He’s trying very hard to be worthy of my attention, and I think it’s sweet.

He wonders aloud if older women are more interesting because we’re grateful, and oh, but that really makes me laugh.  And costs him a few points, too.  It’s an oft-stated assumption that’s, well, just plain wrong in the context of his question.

Ben Franklin wasn’t entirely accurate in his famous letter, known as the Old Mistress’ Apologue, in 1745:

But if you will not take this Counsel, and persist in thinking a Commerce with the Sex inevitable, then I repeat my former Advice, that in all your Amours you should prefer old Women to young ones. You call this a Paradox, and demand my Reasons. They are these:

1. Because as they have more Knowledge of the World and their Minds are better stored with Observations, their Conversation is more improving and more lastingly agreeable.

2. Because when Women cease to be handsome, they study to be good. To maintain their Influence over Men, they supply the Diminution of Beauty by an Augmentation of Utility. They learn to do Services small and great and are the most tender and useful of all Friends when you are sick. Thus they continue amiable. And hence there is hardly such a thing to be found as an old Woman who is not a good Woman.

3. Because there is no hazard of Children, which irregularly produced may be attended with much Inconvenience.

4. Because through more Experience, they are more prudent and discreet in conducting an Intrigue to prevent Suspicion. The Commerce with them is they are safer with regard to your Reputation. And with regard to theirs, if the Affair should happen to be known, considerate People might be rather inclined to excuse an old Woman who would kindly take care of a young Man, form his Manners by her good Counsels, and prevent his ruining his Health and Fortune among mercenary Prostitutes.

5. Because in every Animal that walks upright, the Deficiency of the Fluids that fill the Muscles appears first in the highest Part: The Face first grows lank and wrinkled; then the Neck; then the Breast and Arms; the lower Parts continuing to the last as plump as ever: So that covering all above with a Basket and regarding only what is below the Girdle, it is impossible of two Women to know an old from a young one. And as in the dark all Cats are grey, the Pleasure of corporal Enjoyment with an old Woman is at least equal, and frequently superior, every Knack being by Practice capable of Improvement.

6. Because the Sin is less. The debauching a Virgin may be her Ruin, and may lead to a Life unhappy.

7. Because the Compunction is less. The having made a young Girl miserable may give you frequent bitter Reflections; none of which can attend the making an old Woman happy.

8 Eighthly and Lastly, They are so grateful!!

The reason Ben’s advice sounds so off to me–besides being 265 years old–is that it’s from the point of view of a man already at middle age.  Maybe cougars 265 years ago were grateful,  but it just doesn’t fit so well in 2010.

I much prefer Frank Kaiser’s “In Praise of Older Women,” a column that is mistakenly attributed to Andy Rooney.  Even though it’s aimed at women a generation older than I am, I have appreciated the column since I first heard of it almost a decade ago.    My favorite parts?

Older women are sublime.  They seldom contemplate having a shouting match with you at the opera or in the middle of an expensive dinner.  Of course, if you deserve it, they won’t hesitate to shoot you if they think they can get away with it.

Yes, women with a little bit of maturity aren’t as likely to be drama queens.  So right about that.  I hear this from my younger friends more than any other reason for appreciating an older woman.

And then there’s this gem that says it all:

An older woman has been around long enough to know who she is, what she wants, and from whom.

Time now to understand the word grateful in its proper context.   I’m not grateful because I’m desperate for a man, any man.  Too damned picky for that.  But when it comes to gratitude, yes, it’s there.

I am grateful for the sexy younger men in my life because I recognize that those full heads of hair and six-pack abs are fleeting, that that fiery passion and enthusiasm for life is often tamped down by the burdens  of paying the mortgage and feeding a family, that the rambunctious innocence of a young man can become jaded after a few drudge jobs and a divorce or two.  I appreciate that part of a man’s life and love to breathe it in with him before–as happens too often–he becomes tainted by the mundane.

Young men are still grateful themselves–a man in his 40’s will criticize an older woman’s weight, clothes, hair, ideas, and ideals whereas a man in his 20’s dismisses all those restrictions and shouts, “Woo-hoo, a naked woman!” without insisting she be registered to vote for the same party.

I’m filled with appreciation for such sweet men to be in my life and I’m grateful  because…well, because that’s what I like and what I get.  And if the Law of Attraction is working in its tip-top form, then my gratitude will serve me by bringing more younger men into my life of such outstanding caliber.

Life is wide open and full of options.  And I don’t really know where to go from here.  I don’t recall ever having so many options open for me at 18 or 25 or 30.

Back then, I felt–and was often told–that I have so terribly many alternatives for my future but that I would narrow my path through my field of study…and my first job…and my subsequent jobs…and then with marriage and family and the PTA and certain expectations of fitting myself into the shoebox of societal norms.  Back then, I saw a whirlwind of possibilities being funneled down to just one or two and being on a path that would be impossible to jump from, unless there was a bridge involved.  The high kind with water and rocks below.

Life has not proved that way.  Not for me, at least.  I think of the ending of the second Terminator movie, where Sarah Connor suddenly does not know the future.  I know my future is full of possibilities and that the future is very fluid.  Yes, indeed: no fate except what we make.

I confessed on a walk with my daughter while visiting her college campus that I have so many options opening up for the future that I really am a little baffled by the direction I might choose.  This, after all my life knowing the next logical step in my life phases.   That narrow path is opening onto a wide vista and I’m about to run barefoot into the grass and sunshine, tumbling and spinning and dancing.  With my younger daughter leaving home in another year, who knows what I’ll do?

Maybe I’ll follow one of these sweet young sergeants to England for a year or maybe backpack through Europe for a summer.  Maybe I’ll take my buddy Shawn’s advice and teach acquisition courses for the Defense Acquisition University and spend a few years on the road.  Maybe I’ll switch to the Army or NASA and see what I can learn that’s new in my current career field or maybe I’ll just write books about dominance and submission from the psychological viewpoint or maybe I’ll teach English at a University somewhere.  Maybe I’ll produce audio books or go back into life coaching full-time.  Maybe I’ll go back to playing pipe organ in a local church or open a writer’s retreat or go back to teaching safety workshops so farm workers don’t lose fingers.  Maybe I’ll spend a year in Costa Rica with my laptap and a good Internet connection.    So many choices, and all of them quite possible.

My older daughter reminded me then, on our pleasant tour of the neighborhood, that my menu of futures is unusual for most people.  For most, she suggested, they become stuck on one path and don’t see any options at all.  Once their path is set, they’re committed to it…eternally.  No more choices.   Once an accountant, always an accountant.  Once set in a house in a certain city, always there.  There is a mindset at mid-life that it is too late to make such drastic changes, even if such changes would present an exciting, happy future.  We too often get caught up in the inertia of where we’ve worked so hard to get to and forget that we have another half of our lives to explore and enjoy new things if we’re not absolutely thrilled with where we are now.

So where do I go from here?  Doesn’t really matter as long as I keep moving forward and enjoying myself.

Though I’m feeling very confident right now about my medical tests on Tuesday, I’ve been bothered by a few things and I think it’s absolutely imperative I work these out in my head, not just for Tuesday’s tests but for  many areas of my life right now and in the future, medical and not.    I spent quite a bit of time today talking to some of the best Law of Attraction practitioners I know, and did ultimately get to the shift I was wanting.

What’s bothering me is that my doctor will likely want to see me more often, and as doctors do, she’ll be looking for what’s wrong. If she doesn’t find anything, she’ll look harder and more often.  Until she does.  I don’t like the idea of seeing a doctor for the routine purpose of looking for cancer or what might become cancer one day.  If you go looking for something on a regular basis, eventually you’ll find it.  And if you don’t find it, then you have exhaustive tests that will “hopefully” find something wrong?  Or does focusing on it make it so?

Our family used to be involved with the local Relay for Life events–now about 4 big events in this area, in different small towns within 20 miles of here.  We’ve lost some beloved coworkers to cancer in the past few years, with rumors that 30-something people who used to work in one particular physical area have died.  (I miscarried while I worked there briefly, as did several other women though none of us knew at the time–and there were frequent environmental checks done on the building.)  Because some of our favorite co-workers have passed in the last year and others fight every day, my organization is very focused on supporting Relay for Life and various cancer experiments.  One of the things you realize very quickly when you’re involved in Relay for Life is how many people you know who have cancer or have a loved one who has it.  They make you stand up if you do, and if you’ve lost a parent or child or a spouse,  and then if you’ve lost a sibling, and then if you’ve lost another relative, and finally if you just know someone who died from cancer.  It’s sobering, in a staggering way, to attend such a rally or event.  The stand-up test was given in detail at our last mandatory office function…which was a week before the tests that had my doctor looking extra hard.  At my job, it’s definitely cancer season …or rally season…which means lots of focus on fear.

One of the things at this last mandatory meeting and rally that bugged me was the attempt to get everyone to sign up for a cancer experiment.  They wanted us to take a few basic tests and agree to continuing the tests year after year to see how many of us get cancer over the next 20 years or so.  My answer was not  no, but hell no.  There was such a deep level of resistance to it for me.  Though they were calling it cancer prevention, it was all about how long and under what circumstances each of us would get cancer.    It had the feeling of bringing cancer to participants in what surely seemed like a  worthy experiment.

It’s important to me to have a doctor who’s onboard with the way I think and who’ll focus on finding good news instead of exhaustive searches for bad stuff.  I think I have that in my current doctor.  I know that many doctors have a certain perspective that, if they find themselves ill, destroys them.  I certainly saw this when I was dating The Treat.  He was a wonderful physician with a great sense of humor, but he once confessed to me that he looked first and foremost for the worst case when a patient arrived with particular symptoms.   Even though he seemed light in his personality, in his outlook, he was very heavy and expected the worst.  He also complained to me that he didn’t like treating people with simple colds or anxiety disorders–he wanted to find and cure the really bad stuff and relished it.  I can see now his mindset contributed to his own self-destruction.

When I was dating the Ten of Pents, another urgent care physician, he had a somber but kind bedside manner but was very light in his outlook.  He loved treating people with minor problems and giving them quick solutions.  Whereas The Treat used to tell me about taking off from work to attend his patients’ funerals, the Ten of Pents couldn’t dine out without interruption.  While out for an evening, we had both other diners and cell phone calls to tell him how he’d saved their lives and they were now X-free and happy.  Both were excellent doctors but with very different public personas and very different private outlooks.

My current doc is positive and upbeat and I love it when she asks at my annual checkups, “Did you have a good year?”  and her face lights up when I say, “Yes, I had a great year!”    I’ll spend a little time Tuesday telling her how I want her to work with me, and that as she’s conducting this particular test/exam, I want her to tell me what she sees that’s right, that’s excellent, that’s improved since my last visit.

That, I think, will be my way of balancing carefree routine visits without the constant gnawing focus on what dreaded thing might be wrong. I will be thankful for such thorough tests that can prove how well I’m doing and that I just get better and better.

Every time I’ve been pregnant, I’ve been completely exhausted for the first few months, or at least until the pregnancy ended– whichever came first.  It’s an incredible  tired-ness.  I remember that when I was pregnant with Shannon and feeling guilty for my fatigue, someone in the medical field pointed out to me that even though I felt that I was doing NOTHING physically, my body was very active on the inside and the exertion level was the equivalent of climbing mountains, so don’t feel guilty for needing to rest and regain my energy

That’s a little of how I feel now as I try to overcome the taxation of different medical procedures and tests.  I need to re-focus and re-calibrate to keep my energy for myself.  To that end, I’ve started a list of where I “leak” energy (aka, be selfless, be a fixer, take on other people’s problems, or be over-protective) and have decided a few things I will no longer do.   For starters….

- – I will no longer stress over my day job. Most of the stress introduced into my daily environment is ridiculous and petty and the result of typical reactive rather than pro-active measures. It’s almost never life-and-death for the soldiers. Someone else’s lack of planning tends to become my emergency.  Though I can handle much of this with ease, it sucks the life out of me.  I’m turning it back to the people who invented the stress instead of trying to transmute it into something shiny.  I’ve been pretty good at this for the past few months but every now and then, something major pops up that’s harder to ignore.

- – I will also no longer argue with people at work.  If my boss doesn’t want to let me work from home (telecommuting for compensation) while I’m out on sick leave, no problem.  The work will simply not be done.  If I explain to my customer that she’s pursuing an acquisition strategy that’s absolutely not going to get approved and she does it anyway, then I’m going to bust her at Clearance and she can start from scratch.

- – I will no longer deny myself pleasure.  My lovers are the hottest men I’ve ever known and I’m having the best OMG sex of my life—and so are they.  So there.  I waited a long time for this and I deserve it.

- – I will no longer hound my younger daughter about her grades, homework, schedule, etc.  She’s making her own decisions  and she can live with the consequences.  She’s made good choices thus far about various potential vices but it’s the non-lethal things that stress me with her (in the absence of worse).  She’ll make her own choices regardless of how much I stress over her so I can recognize that and be here if she needs me but let her scrape her knees where necessary.  She’s almost an adult and needs to grow into some smart decisions—and that includes recognizing cause and effect.

- – I will no longer answer the call of anyone seeking help who isn’t willing to give something in exchange for my energy.  That means no more freebies.  Compensation doesn’t have to be monetary (not at all) but it does have to be balanced.

- – I will no longer expend energy protecting Justin.   There was a time when I was in a really great place and he was the one who needed emotional support and near-constant attention—and I had high energy levels to nurture him.  Right now, I have to nurture myself and I don’t have the energy to prop someone else up.   He’s a big boy, and having the courage to take responsibility and walk in truth is a spiritual growth experience that he has to accomplish for himself, no matter the cost.  Instead of me protecting him from harsh situations he’s fallen/jumped into, he has to learn to protect himself, quit sabotaging himself, and not put himself in situations that create pain and sacrifice.  We have way too much in common in that last regard.

- – I will no longer bother with “students” and circle-mates who aren’t serious and don’t put forth an adequate effort, no matter how much I like them personally.  Most of my students, both initiated and not, are making great strides on their spiritual journeys, even though they may not always realize it.  The ones who just want to play at it?  Not interested.  They can waste their own time, but not mine.

- – I will no longer get pulled into OPD (Other People’s Drama).  Yeah, this one’s hard because I’ve tended to be too caring and want to help when I see people in trouble. For most of the past year and longer, I’ve been trying not to get involved and insisting that other people handle their own issues without involving me.  That works pretty well until I start being harassed or cornered, or drama queens mess with the people I love who are too stressed or weak to defend themselves.  (That’s my downfall.) Not anymore.  My patience is at an end.  I no longer have any compunction about legal recourse—or , if need be, black magick.  If I have to use energy to deal with OPD, it’ll be to slap someone down.

- – I will no longer worry over my mom and the decisions she makes.  If she wants to spend too much money on a shoddy painter or accept sub-par work from an electrician, it’s her money.   If she dismisses or takes a particular doctor’s advice, it’s her health.  She is mentally very capable and it’s her decision to make.  But if she asks my opinion, I’ll gladly give it.  Until then, I’ll remember that she’s an adult and able to choose for herself—and it’s okay if I disagree with her decisions just as it’s okay if she disagrees with mine.

Photo by Jean Goff; creative commons license   

I’m a big fan of looking over your shoulder every now and then to know how far you’ve come.  I can point to three different events in recent months that have been solid proof to me that I have my self-confidence back, and really, maybe even to a point that I have never before had in my life.  These are really in ascending order of importance and probably won’t mean anything to anyone else but me, but they are definitely flags for me to notice on my journey and to celebrate for what they represent.

If you can say, for certain, that you believe in yourself, then you probably have moments like this, too.  And if you don’t?  Start looking for them because just being aware will help to make them happen.

1.   This used to happen ALL THE FREAKING TIME and I spent so many nights questioning myself–I suppose because I’d been raised to believe that everyone else’s opinion was worthier than mine, whether they were friends, family, or other experts on how I should live: 

An “expert” who doesn’t know me or anything about me walked into the room at the tail-end of a conversation, heard my description of something that’s working very well in my life, and interrupted to tell me, “You need to grow up and get a life or you’ve got a hard road ahead of you, little girl!” 

There was a time when I would have  worried over his opinions (whether he’d caught my comments in context or not) and would have doubted my path, even when it’s working wonderfully for me.  This time, I just frowned and burst into laughter…because I am grown up, I do have a life, and it’s easier now than it’s ever been because I absolutely believe in myself.

2.  Because my ideas are so plentiful and I’m extremely good at brainstorming new ideas for others, I’ve never placed a value on that talent.  In the economics of my own brain, ideas were plentiful and therefore cheap, so I gave them away.  That’s changed now, and I have to remind myself sometimes, “What am I getting out of this–other than just feeling good by helping someone else?”  That helped me place a value on both my talents and my time.  The difference came when I heard from a man I used to have long, long phone conversations with.  In fact, I burned up my prime time minutes in many such conversations with him.

The defining moment came when I demanded the exchange between us give something back to me.  I already knew the things I was helping him with, but I wasn’t seeing any return on my investment in time.  We’d spent many months in long conversations, had taken a break in our friendship, and were about to go right back to many more longer conversations that were becoming more and more one-sided.  I was spending all my time, honestly, coaching him on a situation.   And what was I getting back anymore?  So I demanded I get something out of our friendship as well.  It took him all of one day to decide that he didn’t want to reciprocate, so I ended the relationship.

One of my coaching clients recently asked if I could help him with the same issues that I’d coached my friend on so successfully.  So I do…at a rate of $125 per hour.  If I’d charged my “friend” for all the time I’d spent coaching him, I would have invoiced him for about $10,000.  This is why I’m happy to give my personal opinion/advice but I never offer my professional advice to friends or acquaintances any more.  My time and energy must receive a fair exchange.  I owe myself that because I value myself.

3.  This one’s rather personal, but it probably represents the greatest change in my mindset.  Women over 40 will definitely understand what I mean, and probably a lot of younger women, too:

My very talented and passionate lover had been entertaining me for about three hours (yes, truly) when we suddenly switched gears and found ourselves in a very intense conversation about metaphysics for about ten minutes.   I reached for my drink and we both realized at that moment that my lover had lost his erection.

Like many women, I’ve always had doubts about my sexuality, my body, my attractiveness.  I’ve had my idea of womanhood squashed a few times over  the years, and by the end of my marriage and then early in the dating process, I felt completely unappealing around middle-aged men who had waaaaaaay too many issues of their own.  I think it’s too difficult for men  to accept their own aging process and that occasional impotence is something that just happens, and it’s far too easy to blame it on their partners or for their partners to blame themselves.  A few years ago, I would have been devastated and probably contemplating elective surgeries (oh, wait….I did contemplate that a few years ago).  This time was differerent though.  This time, I didn’t even THINK in those terms but rather that I probably shouldn’t initiate stimulating intellectual discussions  that would shift our focus away from play. 

My very hot young lover, however,  WAS startled by his sudden lack of, um, ardor.  I saw his gaze lock on mine and saw the horror in his eyes of how I might take this indelicate moment.  He was sweetly embarrassed, not blaming, but he sat up quickly, apologizing again and again.  “It’s not you,” he swore.  “What you were saying was just so interesting and–it’s….it’s not YOU.”

And me, I just smiled like a woman who’s never been hurt before and shrugged and said, “Oh, I know.”

I love this portait of a serene old woman and the way her life shines through her eyes.  Taken by Ron Aldaman and provided under a creative commons license.

Since I’ve been reconnecting with people from my past via social networking–as in, from my childhood, teen, and college years–I’ve been astonished to see what’s become of other people within a year of my age.  A few have gone the plastic surgery route–some look good as a result and some look like their faces froze while pulling a few G’s in some kind of prototype for a new military aircraft. I won’t say that I won’t try cosmetic surgery one day, but I’m not quite ready yet.  (My doctor actually advised, “If you ever decide to have work done, you should always go for bigger boobs because men won’t really notice a little crease on your face for more than 5 seconds.”)

There are others whom I’ve mistaken for their mothers.  Not their mothers when we were kids but their mothers NOW.    As in, they look like their 65-year-old parents.

And it is entirely in the way they dress and in their attitudes.  This is not aging gracefully–it’s more a sense of giving up on opportunities, on life. And yes, these are the same people who say everyday, “I must be getting old” or “I’m not young anymore.”  They focus so heavily on getting older, specifically on the negatives of it rather than the positives–and there are many, many positives.

Part of it has to do with where they live and the expectations of their environment.   They’ve certainly succumbed to it.  I first noticed this when I was 23 and living in my hometown temporarily.  I ran into a former schoolmate and was shocked at her appearance.  She’d just married and, true to hometown expectations, had taken to wearing dowdy dresses and a matronly hairstyle.  Why? Because “I’m old and married and settled now.”  Her face was still young, but I remember thinking at the time that she looked 42, not 22.  Her posture had changed, her facial expressions, the way she carried herself, the constant sigh in her voice.  It was as if she’d just resigned herself to a death sentence and decided to stop living, stop trying, stop enjoying.

I don’t ever want to be like that.  I insist on being age-inappropriate.  I dress how I want.  I go barefoot whether I’m in my own house or taking a walk through the neighborhood.  I fly kites and car-dance and go braless.  I sit on the floor in the family room rather than in a comfy chair.  I might make out with my lover in a semi-public place.

I picture myself in my 90’s as one of those old women with long white hair, wearing purple and red, going barefoot in the grass still at every opportunity, and  probably dating men half my age.  Whatever I’m doing then, I don’t want to have given up on life or given in to anyone else’s expectations of what I should be doing, or how I should be dressing and acting.  I want to take advantage of every opportunity when it presents itself, at any age.

Photo by  Northeast Photography; creative commons license

There’s an edginess that’s been in the air for the past couple of hours.  It’s the kind of feeling you get after a fight with a lover or when a dream just got deferred. I can’t pin it down but it’s been intense.  Weighty.  It’s nothing new…but I wasn’t expecting to have it interrupt my pleasant evening.  Someone else’s feelings, that is.

This makes me wonder how many people suffer from depression because they’re so highly sensitive to the emotions of others.  This isn’t like that horrid feeling when Shannon, Brian, and I walked past the meat market, er, I mean bar, in the restaurant a week ago and Brian and I both went, “Ewwwww, what’s that feeling?” at the same time.  It’s always gratifying to be in the company of other empaths who pick up emotions at the same instant I do.  It’s a blessing to have others like that around, really.  They totally get it when you say, “Hey, who just had an emo moment?”

Tonight’s wash of emotions happened fairly suddenly, and I don’t feel thye’re  ”mine.”  I’m going through my usual checklist, and hey, good health habits make it easier to isolate!  It’s even better when the feeling goes away, often rather suddenly and inexplicably.  Except for not knowing WTF just happened.

Here’s my empath’s checklist, applied to this particular instance:

1.  Why am I feeling this way?  Did this wave of emotion come on out of the blue, almost like turning on a lightswitch?
I have no clue why I’m feeling such sadness and upset.  It came on suddenly in the middle of a pleasant evening.  I didn’t just have a fight with anyone or receive bad news, yet I certainly feel the effects as if I had.

2. Did something happen to trigger this wave of upsetting emotion?
No.  I’ve been on an even keel all day at work, even with people having meltdowns all around me.  I’d had plans to do some decorating projects tonight, and I was looking forward to that after watching a movie.   I’ve also had time to watch a movie I’d been dying to see and liked a lot.  There were no incidents that happened right before  the emotional wave.

3.  Am I well-rested?
Yes.  Sometimes lack of sleep will have an emotional impact, but I slept well last night and spent half an hour in meditation tonight.  The latter might be a clue, though, because  during my meditation, I felt very connected to a friend of mine who’s having family problems.

4.  Is my blood sugar out of whack?
No.  Sometimes, fluctuations in my blood sugar will make me either antsy or down but I can usually associate that with particular eating habits and know what to expect.  So far this year, my diet has been very healthy and I’m giving my body what it needs.  Also, the timing isn’t right for any type of “sugar crash,” even if I’d been less mindful of my diet.

5.  Are my hormones out of whack?
Hmmm, well, I am feeling the need for some male company, but no, no raging hormones.  I’m on a new prescription after an abominable time with the last two consecutive prescriptions but I’ve been on it enough days that I’m rather sure I’m not suffering a sudden new side effect. (Being a human antennae for emotions isn’t on the packaging!)

6.  Is there something in my environment that I’m hearing, smelling, seeing that has triggered these feelings?
No.  That includes any annoying noises or flickering lights.

7.  Is there something going on in my immediate environment that’s emotional turmoil for someone else?
No.  In fact, this started before my daughter came home from work cheerful and continued afterward.   I was home alone in a pleasant atmosphere.  There was no tension in the house and no upset with my daughter.

8.  What was my day like overall–before the wave of emotions?
Overall, good.  Pleasant interactions with everyone around me.  Good news on many fronts.  Some financial relief in one area.  A great workout.  Some interesting new things I learned.  A very solid, though busy, day.

9.  Are my stars out of whack?
Whether you believe in astrology or not, I sometimes find that personal astrology chart is facing some harsher transits.  In this case,  I’m actually supposed to be under some very, very pleasant influences this week with lots of good and positive emotions.

10.  Is this the usual pattern for my mood changes?
No. I can get into a mood and stay there for two or three days, whether it’s blissful, sad, anxious, or whatever. My moods don’t swing every 15 minutes–if they do, I know for certain that I’m being influenced by someone else’s emotions, usually someone who’s ADHD, bless ‘em.  In this case, the emotional wave lasted about two hours and crested, then faded as if someone had fallen asleep or escaped into some mindless pastime.

11.  Do I have loved ones who are having obvious–or not obvious–difficulties that might be related to this wave of emotions?
Yes.  I do.  At this point, I’m usually either calling them or checking in on them when I can.  Some aren’t always available.  And some will lie to me that everything’s just hunky-dory so they don’t worry me, but I’ll find out later how upset they were.

12.  Are there certain words or phrases that come to mind with these feelings but seem unusual for me?
When I first realized I was empathic, I had been talking for hours to a suicidal acquaintance.  When my emotions crashed that night and over the next couple of days, I found myself thinking thoughts that were phrased in a particular way that wasn’t anything like me, at all.  When I figured out where I’d heard those phrases before, I figured out that I’d taken my work home with me, in the worst way possible.  IN this case tonight, I am getting certain words, glimpses almost, that give me clues to the identity of my troubled loved one.

13.  Am I overreacting?
This is where it helps to have a good friend who understands I’m an empath.  She knows that if I don’t seem like myself that she should call my attention to it.   I’ve been through a lot of loss in my life, including relationships I didn’t want to see go, but back in October, she saw me fall to my knees sobbing at a professional conference of 200 of my esteemed colleagues and got me out of there.  To me, I couldn’t separate my sense of loss from breathing and lost all perspective.  She got me out of there and started quizzing me, then it became obvious to me that I was going through not only my own mourning for a loss but feeling the raw emotions of the other people involved in the situation.    Though I’d been through much worse in my life, the double and triple wallop of emotions was more than I could take.

After running quickly through my checklist, I can usually figure out that these emotions aren’t mine but ones I’ve picked up from someone I care deeply about. Often, I’ll be on the phone, running through my list of loved ones and calling them just to see if they’re all right.  Almost always, if I can reach everyone I think it might be, I find the culprit.  Once I realize not only that the empathic wave isn’t mine and especially if I know whose emotions I’m picking up, then I can usually release it and get back to my pleasant life already in progress.

Photo by theflooz; creative commons license

I am losing one of my super powers, and I’m deeply disturbed by this.  It’s been gone for a little over a year, so it’s unlikely I’ll get it back.   

It has to do with the way my brain is wired, and it’s almost always been that anyone who knows about this secret power of mine will not understand and will unleash some weird combination of anger, envy, and annoyance at me, which can be a super power all on its own.  I’ve known very, very few people with the same internal wiring.  The last one kept rolling his eyes at me and reminding me, “I know–you told me.”  And I was surprised every time–not that I’d told him some information between minutia and life-threatening, but that he remembered that I’d told him.  With most of this planet’s inhabitants, I’ve had to repeat myself multiple times, particularly when it comes to ex-husbands.

But that’s what this super power is all about:  my very odd memory.  I’d thought it was just my surreal memory of calendar dates and events.  (Guy:  “Lorna!  I haven’t seen you in months!”  Me:  “Yes, it was the fourth day of September, about 10:30 that night….”  Guy:  “Huh? Geez, are you a stalker or something?  That’s creepy!”) But I’ve now come to realize just how different my memory has been all these years, now that I’ve lost certain aspects of it.

I know exactly when this superpower started to fade.  I was crouched in my office, on the floor, hoping someone would return soon and take me to the emergency room.  I was having heart palpitations and trouble breathing.  My brain went foggy for a  while.  The cardiologist who ran a bazillion tests later diagnosed me as completely healthy–as long as I stayed off the caffeine mega-doses. (Caffeine equals kryptonite.)  I bid my sweet teas and sodas farewell, and felt wonderful, but the super-sharp memory was gone. I didn’t realize how different my memory was from the norm until I confessed it to various friends and family members, who looked at me strangely and told me that my defective (in my opinion) memory is most like everyone else’s normal memory and not defective at all.

These conversations came after I’d walked through a new hippie shop in Destin.  As my gaze wandered over a certain type of incense that is burned over charcoal, I suddenly remembered a beautifully passionate moment I’d thought I would never forget.  Just the day before, my brother had commented on some animal tracks and I’d stepped back in time to that moment when someone  else important to me had told me the same thing.  I remembered the information, but I’d forgotten the situation where I’d been given this information, and having to recover that memory, having to grab it back from oblivion, was frightening and disturbing for me.  How could such precious memories be gone? 

Not that they were specifically more precious than others.  It’s been my norm to remember all those moments, not just the highlights.  My ex used to say that I remembered every detail between us, things important and unimportant that he’d long since forgotten (probably as soon as the next five minutes afterward).  I never could understand how he could not remember things until I walked him back down that lane and painted a few pictures to jog his memory.  Memory joggers were something I didn’t really need.  All the memories were always there.

When I walked away from the incense in that shop, I felt frantic.  I was used to every memory being right under the surface.  Now, it’s there if I, um, jog my memory.  I can read back over what I wrote in my journal from those nights and it all comes back, beautiful and vivid.  Or I might see something that reminds me, but the memories are under a layer of time now.  That’s different for me.

My friends and family tell me that this is the norm for them.  They still see my memory as extremely sharp, just not what it was a year or two ago. I never thought of it as a super power, just…normal.  For me. 

But as I absorb this, I understand better now why people in my past became frustrated with me for not “letting go” of something, someone, some situation and moving on.  To them, they could forget easily and had little trouble letting go of memories when I might have welcomed losing a little of the edge of things that were painful.  I would become irritated with their constant preaching to “let go and let God” when I literally could not let go.  The moments were there for me as present now as when they happened.  Everything from my past had crowded into my present and could not be forgotten or forsaken.  I couldn’t let go of the memories because I wasn’t wired to, and they wouldn’t let go of me.

Having this kind of super power memory was a curse as often as it was a blessing, but now that it’s gone, I really appreciate–and miss–having the rawness of the original moment with me at all times.

Lorna Tedder, adding a little spice to life…or at least to a wonderful Winter Solstice feast.  Photo by Aislinn Bailey; all rights reserved.

Most people I know make New Year’s resolutions, manage to give up on them in defeat within two weeks, and feel like failures for the rest of the year because they couldn’t manifest a handful of changes in their lives in a few days’ time. I do something different, something that really works for me.  I call it the Burning Bowl Ritual, and it’s perfect for Winter Solstice, New Year’s Eve, or even special occasions throughout the year.   I’ve designed a ritual around it, one that can be adapted to almost any occasion or spiritual gathering.

Here’s how I adapted my usual ritual for a Winter Solstice “feast” that includes guests of all religions:

The timing of the Burning Bowl ritual is important to me.  I prefer to do it on the day of the Winter Solstice because of the symbolism.  Not only is this the longest night of the year, but it’s the day many cultures and religions celebrate the “Return of the Light,” as the days begin to lengthen after this night.  It’s also the first degree of Capricorn, an astrological symbol of manifestation–and the beginning of the new year of manifestation–whether you call those intentions or resolutions. 

For this year’s Burning Bowl ritual, once our feast was complete, I handed out sheets of paper to each guest and asked them to draw a big T on the paper. This was their personal list to take home, so they can put away their list and review it later in the year.   On the left column, they were to write down the things they want to honor and bid farewell to in the coming year.  Saying goodbye to these things will make room for better things to come.  I gave examples from my own list for the year:

Fretting over the lack of ——– in my life

Any insecurity or jealousy over ——–

Worry about ——-

Most of my dinner guests chose things like bad health habits, obsessions over certain people, money worries, unfulfilling jobs, and long-carried emotional pain. 

Once they were done with the things they wanted to say goodbye to, I had them turn their attention to the right column and write down things that they welcomed in for the next year.  Not things they resolved to do.  Not things they “invited” in, but may not come.  Rather, things they “welcomed” in because that implies that these things are definitely coming to them and they’ll be happy to have these things in their lives.  In my experience, the majority of things in this list arrive effortlessly throughout the course of the coming year.  I gave a few examples from my own very long list for 2009, beginning on Winter Solstice 2008:

Continue and expand my social circle and spiritual circle of friends and students, with wonderful lessons coming to me and from me

More loving relationships with family, friends, and daughters

An amazing, fun, intimate, creative, and intense sex life –and for my partner to be able to keep up with me

Learning new  things and meeting new people, including things like knife-throwing, archery, and motorcycles

Business opportunities that bring me many different streams of abundantly flowing income and allow me to be mobile in my workspace and hours

A deepening of my romantic love relationship with ————, to include much happiness, serenity, and a ————

My dinner guests welcomed in a huge variety of things that were very personal to each.  I thought that was funny that we tended to want to get rid of the same things that weighed us down but what we wish to come into our lives was quite diverse.  I loved some of the younger guests’ desires for good mentors, career guidance, confidence, and many of the things that my older guests didn’t consider until they heard these later.  I was amazed at the maturity of some of the youngest guests when it came to participating in this exercise.

When everyone finally had their list completed, I asked them to consider a verb for the next year and a simple phrase or mantra.  These are, in effect, my themes for the next year, and usually go hand in hand. I have to pick the exact words, and that sometimes means digging out the thesaurus to make sure each word has exactly the connotation I’m looking for.   My themes for the past few years and for the coming year? 

2006:  Manifest  and Risk Everything

2007:  Enjoy and Allow Miracles

2008:  Thrive and  Celebrate Everything

2009:  Enchant and Be Delighted

My guests began to think of their themes for the next year, some brainstorming with others to come up with the perfect word. Once they had their themes, they committed them to memory for later in the evening.  They chose words like Relax, Recalibrate, Have Fun, Be Adventurous, Succeed, Liberate Myself, Accept, Live Life to the Fullest.

For the next part of the evening, I brought out wine glass goblets that I’d bought for 50 cents each from a local pottery store.  I could have gone with plastic champagne glasses but I wanted something that my guests could take away with them.  I’d also tried to find those little rings–wine glass jewelry–that dangle from the stem, but couldn’t find them anywhere in town.  While walking through a discount store after a sushi lunch with my eldest child, I happened on an earring display and found not what I was looking for but something better.  I picked out about 10 pairs of deeply discounted gemstone and shell hoop earrings that closed the hoop with a clasp.  Each fit perfectly around the stem of a wine glass and made a nice souvenir to be imbued with the energies of the evening and taken away as a souvenir, to be worn later, attached to a car mirror or lamp pull, etc. 

Next, I handed out little inventory tags to my guests.  These were purchased at the local Office Max in the section where they sell tags and stickers for garage sales.  Each tag was about 2 inches long, with a string attached.  My guests wrote a symbol, picture, or word on the tags to represent what they wanted to say goodbye to and placed the tags in the goblet’s bowl.  These were placed inside the glass because their cups are already full of these things.

My guests then wrote symbols, pictures, and words on the tags to represent things they wanted to welcome for the coming year.  They tied these tags to the stem of the glass and let them dangle.

For the actual ritual, I’d hoped to gather in my backyard, but the below-freezing weather made it impractical, so we moved my grandmother’s aged cauldron into my open garage and started a very small fire in the cauldron, which served as our burning bowl instead of the usual barbecue fire pit in the backyard.

We formed a circle around the burning bowl, each of us holding a candle.  I lit mine and then then person’s next to me, she lit her neighbor’s on the left, and so forth until the circle was complete.  Because our guests were of varying spiritual backgrounds,  we asked the Archangels–something common to most belief systems present–to witness our intentions. 

After some brief explanations about the symbolism of the ritual, each guest tossed tags from inside their glasses into the fire, saying goodbye to the things that no longer serve them and that they wish to get rid of in the coming year.  Some called out these things proudly.  Most performed this part of the ritual silently, as was their perogative. 

Then, one by one, and in no particular order, the guests allowed me to cut the tags from the stems, leaving evidence of their desires in place around the stem, and offered the tags representing things to be welcomed in into the fire, with our intentions carried away by the smoke to come to fruition over the next year.  Some of the guests were exhuberant at this point and it was so much fun to see them enjoying this and feeling so much lighter and more hopeful.

When all the tags were gone, I then offered each guest a choice of grape juice or champagne and filled their glasses.  We each called out our themes for the new year and toasted to them, clinking our glasses.  Then we closed our evening with thanks to the Archangels for bearing witness.

The biggest difference, I think, in this Burning Bowl ritual filled with intentions toward what we welcome in and the usual resolving to do  a host of things that will get rid of bad habits to that so many of our intentions are not things we actually have to go do (and fail at) ourselves.  These are more like a wish list to God, the Universe, Goddess, or whatever belief system you follow so that we allow Deity to bring these to us and we simply welcome them when they get here.  Since I’ve been doing these Burning Bowl rituals, about 90% of my desires are fulfilled within the first 8 months of the year–and some are ones I just never thought would have happened, and certainly not on my own. 

As for this year, only 48 hours after the ritual, I’ve already had two unexpected things to welcome in that are stepping stones:  1.  I have reconnected with someone from my past whom I thought was lost to me and 2.  a colleague (who didn’t attend the party) dropped by my house to wish me a happy holiday and loaned me 3 sets of weighted knives so I can learn to throw them!

Photo by Eladesor; creative commons license

Certain types of incense make me feel calmer, others put me in the mood for loving, and some just remind me of the serenity and sacredness of home.  Seems there’s some science now to back up my weird impressions. 

Discover Magazine reports  ( http://discovermagazine.com/2008/sep/26-smell-your-way-to-happiness ) that at least one incense has uplifting effects in an article that may have depressed people burning more incense.  That particular incense is frankincense, one of my personal favs.  I’m especially fond of frankincense and rose oil mixes. 

Others on my list of personal favorites–not including ones that are meant for specific rituals– are:

Nag Champa (the general incense of my home when I have summer guests)

Sandalwood

Dragon’s Blood  0r Dragon’s Breath (the favored scent for romantic company)

Rose

Sweetgrass

Jasmine

My favs remind me of sweet, erotic, sacred, and wonderful times and just make the whole house (or my bedroom) feel great.  It’s good to know that frankincense will give me an emotional lift.  I’ll keep that in mind for times when I’m feeling a little lonely or missing friends.  I like being a Happy Witch!

Another fabulous photo from alicepopkorn; creative commons license.

For the past year, I’ve used “going with the flow of energy” as a guideline for making the most of my efforts.  On a very tiny scale, this principle was as simple as having a sudden urge to clean the house from top to bottom—and doing it while I felt the urge rather than reminding myself that I’d planned to spend the day at the beach or I needed to go shopping.  I mean, how often do I get a cleaning urge?  Most of the time, cleaning is drudgery, so when the flow of energy is for cleaning, I’d better do it.  I find that it’s fast, it’s good, it’s quality. 

That’s been true of the past year and how I’ve used the flow of energy (or urge or empathic desire) to get things done in my life.  It’s like having a tailwind to help move me along.

I’ve noted that the flow of energy moves in days or even moments sometimes, and other times, a particular push will last for several months. 

For example, from December 2007 until March 2008, the push I was getting seemed more health-related than anything else.  I took advantage of it to start a new eating program, a new exercise program I stuck with until I injured my foot, a new way of thinking about things.  It took time, yes, and effort.  But instead of telling myself that I didn’t have time to spend 5 to 7 days a week exercising because I needed to spend my time on work or maybe actually date some,  I went with it—and enjoyed both the activity and the results.  It was a strong force and by March, I was in great shape and feeling wonderful. 

In April, for the entire month, I was hyper-focused on productivity of creative projects.  I barely slept 4 hours a night because I just couldn’t put down the work.  I was having so much fun!  A part of me kept saying, “But what about this guy you were interested in?”  And though he was interesting, he couldn’t hold a candle to the creative projects that kept me up all night.  We had a chance to spend a terrific weekend together before he left the country but I actually preferred to finish my creative project to the foot rubs he’d promised.  But I was going with the creative energy and I knew that the social energy would come later, and that shifting my attention to him rather would have made the desired romance not flow so sweetly.  My heart was elsewhere—in the children of my creation.

Over the summer, the energy focus honed in on home and hearth, on preparing and feathering my nest.  That including all sorts of home repairs, major house refurbishment projects, and yard clean-ups that lasted the entire summer.  I hated living in a construction zone but the results were sweet.  Not only that, but I had both girls home for the summer as well as their houseguests and several spiritual gatherings.  The house was full of good kitchen smells, flowers, live music, and laughter.  The energy shifted away from good exercise habits, though, as my foot injury kept me from my usual routine. 

Almost as soon as the major house projects were completed and the summer guests all left, the energy shifted into something social and sweet, with more date-able men arriving on my doorstep than I had time for.  I really don’t have the patience to date three men at once, no matter how great they all are.  But the autumn months shifted into new friendships and new relationships and away from work, creative projects, and good health habits.  I let a lot of my daily chores and routines drop in favor of spending time with new friends (to which Luna will attest), but I knew enough to go with the flow of energy and just enjoy because the energy would shift focus soon enough.

Now it’s time for the next shift.  In some ways, the shifts seem to be moving backward through the astrological houses and I’m not dealing with 2nd House issues, but I’m not certain of it.  Just an observation that must bear out more testing.

This one seems to be more about tying up all those loose ends I’ve left flapping in the wind since summer.  It’s sort of a backlash to go with the energy flow for so long but it’s shown me some very important things that I knew in my head and now have had reaffirmed in my heart.  This shift or phase is about rearranging some things in the life I’ve built to have the life I want—and that means rekindling my good health habits, staying productive and creative, and structuring some streams of revenue that I won’t have to think much about. 

You see, I know that if I’m emotionally involved with someone again, I’ll want to spend  a lot of time with that person, not secreted away in a closet while I write my novels or working alone on a house repair project  or dancing at a festival somewhere.  So I need to make arrangements in my financial house so that I have time with and time away from my partner.  That may be as simple of globetrotting with someone while I have my laptop under my arm.  Or it may be that I spend two or three days working and then spend my weekends with a partner.  I guess the point is, I want to splinter my focus as little as possible, and that means all the mundane stuff should run as smoothly as possible so that I can immerse myself in all aspects of life when they present themselves.   

I’m not sure how long this particular shift will last, but the results are bound to be marvelous!

Photo by Lorna Tedder, copyright December 2006; Peaceful on the farm at sunset–a much gentler energy after Daddy died.

I hated him.  I loved him, too.  But this is probably the first time in my life that I’ve been grateful that Daddy was a tyrant.  It’s afforded me the opportunity to see his traits in others and identify others like him.

Not at first.  It usually takes a few interactions to really make that connection.  I don’t fault myself for not recognizing it immediately.  How can I?  There were many people inside and outside my family who knew him only superficically but thought he was a good church man, a wonderful and doting father,  a kind husband.  But they didn’t live with him and see him with his guard down.  So how can I assume someone else is fabulous just because I’ve been told some nice things about them?  I can know them only when they show me their real faces.

Daddy is on my mind heavily several times a year–around Father’s Day, his birthday (both his legitimate and not-so-legitimate ones), and around the anniversary of his death, which almost two years ago.  I don’t think about him much.  I don’t grieve him.  He made life hell for the people who loved him.  Other than those few times a year, I really don’t think much about him and I don’t miss him in a sad way.

This is not one of those times. 

For the past couple of weeks, memories of him have re-surfaced, triggered by upsetting interactions with new people in my life, ones I’ve never been a fan of.  Two years ago at Labor Day, I left my parents’ house in tears, saying to my mom that I’d either see her at the holidays or at his funeral, but I wouldn’t be back before then.  I finally had to put my own mental health and that of my children ahead of Daddy’s guilt-tripping, manipulative tirades that had all of us cowering before him.  To some people, that made me a bad daughter for refusing to see him in his last few months, but his effect on my family was devastating, and we’d cry for days after each visit.

He had some truly bad health problems, yes.  But it’s wasn’t his health that was upsetting.  He had always been controlling and manipulative, so his health was just another way to draw us close and then beat us over the heads emotionally.  There were many times in his last few years that I spent curled up and sobbing and no one knew.  I am content with the decision I made.

Daddy was a textbook case (if there is such of thing) of Bipolar Disorder.  Never medicated for it or for depression because that would have been a “weak” thing to do. I was there when his physician offered him a prescription and saw Daddy’s vile reaction.

He loved us, yes.  I do know that.  But he rarely showed it or he showed it in a way that was inherently controlling and painful.  There were few kind words and  I think his children were always hungry for them.  We almost never heard them for ourselves, though plenty for other people. 

There were times I tried to find a common ground with him, times when I tried to have a real relationship with him.  If I broke through at all, it was only for a little while and then the old behaviors returned.  These were the dynamics of our relationship and always underlying every conversation.  I knew two years ago by the heaviness of the energy over him that he would not live much longer and that each time I waved goodbye, it was likely the last time.  So I tried in that last year of his life to reconcile my turbulent emotions of dealing with his manipulations with my desire to make peace with him and him to be willing to see me as a child worthy of his unconditional love. 

What I learned was that sometimes there is no reconciling it.  No matter how much you want a certain kind of relationship with someone who has extreme emotional and mental issues, it’s just not going to happen.  They are in control of the relationship, not you.  Even if they want it, they may not be capable of it. 

What I had to do, ultimately, was to take care of myself, to stay away from him, to get my own balance back.  That meant staying the hell away from him. 

Last night, over a glass of wine with Luna, I told her about my dad.  Wise woman that she is, she asked if I had noticed certain patterns in my life.  I tried not to laugh–she doesn’t know the extent of the self-inquiry I’ve done to work through all this.  But she noted how I started with dealing with abusers at the closest level–through blood, my father as my primary role model–and progressed to spouse, to best friends who were abusive, to best friends/business partners/lovers who have been abused or are still tied to abusers and unable to walk away.  I humorously suggested that there are just soooooo damned many abusive nut jobs out there that you can’t throw a stick without hitting one…or get into a relationship without one being attached somehow to the other person as an ex or parent or business partner.   Luna noted that, for me,  the tendrils of abusive people have been thinning out but they are still there.  I think they probably always will be because I can recognize them and help other people understand them.

And for that, I guess I am grateful that Daddy showed me what such a person looks like and that sometimes you just have to let your abusers go and walk away, no matter how much you care.  Daddy gave me a lot of pain in my life, but he also gave me something I can share and help others understand.

Photo by Randysonofrobert; creative commons license

 
It’s a perfect example of the Law of Attraction in action, but  I tend to draw to me people who are or have been abuse victims. This was highlighted for me by The Elemental Muse (hi, Bev!) this week and through an intense EFT (tapping) session with AngelSu when I was having chest pains and migraines yesterday. 

I often write about how much I enjoy being single and independent, but actually, it’s the not being abused that I enjoy.  Being single again and independent were part of my escape process and I often equate them with being abuse-free.  It’s been a long time since I’ve written much about my previous situation, and my ex and I are now quite civil to one another in a keep-your-distance-and-interact-only-for-the-sake-of-the-kids kind of way.  After talking to a repairman this week who used to see me in my old life with a polite smile plastered over my sad face and realizing that he never had any idea of what life was like for me, it’s time to talk about it again.

I was in a long-term abusive relationship, I allowed myself to be abused and dominated, and I left it, finally. Leaving it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and the most rewarding thing I could do for myself and my children.  

Most people think of abuse as closed-fist beatings.  It can be, yes, or it can be more insidious, something that’s often referred to as verbal abuse, and often neither the abuser nor the abused realizes what it is because they can’t link it to a physical bruise. I see this with submissive men who are seeking a dominant woman and find a domineering one instead.  I see this with spiritual women who will do anything to keep the family together and take on the task of self-sacrifice, absorbing the brunt of cruel words so their children won’t have to, even though their children experience the abuse through their mothers.  I see it in loving, strong people who turn into doormats just to keep the peace and lose themselves in what amounts to a suicide of the personality as who they really are is completed eradicated from the planet in order to please their master/mistress.

If you have no idea what type of abuse I’m speaking of, then here are a few from my own history.  Do you recognize yourself?  Anyone you know?  No one who knew my ex through work or as a casual acquaintance–or even fairly close friend–would ever have suspected what was really going on between us.  A facade is hard to keep up all the time, and when you’re married to someone, they can usually relax and let the real self shine through.

He constantly criticized me, all of which was for my own good, of course.  For a long time, I believed him.

I was a different person in his presence.  My friends noted this.  Even my children noted this.  I changed from a vibrant, fun, independent person into a shell of myself, rushing to placate him about most everything so he wouldn’t be sharp-tongued with me or give me that withering glare.

I was put on a short leash.  He had to know where I was, what I was doing, who I was with every moment of the day.  The reverse was not true, but he had the need to dictate my free time and fill it how he wanted.  As our relationship deteriorated, this just got worse until I felt I was suffocating.  I could not go anywhere without him with me and if he didn’t want to go there, he behaved badly or sulked until I gave in.  If I did got anywhere or spent time with anyone else, including my pre-teen daughters in a private girl-stuff conversation, then he accused me of excluding him, and one again I was the bad guy.

He frequently told me that our problem was that I didn’t communicate more, yet he talked over me when I did or told me what I was saying was stupid or worthless.

Almost any decision I made without his complete approval was subject to criticism.  If I thought of it, then it was inadequate.  Some good stock market decisions come to mind.   No matter how much research I had to back up my decision or my suggestion, it was never good enough.  Like what type of dog would be non-allergenic for Aislinn…which is why we didn’t get a dog until after I filed divorce papers.

He supposedly supported my religion and often said he did to others, but then ridiculed me for my beliefs, both privately and in front of our children. 

I was told how much of a burden my family members were, even when his assistance was minimal or just normal good stuff that any friend would do for a friend with a family medical emergency.

Whatever happened between us that made me unhappy, I was told that I had wanted it fiercely and needed to keep it, whether I had or not, and even when many times I’d said it was something I didn’t want.  That included being in a job I hated and desperately want to leave and  the Mercedes I drove but hated because I preferred a pickup truck and he liked the image of a Mercedes-driving wife.

I could never do anything well enough.  Even if it was something that I excelled at and my employer appreciated that particular skill because I was one of the best at what I did, well, for my abuser, it was never good enough.  In fact, with little or no knowledge of how I handled the situation in my daily job, he always thought he could do it better and would give me instructions on how to do it as if I were a small child.  The Stupid Treatment was administered in regular doses.

I was frequently told that I expected too much in regard to small things that happy couples always had.   I was told that my yearning for a romantic connection or a long conversation was unrealistic. 

I never knew what mood he would be in when he came home or answered the phone.  Everyone has different moods throughout the day, but I would get knots in my stomach when he came home because I didn’t know if he’d be smiling or yelling. 

He would unexpected fly off the handle at me, then be fine and happy, then angry at me for being upset or skittish. 

Every other sentence was a guilt-trip.  He later admitted to me, during the divorce, that he knew just what my buttons were and how to push them to get what he wanted. 

I was told in front of my daughters that I was “weird.”  I was told to my face, on a regular basis, that my dreams for my life were silly and that no one would want anything I had to offer except him, so I should be grateful for what I had.

I could never do anything quickly enough.  Even if the normal process took months, he’d be upset if I couldn’t accomplish it with superhuman speed. Even if I had to rely on others who took too much time, it was still my fault.

He would “thank” me for something in the most sarcastic voice he could.  Or I might get the silent treatment for weeks at a time.  He had the ability to turn off and on like a light switch, so that he would be loving and happy and then–boom!–no interaction for weeks and then–poof!–talking happily again and demanding to know what’s wrong with me that I’ve withdrawn.

He punished me (for decisions I made without him, for my opinions, for no reason) by withdrawing his affections.  I’ve never been lonelier than in the same room with him.

He would give me delicious crumbs, just enough that I knew he could be loving and responsive, just enough that there was always the promise of a banquet, and I was seduced into staying, hoping for banquet eventually, but it never came.

He let me know he had achieved all his dreams, but my dreams didn’t matter.  For me to have my dreams, it would be a step down in our affluent lifestyle and it wasn’t “right” for me reduce his lifestyle in order for me to have my heart’s desire. 

There were times when I wished he’d change back into the person I knew he could be and had seemed to be, and I kept hoping he would.  For years.

These are a few of the ways I lived my life back then.  These things only got worse over time.  They never got better, except for a few weeks when I was filing for divorce and he was scared, but even that didn’t last).   Abuse never gets better.  It may take a day’s break here and there but  it’s only a quick plateau before it escalates yet again.  The only way we got along was if I tried to be something I wasn’t, and that made me even more miserable.  I was not loved for who I was but for what I was supposed to be, and being that person was the same as suicide to me.   I no longer existed except as an extension of him. 

But I stayed for my girls…and then I left for my girls, and for me. 

The best advice I can give to anyone who recognizes himself or herself in some of what I’ve said is to take a vacation from them.  A few weeks or months if possible.  If not, even a few days.  My ex did not want me away from him for any length of time and especially not out of his range of his cell phone.  This was his best way of controlling me.  I could not get “out of his energy” long enough to think things through.  That was a valid concern on his part because once I did have a few days away, I could look at everything objectively and start to see what was really going on in our relationship and how I was being manipulated.  For this reason, he refused to move out and give me some space to work through things when I was still open to a reconciliation.  Even though the marriage counselor advised it. 

An abuser knows that the moment you stop focusing everything on him or her, then you might actually focus on yourself and do the right thing for you, and that translates into being able to do the right thing for your children, too.

Perfect photo by kortini; creative commons license

I’ve been stress-free for four years.  Okay, not ENTIRELY stress-free.  There have been a few particularly stressful times—like the business-destroying rumor a year ago or a major family health issue or a sudden break-up of a promising new relationship.  But those are just spikes on the stress meter.  They are not a constant steady HIGH plateau, which is how life used to be for me.  And by comparison, that feels stress-free to me.

I’m still in the same high-stress, high-stakes, sometimes-life-or-death job I was then, and with less likelihood of being able to leave it right now, thanks to the economy, college tuition, and property insurance.  If anything, I should have more stress, judging by additional responsibilities I have at home and that I’m the sole breadwinner now.  But I look back now and see that my stress was mainly what I put on myself or allowed to be put on me by others, and that the bulk of my stress was “relationship stress” that I put on myself by trying to fit my three-dimensional trapezoidal peg into a round hole.  It’s incredibly hard to live the life someone else wants you to live and try to be happy not being yourself.

When that relationship ended, people began to comment to me about how much younger I looked.  Like most people who have been out of a bad relationship for a few years, I didn’t realize how bad things had been until I could actually lift my head and look around.  I felt younger and freer, and it showed in my less restricted movements  and expressions.    I can look in the mirror now and tell the effects of the years—certainly when I remember my 20’s–but it’s years I’m seeing and not stress.  It’s not very different from the way I looked 10 years ago, and when I look at some of my photographs from that era, I certainly looked older than my years—if not by crinkles, then by the despair in my eyes. 

I recently saw current photographs of two men I haven’t seen in a while.   I didn’t recognize either of them. I had to be told who they were.  That’s what stress—and lack of it—did to these men.   

The first of these two men with similar high-stress careers looked as if he was aging at a ratio of 7 years to every 1 he lived.  The deep frown, the graying hair. The transformation was extraordinary. It was heart-breaking.   All it took was one glance at his photo to know this man’s personal life is pure hell.  When I think of him now, I get a flash of insight–I see him as a beautiful, jewel-colored, green locust that sings to the heavens until some type of animal picks him from the tree he clings to and swats him into the creature’s mouth and the animal sucks all the life out of him, leaving only a dried husk where a vibrant being once was.  That him, now.  A husk of his former self.

As for the other photo, the second man seems to have reversed his age by a decade.  He still has those mid-40’s crinkles at the corners of his eyes, but other than that, I didn’t recognize him.  The transformation was extraordinary.  The last time I saw him in person, he’d been beaten down, tired-looking, wondering aloud if life would get any better—though to outsiders, he had it all.  In a recent email from him, he told me he’s now divorced after a long and unhappy marriage and the burden he’s been carrying has been lifted.  I don’t doubt him—the change he’s made is visible. 

For women out there who are so afraid of aging, never underestimate the effect of stress.  And it saps not just your looks, but also your energy and life force.

Photo by noahbulgaria; creative commons license.

Rather than what’s not working for you, what IS working for you?

Normally, I try to do a simple assessment every New Moon, but I’m either behind or ahead this month—I’m not sure which yet.  It’s easy to look at all the things we do wrong, whether we do anything to change them or not, but sometimes it’s very valuable to look at what we’re doing right and acknowledge those things so we can continue them.

Some of the things that are working for me, as of this month, include:

1. Refusing to grow old. I’ll be old when I’m 90 (maybe), but not now and I’m not going to beg to be old before then.  I find it annoying when people start “getting old” around 35.  They can be drop-dead gorgeous and in perfect health and suddenly complaining that a muscle strain isn’t healing fast enough, so they must be “getting old.”  I do hate for people in their 40’s to drag their whiny butts into my office and tell me all their aches and pains and how they’re getting old.  Yes, there are occasional pains, strains, and culminations of things ignored when younger, but  take it in stride, folks!  Most of what I see is the result of self-abuse, not age.  Years ago, I had a friend who was almost 20 years older.  She was 50 and as perky as any varsity cheerleader.  Quick-witted, fun, funny, full of life—moreso than anyone I knew in their 20’s, 30’s, or 40’s. She had a great life!  At 51, she convinced herself she was old.  No matter what happened, even things that happened every day to our 30-year-old colleagues, she began to excuse it as “I’m getting old!”  I heard it from her 20 times a day until she became a husk of her former self.  I still see her occasionally and she is and has been an old woman for many years now.  There is nothing physically wrong with her but the way she thinks and carries herself, she is…old.  I stay far from her and don’t let her or anyone else tell me I’m old.  I’m over 40, but I’m not a ripe old age:  I’m just ripe.  And even when I’m 90, I don’t think I’ll be old—instead, I’ll become timeless….

Thank you for reading!  The complete version of this article is now included in Give Your Life Direction.

Making time for live music in my home, courtesy of houseguests, Brian and Amy. Photo by Shannon Bailey.

I am The Poster Girl for Productivity, yet until this summer, I’ve felt that I wasn’t productive enough. I stressed myself so terribly much, too.   I would finish a list of 200 things in a weekend and fall in bed exhausted on Sunday night and say aloud, “I didn’t get everything done that I planned–I’m such a failure!”

Maybe that comes from the way my dad used to tell me I wasn’t “fit for nothing” and the way my mom was always so busy, proving her value through neverending jobs and responsibilities that were seldom rewarded.  I don’t know.   Unfortunately, it’s something I’ve passed along to my kids, who refer to the “P-word” with great disdain.  Now I’m trying to undo it.

It occurred to me early this year that I routinely say “I don’t have time to—” or “I never have enough time.” This isn’t anything new.  But I decided to do something about it because I am positive I have been saying this since I was 25 or younger, and if I felt I didn’t have enough time at 25, then surely I have less time now that I’m in my 40’s, right?

Yet I realized yesterday when I walked leisurely about my back yard and plopped into the hammock that I was suddenly, for the first time in my life, NOT in a rush.  It was truly the oddest feeling!  But while swinging in my hammock, I thought about the changes I’ve made this year and how those changes and insights have affected my idea of time–and no, I didn’t invent that time machine I’ve been requisitioning for 20 years so I could get everything done in one day’s time.

1.  I made a conscious effort to stop staying “I don’t have enough time.” Why reinforce it?

2.  I realized that I’ve already been living in a time-machine of my own making–extreme overproduction–for decades.  Imagine that to get your work done, you climb into a time machine and go back and finish everything you left unfinished because there weren’t enough hours in the day.  So you come back to the present and only 5 minutes have passed but your body’s aged 5 hours.  You may manage to cram more stuff into one day, but you haven’t made time for life.

3.  I railed against my religious upbringing and decided that enjoying my Present here on Earth is not sloth, not a sin, and is–in my view–something Deity would revel in seeing me relish.

4.  I stopped subscribing to the overload of blogs and podcasts on “how to be productive” or “how to manage your time” because productivitis seems to be a disease that needs to be fed with all these tools and techniques that need even more tools to manage them with.

Thank you for reading!  The complete version of this article is now included in Give Your Life Direction.

Photo by red nails; wrong city;  creative commons license.

A tiny metal spike in one’s foot is no fun at all, but I accept that the Universe is intent on bringing me something I really wanted by forcing me to stay home–much to my boss’ chagrin.  

The way this works–or so I’ve found over the years–I know that on by Saturday, my foot will be soooooo much better.  In fact, the pain and inflammation may even go away overnight.  For weeks now, I’ve been hating that I would have to work this week, Shannon’s last week before leaving for college on Saturday, and that I would miss these last few days with her.  My heart’s desire was to have more time with her this week, and I’ve been quietly attracting that without a huge fuss.  Unfortunately, because I haven’t played Queen Bitch Mother and insisted she spend every spare minute with me, other time-snatchers have crept into the space I’ve lovingly given her.    That’s often been a theme for me:  where I give someone space, someone else quickly grabs onto them.   But the Universe decided to help me out.

My new shoes unexpectedly irritated my right foot and when that didn’t totally sideline me, I stepped on something, most likely while running barefoot in the dark to turn off the back yard sprinklers.  A rose thorn, I thought.  Or maybe a briar from the big cleanup I’m doing.  It got better and worse and better and worse, worse, worst!  I finally gave in to the fact that I cannot put my foot behind my neck long enough to extract a thorn from my sole with tweezers and, since was at the point of no longer being able to drive to work or walk around the office, I went to the doctor who, after extracting the offending “foreign body,” kept telling me how impressed he was that I’d been walking around on a mini-knife all this time. 

I complained to Shannon at first, because I HATE being immobile and there’s so much I  want/need to do!  But the pain didn’t go away and kept me home for the next two days.  It’s still too sore to walk on, but is improving.  And I know that this was the Universe’s way of helping me–keeping me home from work so I can hang out while Shannon packs and have a few late-night talks with her. 

This isn’t the first time I’ve attracted a minor injury or illness.  When I do, it’s usually in some way that helps me, even if it doesn’t feel that way at the time, as I wrote about in the essay, The Miracle of Bad Things. Sometimes, it feels like a huge hindrance, a conspiracy to stop me from doing something I want to do or from being with someone I want to be with–and other times it forces me into someone’s path whom I would not otherwise meet.  I’ve caught the stomach flu just long enough not to go on a business trip with the criminal I was secretly helping to investigate.  I’ve had a sudden allergic reaction that kept me from a date with a man who beat up the woman he went out with instead.  I’ve had a knee injury shove me in the direction of a friend who would introduce me to amazing new things. The list goes on.

But just as soon as the illness or injury has blocked the action that would harm me or keep me from my heart’s desires, the illness or injury goes away, usually within a very short period of time.  In this case, because I couldn’t logically (ah, darned logic!) stay out of work for 3 days with so much going on, the Universe stepped in and helped me out so that I could have these last few days with Shannon before she fledges.  The need for the block will be gone by tomorrow, and soon after, so too will the injury.

But just in case, I let my awestruck doctor keep the piece of metal.  It doesn’t need to find its way back into my path!