For readers of The Spiritual Eclectic, here’s a freebie on January 13-14 — a pagan love story.

For as much magick as we work and work hard at, too, sometimes the hardest part is just letting go and “allowing” things to come to us in a better way than we could ever imagine or just letting Deity act as our Universal Manager without our being so stirred up with anxiety.

Last week, everything was turned upside down for me when I found out a supposedly spiritual person–a fellow pagan who professed to a creed of harm none–was stealing from me.  Openly.  Admittedly.  I give a lot away in my time, resources, and money, but when someone steals from me, that act strikes a chord that is cacophonous and bitter and makes me want to close down and not be quite so giving…at least not of good things.

To further my embitterment over the theft, she rationalized it away as doing it for the poor, or for poor people in “the South,” and she’d generously (her word, not mine) said nice things about me while taking money out of my pocket.  All I could think was, I was raised in South Georgia, a good 20+ hour drive south of her in the tightest notch of the Bible Belt, and though we didn’t have much when I was growing up and I’ve always worked for every last thing I have, I never ever stole.  If I didn’t have the money, I did without.  That excuse for stealing won’t fly with me…or as they say back home (about 100 miles from where I live now), “That dog won’t hunt no more.”

Needless to say, I was upset.  I was very close to posting a map to her house and her philosophy that it’s okay to steal if you have a reason.  My blood pressure was up for a couple of days and then, suddenly, I just turned it over to Deity to take care of for me, as sure as if God, or Goddess, or perhaps Archangel Michael–whom I work with quite a bit–had said, “Stop fretting about it, Lorna, because I’ll take care of it.”

I guess that would be akin to something I was frequently told in my Southern Baptist childhood:  “Vengeance is mine,” sayeth the Lord.  That takes on a whole  ‘nother level of meaning when you’re a priestess of The Morrigan.

So without a whopper of a zap-you-back-bitch spell or prayers for her destruction enlightenment, I turned it all over to Deity, letting go and letting God take care of it, without any further worry on my part.  Within minutes, a calm came over me.  Just a deep serenity and knowing that it was “taken care of.” A few hours later, yes, I found out it had been.

That’s not the first time that’s happened, that letting go followed by a sudden sweet serenity, peace.  Allowing is one of those harder things for me to remember because I first have to recall that I CAN find calm again and how I do it every time, and then get into the right headspace to let go.  For most of my breaths and heartbeats, I am calm, happy, creative, and very productive.  But not always.

It’s hardest for me to maintain that serenity–or remember to “allow” when turbulence occurs–when I feel ill or weak or heart-wounded.  It’s become so easy for me to manifest when I can “just allow”  my needs and desires to be taken care of.  There’s no resistance in my energy to letting go and letting my Gods deliver my heart’s desire in little things and even bigger things that have been yearned for for years but finally have come when I’ve let go.  I look back at what’s been delivered in the these last 18 months and I find myself giddy with disbelief. It’s come so easily after so long of struggling!

It’s harder sometimes with the things that are closest to the heart, in allowing them to come, in letting go and no longer resisting with our fretting or worrying over them.  It is often in those places where we feel the weakest, whether through physical sickness or insecurity or fear over possible loss at a wrong step.  Those fears wrap around our desires and we hold onto them, more tightly than the little things or the less important things.  Our desires are weighted down and can’t fly freely.  Being sick or in a grief state reinforces those feelings of fear and weakness, makes it harder to break through and turn them over to Deity to handle for us.

It would seem, wouldn’t it, that when we’re weakest, we’d be quicker to turn over our weighty fears and problems–wouldn’t it?!–instead of hanging onto them?

Sometimes we need reminders.  For me, that’s a simple little ring I have that says ALLOW MIRACLES.  I gave it to my daughter when her heart was broken, and later when my heart was broken, she gave it back to me.  Those heartbreaks were, in hindsight, miracles that set us free to be loved by far kinder men who enhanced our lives rather than drained.  Whenever I am shaken by turbulence, I chase down that little ring and wear it a day or two or until I can find my calm again and allow…because when that calm comes, I know that in spite of the current queasiness, there is a far better outcome on its way to me, and all is being taken care of without–especially without–my worrying about it.

Do you see this photo of the path through the woods?  I cannot see where this path ends.  As with Life, I can see only a few steps ahead.  In places where the path is straighter, I can see farther, but what’s around that next bend?  Or just over the hill?

To me, it’s unknown.  And I’m a person who likes to know. 

I occasionally have visions of the future–photographic flashes, if you will, sometimes  accompanied by sounds, smells, and–most distinctly–emotions.  I have met strangers whom I remembered from the future as extremely important to me, complete with all the feelings that flank a deep love relationship.   And I have had strong intuition about certain things around that next bend, both joyful and painful.  But I still don’t know what’s around the bend.

And I still want to know.

Somehow, I feel that I’m more in control of my destiny if I know.  If the flashes aren’t there or the strong intuition or the very serene sense of “knowing” and I still desperately want to know, I will attempt to divine for it.  It’s my way of reaching out into the future, raising a periscope high above the forest so I can turn the looking glass this way and that, and see where the path leads.

It’s been pointed out to me by past spiritual teachers that my persistent need to know is a sign of a lack of faith.  Having faith in the Universe and that I will be taken care of is one of my life lessons, and one I have not yet mastered…but I am working on it.

Two months ago, I began an exercise that was meant to be artistic and turned out to be very spiritual for me.  During this exercise, I discovered that art is an act of faith.  Although I had been a writer all my life, I had never until two months ago participated in National Novel Writing Month.  This year was different–I had room in my life to give it a try and see if I could actually write a whole 50,000 words in 30 days.  And I had a story worth telling–the story of a woman trying to find her purpose in life and a man who would do anything for love.  Two tortured, not always nice characters discovering their dark places alone and together and in the process helping me work through some of my own dark places, as often happens when I pick up a pen or sit down at my keyboard.

Although I had wanted to try NaNo before, I had always had a career, busy home life, kids.  This year, I had an empty nest, a short break in my relationship, and not so much overtime to work in the office.  So I decided to pour my passions into writing as fast and furiously as possible for the entire month of November.  I finished the month with 50,105 words and the next month with another 35,000 words.  Another 15,000 words or so and I’ll proudly be done with THE SECRET LIVES OF LIBRARIANS, the first of the 9th Gate Book series.

While the creative aspect has been a blast, the spiritual aspect surprised me.  The other thing I did completely differently from any writing I’ve done before–instead of sitting down and writing it all out or dictating a chapter, transcribing it, reading it, and then dictating more–was doing nothing but dictating the story.  No going back to analyze and agonize over what I’d already written.   I dictated on my commute to/from work, on power walks, while folding laundry or cooking.   To my shock, I found that I’d written 500 pages entirely on my phone’s recorder app, and in record time.  Oh, the Gods were good to me!  

I was okay for the first few chapters where I could remember everything, but then it became strangely disconcerting.  (Yeah, that’s often the sign of a spiritual lesson, isn’t it?)  I began to feel ungrounded, worried.  Although the story was plainly there in my audio files, like life experience only I remembered, I didn’t have anything to look at to see exactly where I was or where I was going.  I knew I had come a long way–all I had to do was look at the transcription word counts from the audio files–but I didn’t have the actual printed pages to look back at, the manuscript dog-eared or scribbled on.  All I had was the momentum to go forward around that next bend.  I knew how the story started, how it ended, and some things that happened on the way.  But I didn’t know that Lilah had been abducted as a child and how her survivor’s guilt turned her into a self-proclaimed monster or how Daegan would understand calling on his Gods most often when he was in need or desperate or desperately in love and the correlation between prayer and romantic need.  These were things that I discovered as I moved forward on the path, both literally and figuratively.

Then one day, about 80,000 words into the story, I was out with my phone’s recorder app turned on, walking at a nice 4 mph clip, when I came upon the path in the photo.  I didn’t know where it led and I didn’t know what was around that next turn.  Specifically, what words would I be dictating?  What insights would come to me when I turned that corner?  I had just recently heard a lecture by Dr. Wayne Dyer where he talked about having faith when he sat down to write that whatever he needed to write would come in the perfect way, and that’s the way I approached this entire novel–completely on faith that whenever I pick up that recorder and head down an unknown path, whatever I need to know to write about will come to me, that the creativity and inspiration will be there, that the right words will be there and it will flow. 

That I will never turn that corner and find there’s nothing there for me but emptiness. 

Some surprises, yes.  Often.  But that I’ll be okay and the words will come. 

Art itself is like that, like Life.  It’s all an act of faith.  Whether it’s the writer not knowing what happens in the next chapter, the sculptor not knowing the resulting form, the photographer not knowing exactly what will be captured in a split second of the life of her subject, or the musician sitting down to pluck out a few chords to match his lyrics.  Or even the seamstress or quilter with a pattern in her head but still no idea which fabrics she’ll pick or how the end result will look….except beautiful. 

Writing THE SECRET LIVES OF LIBRARIANS has been like that: the faith that what I need will be there when I reach that point on the path.  Even though I have no idea how it looks now.  I don’t need to know the exact words when I put on my walking shoes and head out the door to finish these last chapters.  The words will come as I stroll the curves and twists of the path.  I don’t need to know.  It will come.

And the same in my life.  I don’t need to know exactly what’s around the next bend. 

Because it will be okay.

I have faith.

Just something that brings me delight:   Different metal trivets stored against the stove’s back splash brings out the metallic tile colors in the wall and appliances.

I generally don’t associate with people who are extremely judgmental, and if they judge me, I will break the friendship, cut them out of my life, or otherwise distance myself. I find that–most of the time–the people who judge others, whether by actual or perceived actions,  aren’t focusing on their own business enough. But then, hey, maybe that’s a judgment on my part.

I learned my newest and best lesson on judging from American Power Yoga 60 instructor, Kurt Johnsen. I’ve tried yoga many times before, but it’s never stuck until recently. This time, I believe that it is because of the instructor.  The APY 60 course is essentially 60 days of yoga classes, each day consisting of a 15-minute warm-up with life coaching lessons from Kurt and then a 45-minute lesson which is repeated six days, then a rest day before beginning the next lesson. Most of the life coaching and diet tips are already firmly in my regimen.

But I did discover something new when Kurt introduced the idea of wearing a bracelet band on your wrist to remind you not to judge.  The part that really caught my attention here was not the judging or not judging other people but the judging or not judging of situations.

He gave the examples of something bad happening which turned out to be a very good thing, and how life ebbed and flowed from seemingly good  situations to seemingly bad and how the exact opposite was justly likely come out of it.   He suggested not judging the situation as good or bad but that it just is, and wait and see how it plays out.

When I take these examples and look back at specific times in my life, things that seemed really bad–some of the worst things that ever happened to me in my life–turned out to be the best things because they put me in a much better road. They were life changing, yes, and at the time they seemed like they were terrible life changing things.  Later, those things opened doors to true happiness, that would never have opened otherwise.

Since being exposed to  Kurt’s advice, I have actively tried to observe myself judging events and situations, not as bad or good but as just…they are…just life…just events and situations that lead me forward on this journey.

Within the first three days after hearing this advice, I watched one situation played out, back and forth, ups and downs,  little rollercoasters causing my heart to pound and then leaving me nauseated.

In one particular situation, I received the good news of having full time help in an area where I have been doing the work alone. I was overjoyed. This is a good thing, right?

Finally I was getting the help I wanted and needed, but then I got the bad news. My new helper would not be allowed to work on certain projects with me for personal legal reasons. That was bad news, but then I found that I had another project, a huge project that could consume most of my time for the coming six months…and I could turn it over entirely to my new helper.

Great news right? I know, I know. It’s sounding like joke!

Then I found out that the new project was tied into –unbeknownst to either of us at the time–his personal legal situation so he couldn’t work on that project with me. However, that project–which was going to be so time consuming–suddenly went away.

And that was good news right? I mean, seriously, didn’t Grandpa Jones back in his HeeHaw days have a routine about this?  By this point, the good-news-bad-news shifts were plain funny.

All these up and down in a matter of few days!

I saw these same little rollercoasters going on in my romantic relationship during that time because now I was looking for events and situations that I was judging as either bad or good.  These also went from bad to good within a matter of hours and back to good again. What I learned from looking at this was not to get caught up in all those rollercoaster, hairpin-twist-turns, upside down and flung this way and that, but just to keep going forward and instead of being in a rollercoaster, just surf.  Just surf between the ups and downs, the seemingly good and seemingly bad situations. Don’t judge any of them as being bad or good, but just as being a matter of course, all moving me forward.

100 and More Ways to Feed the Body and Soul: Baby Steps to Less Stress, Better Health, and More Energy

by Lorna Tedder

Published by Spilled Candy Books

Over 100 tips for stress relief, ergonomics, desk exercises, and health in general.

*******

Download to your Kindle or Kindle app now.

Down 30 pounds & staying positive

How can you be positive when it seems there’s so much negativity and so many negative people around you?  It all depends on your focus.

Eleven seasons of The Biggest Loser had passed before I saw my first episode.   I’d heard of it, here and there, from friends at work, but I’d never watched it.  That’s because I don’t watch much TV at all.  That said, I do enjoy some entertainment on the treadmill, which is what I do whenever I’m taking a break from P90X or wanting to supplement it.  I like 90-minute sessions on the treadmill, so that’s usually one movie or two episodes of a TV series. 

After I’d listened to Jillian Michaels’ Master Your Metabolism and then her heavily peppered Law of Attraction book, Unlimited, I decided to check out her other work, including the TV series she’s best known for.  So I watched Season 10 and found it to be very inspirational, enough so to watch one more while I upped my 90-minute push on the treadmill. 

“You’re downloading another season?” my 18-year-old asked as she looked over my shoulder.  “Which one?”

“Season Six.  You know–THE season.” 

Obviously she didn’t know, but even a non-viewer like me had heard about Season Six of The Biggest Loser and how it was so much more about game-playing and snarky comments.   Even though it was at a difficult time in my own life when I couldn’t have cared less, I do remember hearing talk at the water cooler about Vile Vicky, the conniver and game player,  her puppet husband Brady, and their oh-so-negative allies, Ed and Heba.  The  season was best known for being the least Biggest Loser-like, the least inspirational, full of sniping and sometimes downright cruelty.  Yes, of all the seasons I’d heard mentioned by friends at work, the only one that brought out ire in general was Season Six. 

My daughter cringed when I told her all this.  “If it’s the season that’s so full of negativity, why would you EVER watch it?”

She had a point.  We’re both big Abraham-Hicks fans and we try to stay positive.  She will walk out of a room, conversation, or movie that is negative, and Season Six was surely going to include a lot of unnecessary sniping.

I explained that I’d been told to watch it anyway, that there was still inspiration there.  And there was!

For all the negativity and the Blue Team’s obvious lack of emotional support for other participants, I realized that there was so much more going on than just the negativity and sniping.  There were several tremendously  inspiring stories going on alongside the negative ones.   I especially loved the..subplots, if you will…of Michelle and her mom (Renee), of Coleen, and of Amy.  I found them all to be very mature, compassionate, hard-working, POSITIVE people–the kind I would like as friends or at least to hang out with. 

In real life (ha! as opposed to reality TV!), we all encounter negative people when we’re trying to stay positive and for everything and everyone around us to stay positive.  We can focus on them and how they mess up our otherwise positive focus and even blame them for our own failure to be/stay positive.  Or…we can choose to look at all the positive people around us, at those who are compassionate and willing to help us, at those who are upbeat and positive.  I’m glad I watched the entire Season Six of The Biggest Loser–what’s memorable for me is the inspiration of those who were positive and really changed their lives.  The negative people are just blips in my memory already, and will soon gratefully fade away.

Before I explain why I fired my family doctor right before I lost 20 pounds–and yes, your doctor works for YOU, in case you missed that–I’d like to touch on a couple of other subjects:  1.  Why going it alone in a health regimen may be better than having “help” but isn’t the preferred way and 2.  Whether we should blame our parents for the food choices they made while we were growing up.

I’ve seen it happen to many people, almost exclusively women…the diets and failed diets and the attempts at regular exercise and the failed attempts at regular exercise…the years of struggle with weight, only to get near a goal and be undermined by those closest to them.

About a decade ago, I watched a close friend get within 2 pounds of her goal of a 50-pound loss and nearly have to become a hermit to make it.  She was so hurt!  After 2 years on a nationally recognized weight loss program and one-hour-a-day of hard exercise, all those people who originally urged her to lose weight turned into her worst enemies–or worst tempters, as the case was.  Her family and friends suddenly began trying to tempt her with pizza, alcohol, and lots of junk food.  She learned from her sponsor that this was all perfectly normal–grown children would suddenly see mom as a threat and best friends in need of a little toning would be overcome with jealousy.  Her trusted levels of support would become insecure in their own body images and try to sway her when she was readiest to celebrate her hard work.

Lack of support isn’t just a matter of personal insecurities raising their ugly little heads among your supporters.  There are also the people who seem to think you’re an idiot when you say you can’t or won’t eat certain foods for health reasons you have that they don’t.

I went through this for years with a former in-law who loved to cook–and expected me to eat it.  When I began turning down her goodies, it became a struggle for control. She would lie to me about certain ingredients–my daughters sometimes reported later what they’d seen her put into the food and that she got a kick of my eating her ”health” food and loving it and how it wouldn’t hurt really me.  Except, now that I’ve done this detox diet, I know that some of the ingredients she  pretended weren’t in her treats really were harmful to me.  They gave me headaches, congestion, bloating, asthma, upset stomach, weight gain, and sometimes rashes.  Only I didn’t have any idea and I’d trusted that she hadn’t used certain ingredients, so I didn’t connect the foods with the reactions.  But hey, my ex-in-law got the benefit of an ego trip so who am I to argue?  She will never ever make another “healthy” food for me.

It’s not quite as bad as the birthday girl’s mom who defies the parents of the kid with a peanut or dairy allergy, shrugs it off as over-protectiveness, and then feeds the food-sensitive kid something that will  send him to the ER before the birthday party is over.  Still, I have no use whatsoever for people who intentionally sabotage a restricted diet, whether it’s for “vanity pounds” or a matter of life or death within the hour or something in between.  Lying about what you feed a person is unforgivable–and yes, I’ll talk later in this blog about what the food industry and restaurants cover up.   I have rarely spoken to my former favorite uncle after he years ago tricked me into eating venison and I knew in the first bite that it was not steak.  I am still angry when I think about his guffawing over convincing me to eat it, his sheepish grin to see if I’d know something was amiss with that first bite, and my parents looking guilty for going along with his lies.  Yes, I knew the difference, and no, I did not appreciate it.  I put it right up there with stories of restaurant workers who have spit or pissed in a patron’s food or medieval tales of poison slipped into the banquet fare.

Not that intentional or unintentional sabotage are the only forms of killing a good diet.  The biggest diet-killer for me was always the extra work.  Not really the prep time for my meal’s restrictions.  Some diets do require more prep but for my detox, many of my healthy meals have been ready in 10 minutes or less.  During my 2-decade marriage, my spouse and I took turns cooking (he had 3 dishes and I was more…experimentive).  If I was on a diet, the only way it would work was if I cooked all the meals.  He either didn’t offer or didn’t know how to cook for whatever was on my diet.  The extra work to cook my own dishes and for the entire family eventually became so time-consuming that I gave up my diet, especially if I had achieved my weight loss.  Why stick to a great style of eating for my own needs if I was forever burned out on the extra food duties? 

Part of my success with this detox diet has been that I have gone it alone.  I didn’t want loved ones weighing in to question my intelligence at applying a diet they knew nothing about or one that was different from theirs and would only create extra work for them.  Been there.  Too much energy spent defending my food needs as reasonable.   I either wanted total support or for no one to know.  I told almost no one what I was doing and planned the first two weeks of my detox for a time when  most of  my co-workers were out for the Christmas season.  I mentioned it to my daughters, who were really quite supportive during a time when they were both home and used to holiday excursions to lots of restaurants with Mom.  I felt a little guilty that I couldn’t take my older daughter out to dinner when restaurant food is a big deal for a starving college student.  I did have to mention a couple of times to my younger daughter (in the pic above from several years ago) to clean her own dishes because, regardless of other reasons,  it just wasn’t fair for me to have to scrape cookie dough remnants off a plate before putting it in the dishwasher!  My daughters are old enough now to make their own meals without me having to cook twice as many meals to accomodate them.  The worst of the problems is that every now and then, I have to smell chocoloate chip cookies baking in the kitchen, beckoning to me like a hag with a poison apple….

The other person I mentioned my impending diet to was a “person of interest” in my life, right before he was away for several weeks.  He was super supportive and the very first person I discussed my plans with.  When he returned, I was half-done with my detox and down 13 pounds by that time.  He was super supportive in ways I have never known from a friend or family member:  looking up food info for me, downloading spreadsheets for me, sending me links with info he’d researched on some side-subject I was interested in, propping me up if a favorite food caused me grief, trying my experiments for himself, and just generally cheering me on all around and making me feel like an adored queen for my triumphs.

So to an extent, I “went it alone” on this adventure, but I got some great support, too.  The biggest difference in the support was  that with previous diets…in a time of previous people in my life…I had a guy showing up to eat and talk healthy foods instead of bringing junk food into my house, someone urging me ever onward instead of challenging me to defend why I needed to do my diet instead of his,  someone boosting me up instead of telling me I’d just fail this diet or gain all the weight right back.  I got real support, wonderful support.

That’s the way it should be.  And if you don’t get that level of support, then I think it’s definitely best to “go it alone.”

Continued….  Is your diet your parents’ fault?  Have you screwed up your own kids already?  And why, oh, why did I fire my family doctor?

Continued from Losing 20 Pounds in 30 Days:  Part 2 — Earliest Indicators of Weight Gain to Come:  Intense Hunger

In the previous article, I talked about how I went through episodes of intense hunger, a side effect of a drop in my blood sugar that sent me into a  food-focused ravenous mindset where getting to eat again became more important than the subject of the meetings I sat through.  This article focuses on the second clue I had that something wasn’t quite right.

2. WTF?  Diets and exercise have the opposite effect?

The second big clue that something was amiss came from unexpected results of a doctor-approved diet and frequent exercise.  The unexpected result?  Weight GAIN.  

I’ll be honest–I haven’t always eaten “right” or “well.”  I have been eating far healthier in my 40’s than I ever did in my 20’s, for example, and definitely healthier than I ate as a child. I’ve not always been athletic either, but since my late 20’s, I’ve been a regular exerciser and at times a real gym rat.  I was in the best shape of my life in my early 30’s (see pic).  I had two little girls, a high-stress career, and a regular workout schedule, 3 times a week, weights for 30 minutes. I was 113 pounds and rrrrrrrripped.  That was a couple of years before I had a back injury that sidelined my gym work for years and before I headed off to an assignment where I sat in 9-hour meetings without food breaks. 

My then-husband never hit the gym and ate whatever he wanted while I, like many women of my age, struggled to be the perfect Superwoman.  I got little to no support for my diet or exercise regimen because it just wasn’t something that mattered to  him at the time.  And frankly, I think he preferred I be a little overweight to keep the guys from paying me too much attention…even though I was far too busy in those days to notice other men’s attentions.  I would forgo a dessert with dinner or a glass of wine and he would take it personally that I didnt’ want to enjoy those things with him, not understanding that I was concerned if I gained 5 pounds.  Like a lot of husbands tend to do to their wives, he often seemed to sabotage my attempts with too many sugary temptations.

Then, in my late 30’s, everything changed.  I still remember going home from work early to plant herbs in my garden and sitting there praying that my husband would be more supportive of my attempts to eat healthy foods and maybe even go to the gym or take up fencing with me.  Then a miracle happened:  he came home from a doctor’s appointment and joined me in the back yard where he announced that he was turning over a new leaf–a new diet from his doctor and regular forays into team sports. 

His metabolism was very different from mine, and so were–looking back–his food needs.  The diet his doctor put him on became the diet for the entire family:  low protein, low to no fat, and high carb.  That was also the prevailing “healthy” diet of that time.  Low-fat and no-fat products were all over the grocery stores…except that they were extremely high in carbs.  For the next year, he changed his diet and exercise routines and lost 30 pounds. For that year, I changed only my diet to match his–and I gained 30 pounds.  For him, the fats were a huge issue.  For me, it was the carbs.

Working a little harder at the gym didn’t budge the weight, either.  One night, my husband and I went for our usual 1-hour powerwalk (powerwalk for me, a breeze for a tall guy!) and I complained to him that for the first time in my life, I couldn’t manage my weight.  It had been a year and all I could do was continue to gain so I needed to change what I was eating.  His response was identical to what my doctor had said as well as other people who really didn’t know what I did in my daily life:  “You just need to exercise more!”  I was exasperated.  More?  I was taking a 1-hour powerwalk every evening and spending 1.5 hours in the gym 3-5 days a week.  More? 

When I defied him and my doctor to try a different diet, I started dropping weight, immediately.  Initially, I had to defend my food choices almost every day, but within a few months, it was obvious that a low-carb diet was producing results.  I stuck to it for almost a year before my diet became a casualty of my divorce.  Big mistake on my part.

Since then, I’ve kept a steady exercise regimen and eaten mostly clean, with a few cheat days, and eaten around 1500 calories a day.  But not a lot has changed.  When I started P90X, I became a very strong, durable machine over the next 3 months, but not a lean machine.  I gained lots of muscle, flexibility, endurance, stamina–which had been my goals…but I lost only a few pounds.  Even the current man in my life, who is a very supportive friend and health nut, believed that more exercise was the simplest answer to my quest.  When I doubled up, adding an hour of cardio 6 days a week to an already strenuous P90X of 1 to 1.5 hours a day, 6 days a week,  I actually gained weight.  Fat, not muscle.  Okay, big clue that something wasn’t right.

So using the WTF-am-I-gaining-weight-while-exercising-like-a-mad-woman-and-eating-clean indicator, I decided to visit my current family doctor and ask him to run a few tests. 

It took less than 5 minutes for me to decide to fire that doctor.

Continued….

That’s me in the picture.  Maybe 21, if that.  With the hat, gloves, and heels, I may have topped the scales at 105 pounds but it’s doubtful.  I confess:  football players in college used to ask me to walk on their backs in my stocking feet because I was just the right weight for everything to crunch pleasantly for them.  But even  back then when I was anorexically thin, there were early indicators of weight gain to come.

I know that when my daughters were in their early teens, I really hurt their feelings without meaning to.  They would try on clothes I wore in college and through my mid-20’s and…the clothes wouldn’t fit.  My out-of-college, newly-married, and owning my own home clothes that I’d saved out of sentiment were too little to fit  two slender, healthy teens.  They took it as a defect but I never meant it that way–I could see only that sudden realization of just how thin I was in my teens and 20’s, even though I often worried back then about being overweight.  And yes, that includes how I felt about myself in this photo. 

But as for the early indicators of weight gain that would catch up with me later–and that something was amiss–they fall into two categories

1.  “Feed me now or I’m going to kill something and eat it raw!”

I’ve come to understand over the last decade that it’s a product of uneven blood sugar, but it’s important to note for soooo many reasons.  I was tested a number of times in my 20’s and 30’s and told, often with annoyance by my physician, that no, you do not have diabetes and all your numbers are in the normal range.  True–they were in normal range.  In fact they are still in the normal range for this test, even though I now realize I’ve always had problems with my blood sugar.

More than anything, the indicator was the insane hunger than no one around me seemed to understand and–usually–intentionally made worse thinking I was being a either a rebel or a brat.

It’s hard to explain the hunger but when my blood sugar drops to a certain point, I can’t focus on anything but food.  Finding food, getting food, eating food, NOW.   It’s a little touchy to haul something to eat into a meeting with a bunch of Colonels and Generals and sit there and munch away because you are five hours into the meeting without a break and someone in charge has just decided that it’s more efficient to work right through lunch.  The last thing you want is an angry VIP asking you if you brought enough for everyone, so you sit patiently–no longer thinking of the subject of the meeting but only of when you’re going to get to EAT–until the entire day has passed without food and you are shaking all over and nauseated to the point you’re not sure you can drive somewhere and get food.   Sure, there may be vending machines nearby–sugary drinks and loaded candy bars for those of you who had no idea a short meeting would turn into an all-day affair–but that only makes the problem worse. 

I didn’t notice this so much in my 20’s and early 30’s but that was mainly because of where I was working at the time.  We rarely had meetings that lasted more than a few hours and I had a lot more control over demanding  breaks where I could wolf down something fast before reconvening.  Though an all-day-with-no-lunch-break meeting was rare, it was the norm when I moved to my new assignment…and the extreme hunger became more noticeable.  In that job, every Monday–and frequently other days that weren’t announced–started with a 7:30 AM meeting that was supposed to be over by 8:30 but never was.  It dovetailed into the 9:15 AM meeting, which was supposed to be over by 11:00 AM but rarely was.  Often enough, the VIP in charge of the meetings would send a lieutenant out to bring her a sandwich while the rest of us stared at powerpoint briefings.  Well, except for me.  I was staring at her food.  The 9:15 meeting would over run over into the 1:00 PM briefing, which would last until 4:00 PM or so. Our VIP took bathroom breaks and lunch breaks while the meetings continued, and for those of us who were required to attend all 3 meetings, it was miserable.  But that was when my blood sugar drops became pronounced and my hunger so strong that I would yelp at anyone who spoke to me.  I didn’t mean to be impolite or unprofessional–it was just a survival instinct of focusing on nothing but food, food, food, food, food.

Normally, I could control my hunger away from work without any problems…except on family vacations or outings.  Then, my hunger became the subject of huge marital disputes.  We would have a good breakfast as a family and hit the road.  Around 10:30 or so, I’d tell my spouse, who was almost always the driver, that I was starting to get hungry and that we’d need to look for a place to eat in the next town but definitely within the hour.  It became a battle of wills somehow–him thinking I was unreasonable and dictating the choice of restaurants when he didn’t want to stop at a particular chain that happened to be the only restaurant in the next town and me thinking he was being an ass for waiting until after 1 PM and 8 towns later to stop at a chain restaurant he preferred.  Usually by the time we stopped, I was too nauseated and shaky to eat much and was car sick the rest of the day.  Since I was usually to the point of opening the passenger door of a moving car and leaping out to raid a convenience store’s shelves, I eventually started carrying protein bars or small ice chests with me on family trips so that I would never be at anyone’s mercy again.

Since the people “in charge” of holding me captive in meetings or cars had no inkling of what it was like to feel the hunger I was feeling and the desperation of the survival instinct to eat as soon as possible or DIE, I endured some miserable experiences that–as least in my husband’s case–could not be explained.  If you haven’t lived it, then you’re likely to think the person bringing crackers into a very staid and serious briefing is a rebel and that the passenger who’d rather leap out of your moving car than wait another hour is obviously just being a drama queen.    No one else around me seemed to be having this problem but, in looking back, I now see that it was a big indicator that something was amiss and that I needed to take better care of myself when my body said I needed to eat–and not vending machine junk food either.

It was an indicator for two reasons: 

1.  Since I wasn’t allowed breaks for meals or to have food in the meeting areas, my initial weight gain (that I later lost through exercise and better eating at my next assignment) was the result of grabbing something from a badly stocked vending machine.  It usually came down to a choice of Pepsi vs Coke and Peanut M&Ms vs a Snickers bar.  Seriously.  Those were the healthiest choices we had, short of cannibalism. My blood sugar was all over the place all day long.

2.  It was an early warning sign that something was amiss with my blood sugar–even though this was years prior to my parents’ being diagnosed with diabetes late in life.  Maybe I could have been more insistent that my physician run additional tests or talked to nutritionist back then about my food sensitivities. 

Continued…..

The first picture you see here was taken at Thanksgiving 2010.  I was working out 6 days a week–hard–and had been for 5 months with good results but no significant loss of weight or inches. 

The second picture was taken  in January 2011, just 6 weeks after I started a detox diet and had lost 20 pounds.  Easiest, fastest weight loss of my life.

Okay, technically, I lost 20.6 pounds in 29 days on a detox diet I’d considered trying for years.  My weight has fluctuated a little in the past 3 weeks since I started adding foods back in to see what I’m allergic or sensitive to (lots of surprises!), but I’ve kept about 19 pounds off and have begun adding back exercise.  The best part is that I lost 6.5 inches off my waistline and 5.5 off my hips.  The biggest indicator that I was sensitive to something in my diet was a drastic 4-inch drop in my waist in the first week of eliminating specific foods.  I’m still not sure what it was but I do have my suspicions, as I’ll discuss in this blog.

In this series of articles, I’ll cover what got me started on this adventure, how I turned myself into a human guinea pig (a la Tim Ferriss of Four-Hour Body fame, though I didn’t follow his regimen…just his self-experimentation mindset), food sensitivites and how they affected my waist and weight, good friends with really horrible advice, the demons in my pantry–and in the grocery store and restaurant, why I wasn’t eating as cleanly as I thought, why I had to double my caloric intake to lose weight, and how I’m meshing exercise with this regimen.  And more, too, as other things become important to analyze.

Let me say that this attempt at getting as healthy as possible (with the wonderful by-product of dropping 2 dress sizes almost overnight…or so it seemed) is not anything new.  In fact, I’m a little perturbed at people who say silly things to me like, “Oh, that’s wonderful that you’ve decided to focus on your health.”  No, I didn’t just decide this now.  I’ve been working toward this for 3 years, 1 month…and a number of times before when I’ve given up.  Most people don’t know that I did my first round of P90X last summer or that I was doing P90X doubles in the autumn.  To get to where I wanted to be–and to where I’m going–it took more than even P90X doubles (about 15 hours a week of strenuous exercise), clean eating, calorie restriction (bad, bad, bad), and portion control.  It took turning my eating patterns into a scientific experiment and figuring out exactly how I reacted to everything I consumed. 

I have learned that I usually have a choice–do I want to eat this 2 ounces of cheese badly enough that it’ll be worth the horrendous 24-hour headache that awaits me?  It’s an on-going experiment, and one of the things I set my intentions for at my 2010 Winter Solstice ritual.  If the body really is a temple, it helps to know what you’re painting the walls with and whether it makes the temple stronger or tears it down.

It’s that time on the calendar when everyone’s doing a review of the year.  It’s our way of taking stock as a culture, a country, a community, an organization, a family, personally.  I admit, there are times when I look back on the year and think, wow, I got nothing done!  I’ll remind myself of how I’d wanted to travel more or finish more projects or grow spiritually or prosper or improve my health or find the company of a good man and not be able to conjure up all those successes in one instant.  I’m a visual sort of person, though, so I discovered this photo-tool through my friend Sharyn Cerniglia. 

To the naked eye (or the person who doesn’t know how to read my mind!), these photos don’t necessarily make a lot of sense or show what a great year I’ve had, even though most of my readers have seen them here at The Spiritual Eclectic.  But here’s my year’s highlights, in pictures, and what each represents.  Funny, but most correspond with specific goals and sectors in my life, such as prosperity, family, travel, spirituality, health, and romance. 

Try it yourself–you’ll probably find yourself smiling back at the photos of yourself and the things that were important enough to take pictures of.

#1 — Leaving the house to  hold someone accountible for some unethical/illegal activity–felt really empowered that day after finding out how many lies I’d been told!;
#2 –My new home office, just the way I love it;
#3 –Jasmine Hills gardens where my “adopted little sister” Jillian got married and I performed my first legal ceremony;
#4 –Clowning around with daughter Shannon and masks over Labor Day;
#5 –Mother’s Day with daughter Aislinn at Bay Point–and getting a quick visit with a dear childhood friend;
#6 –The labyrinth at the Florida Pagan Gathering and camping with friends (twice this year);
#7 –About 70 days into P90X and seeing/feeling a difference;
#8 –My girls on Grayton Beach at our annual Thanksgiving picnic (Aislinn taking photos of Shannon);
#9 –My garden and patio;
#10  –A playdate with a very special guy;
#11 – Weekend trip to Disney and a reunion wtih Maggie Shayne, Barbara O’Neal, and other writer pals;
#12 – Breakfast with Sharyn Cerniglia in Orlando, my Law of Attraction/Abraham-Hicks friend and a big instigator of some very positive steps I’ve made (sorta a role model, and I don’t have many);
#13 – Dressing up for my spiritual circle’s monthly gathering;
#14  –Metrics for health regimen–pulse is wayyyyy down, BP is good;
#15  –My new car, Isabeau; and
#16 – The front door of my house, flanked by autumn flowers.

Back on the 24th of August,  I emulated my dear friend Maggie Shayne and posted a seasonal review of the summer–not any of the hardships or turbulence  but the most satisfying moments of the summer.  Now that Autumn has passed and the frigid Florida weather has arrived (yes, it’s dipped several times into the low 20’s–uncharacteristic for this area), it’s time to look back on the season and think about the best of it.

Whereas the summer was about building and strengthening my foundation, this fall has been about preparing for big changes in my work life, my home life, and my romantic life.  Not that any of those changes have happened, but instead the season was a constant reminder of both the endings and beginnings of my younger daughter leaving home in 2011 and what it means for me personally, emotionally, and financially.   New doors are opening and I have to decide…eventually…which ones to step through.  Switch jobs?  Move to a new home?  Move to a new city?  Give my heart away again?  Travel internationally?  All of the above?

So this season has been about recalibrating and preparing myself emotionally for the possibilities before me–the ones that are in every way both exciting and terrifying.  The best of the season has really been focused on two things:  relationships and spiritual gifts.

On the relationship front, a new friendship has probably had the most impact and given me, in spite of some turbulence, the most satisfying moments of the past four months.  Hands down.  I have laughed, I have been delighted, I have been intrigued, I have been challenged, and I have been touched.  Through extremely intelligent conversation and plumbing some difficult emotional depths that have been off-limits for quite a while, he has helped me to fine-tune what it is I want at this point in my life.  He has become my best friend in a way a man has never been my best friend before, and I’m so grateful to have him in my life.  That’s the outcome, at least, but the journey has had many sweet moments.  It’s immensely satisfying to be able to give someone my trust and know that he knows me better–even if he doesn’t understand me any better–than anyone else in my life…ever.  He is closer to me than any lover has ever been, and this fact amazes me.

The spiritual gifts have been just as satisfying over the autumn months.   There have been beautiful moments of intuition and understanding, and I’ve made some leaps in my application of The Teachings of Abraham.  I’ve had some moments where I was thrown way off course but made it back to my path rather quickly and regained my serenity faster than I ever have in the past.  I came to understand how well I’ve brought certain things into my life and that I can bring them in again, that I’ll be just fine–no matter what. 

So in hindsight, this season has been about feeling adored and appreciated and loved by the Universe while figuring out a last few things for myself, practicing them even badly at times but coming through it better, and allowing others to go through their own painful growth periods to figure out their own happiness.  After all this, I am anticipating an eventful Winter season.

 
The view from the dining room, 2 December 2010.  The 20-degree weather is coming in a few days, but for now–and again next year–it’s beautiful….and life keeps moving forward.  Photo copyright by Lorna Tedder.

I used to kick myself all the time because I could never get caught up.  No matter how many hundreds of things I scratched off my to-do list on any given weekend, I would fall into bed on Sunday night feeling like a failure because there was always so much more to do.  My last words as I fell asleep every Sunday night were usually, “But I didn’t get hardly anything done!”
 
My mom, at 81, will often tell me that something needs maintenance and she can never get it all finished before it needs maintenance again.  It’s a chore that never seems to cease.  She despairs about it, but I’ve come to realize that it’s a good thing. 
 
I stand before the mirror and frown at the cut on my lip.  There’s one on my finger, too, and a particularly bad burn on my hand, but it’s the one on my lip that annoys me more.  It’s the one that keeps me from giving or accepting a kiss, and I’d like to be giving lots of kisses at the moment.    It’s been there for about 5 days and every day, it gets better and better.
 
The repair process—the old cells replaced by new cells—continues, the process moving forward, and I’m glad the processes of life are never done.  My lip gets better every day, the cut smaller, better healed. 
 
Life keeps moving forward, propelled by the processes of regeneration, even the small and annoying tasks that claim the most mundane moments of our days.  It’s never done because I am not finished with life.

It’s been a long time since I’ve met anyone I was romantically interested in who could sustain multiple Life-Death-and-the-Universe discussions but let’s just say that this particular man is like sweet tea made with real sugar on a hot South Georgia dog day:  a little old-fashioned, very sweet, and totally refreshing.  I very much appreciate men who are my intellectual match and are non-judgmental, both for who they are and for the incredible epiphanies they bring to me.

This September has been particularly crazy with the Fiscal Yearend and slashing through as many projects in a single day as I usually do in an entire month…and I’m no slacker over the course of a month, either.  It’s a mental and physical strain and I almost find myself wishing that September were over and done with so I can get some rest.  It’s also been a difficult week for me emotionally–not that I’ve told him this–because I’ve been forced to work through some old issues and he doesn’t let me get away with changing the subject or not answering.  I’ve had to search my feelings on several past issues just to answer in an intelligent way and unwittingly he’s helped me slot some old experiences and why certain relationships failed…and why I’m glad now that they failed. 

In short, Sweet Tea makes me think, and that’s something most men don’t do for me.  Two discusssions brought me to these conclusions:

1.  We spend so much of our lives planning for a distant future.  If we’re not happy where we are now, instead of fixing it, we dream about the day…maybe years from now…when life is finally better.    By wishing to be in the future, we wish our present away.  We wish our lives away.    Yet, wherever we stand, we look back at what we consider wasted time and we regret that we wasted it.  That wasted time in the past–when we could have been having fun or doing more enjoyable work or in a better relationship–is the same as the present we wish away. 

2.  I’m at a place in my life where I don’t wish for some magical, golden future when everything is oh-so-perfect and focus on that future while the present is gods-awful bad.  As I explained to Sweet Tea, it’s like that glowing ball of happiness in the future that other people run to is something that’s inside me right now and as I move forward into the future, I take it there with me.  There’s no big something in the future that will make it all better–just me in the present, at one with my joy, moving gleefully into the future with it rather than chasing it.

Wishing away your life?  Bad!  Men who make me think?  Good!

When I spotted the CNN headline, More teenagers adopting ‘mutant’ Christianity, followed by “Author:  More teens becoming ‘fake’ Christians,”  I inwardly groaned and wondered if someone else was making the connection with eclectic spirituality.    Instead it was a pitch for Kenda Creasy Dean’s book, Almost Christian, and a story that read like a scare tactic for parents of teens who fear their children will grow up and leave the Christian faith.  There’s a lot of blame placed in the article, with the conclusions drawn from the author’s “in-depth interviews” of teens who were indifferent  about being Christians.  I also read the article as a call to parents to get tougher on their kids.
 
Two points I’d like to make, both based on my personal observations and in-depth conversations with people of all ages over the past decade. 
 
1.    You should be passionate about your beliefs. If not, then don’t call yourself by that religious affiliation.  If you’re not passionate about your beliefs, it’s tantamount to fraud.
Maybe these teens are indifferent about their faith because Christian has become the expected way to classify oneself when an American is asked about religion.  It pops up everywhere—not just in conversation but in write-ups for awards at work and on dating sites.  The same people often will talk about not ever going to church or the social aspects of church and not seem to make the connection with spirituality…which we assume one would find at church.   Idle talk at a water cooler about what happened at church last Sunday will more likely include what someone wore and shouldn’t have, who was there with whose ex, or some particularly detestable drama that should have its own reality TV show, “The Real Christians of the Local First Baptist Church.”  Sometimes there’s mention of a particularly meaningful sermon, but when the discussion turns to spirituality—when and if it does—the talk is very personal, about the close-to-the-bone situation, about God, about hurt and healing and forgiveness and compassion and figuring it all out.  And none of that is specific to Christianity, but the tone is much higher and lighter in purity of spirit.  Many of the people I meet who claim to be Christians aren’t practicing Christians.  It’s more like they had to choose a religion and Christianity was more familiar than anything else on the list…being it’s the  best known religion in America.
 
Keep in mind that the fastest growing religion in the US is not Wicca or Islam or Satanism or The Cult of Lorna, but none of the above or unaffiliated. For many who would otherwise call themselves Christian, perhaps eh, whatever might be the more accurate classification, even though it would certainly lessen the numbers of “Christian America.” 
 
This news story seems to say that teens leave the Christian faith they’re raised in because they’re not passionate about it.  If that’s true, maybe they should be exploring other faiths, other belief systems, to see if they’re more passionate about a different form of spirituality.  I definitely recommend exploring different belief systems over forcing your teens into going to church every time the doors open, drilling them to make sure they stick to tightly-structured interpretations of Christian belief out of fear that they might become church drop-outs or “unchurched.” 
 
2.    If you want children and others to follow your belief system, then live it yourself and be the best role model for it you can be.
Technically, I am considered by Christians to be “unchurched,” because—even though I’m still an inactive member of the First Baptist Church in Donalsonville, Georgia—I no longer attend Baptist worship services, regularly or irregularly.  Never mind that I’ve been a Wiccan Third Degree High Priestess since 2004, that I strive to live each day in the sacred way, that I’m quite often mistaken for a “good Christian” because of my compassion and kindness toward others.  To many Christians, I am not considered to have a religion unless I have theirs, and they don’t bother to find out how much we actually have in common or that the God I worship now is the same one I worshipped as a devout Christian. More to the point, they cannot understand why I—or anyone—would ever leave the Christian religion.
 
My reason is similar to what I hear from many other Wiccans and Pagans who have left behind a religion, but never left behind God.   Probably half of the Wiccans I know were raised as Christians,  Baptists in particular.  Another good percentage of converts came from Catholicism, already rich in ritual and an understanding of  Trinity.  Most describe it as I have…like “coming home.”   Almost every convert from Christianity has a familiar story—either the hypocrisy or mistreatment drove them away.  Not one incident, but time and again.
 
For me, it was the hypocrites, all the way up to the Chairman of the Board of Deacons to the Pastor and his staff.  So many of the people telling the youth of my hometown church how we needed to live and what we should believe simply didn’t live it themselves.  The ones who made the biggest impression on me actively did not live by Christian principles.  So when I left home for college, I left the Baptist Church.  It wasn’t, as Kenda Creasy Dean alleges, because I wasn’t passionate about my beliefs, but because my Christian beliefs seemed out of place with so many of the people around me.  It was the people in the church itself who caused me to decide to leave it.
 
I later wanted my children exposed to the Southern Baptist brand of Christianity I grew up with so they could make up their own minds.  I also exposed them to other belief systems, so they could find which form of Deity resonated best for them  (in other words, which form of God spoke to them).  I allowed them to attend church with my dad, but that stopped when my older daughter was  nine years old.  She came home after witnessing the ongoing mistreatment of several old men by more aggressive adults in the church and announced to me that she wanted absolutely no part of it.  I told her it was her choice, that I would not force her to go back, but if she ever wanted to, she could.  She didn’t.
 
Do you think that children don’t notice if you don’t practice what you preach to them?   If they notice at the tender age of nine, do you think they’ll still give adults a pass when they hit their teen years? 
 
I’m not saying that Christianity is the only religion with its share of hypocrites.  I can attest to having discovered plenty of hypocrites, drama queens, and petty minds in Wicca and paganism as well, with a few being so inept at following their own guiding ethical principles that my children have shied away from involvement with Wicca at times. 
 
I do still think that the best way of encouraging  (if that’s what you want to do) someone to join your religious beliefs is to live your life by those standards, being the best Christian/Wiccan/etc  you can be.   It’s called living by example, and when your favorite teens see what works for you, they’ll be much more likely to continue with it or return to it because they’ve seen first hand what it means to know God through that religion.

I’m taking my cue from friend Maggie Shayne and doing a “seasonal review.”  As this long, hot summer of 2010 fades away—the first hints of Autumn cool are on the horizon—I don’t want to remember the passing season as the one that was blemished by the BP Oil Spill here on the Gulf or by a serious but temporary illness that resulted from a bad reaction to allergy meds.  To make the best of the season, I’m looking back at its most satisfying moments.
 
Summer 2010 was the season of working on my core after a turbulent, off-kilter spring.  My core, my foundation.  And not just physically.
 
My most satisfying times were hours I spent with

Aislinn, talking about her life-altering decisions for the future, listening to Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games audiobooks and various Abraham-Hicks downloads together,  discussing her photography business and how to market it.   She’s grown up so much over the past year and we’ve become closer, but this summer has been really good with cementing a firm foundation between us.  I am especially happy, relieved, and—when I think back on it—pissed because it was only 5 months ago that someone tried to destroy our mother-daughter relationship and used her for the sake of pure drama.  I have the kind of relationship now with my younger daughter that I have always wanted, and when I think of what I might have lost because of someone else’s manipulations,  I feel both anger and hate.  And that’s honest.
 
I’ve also loved brainstorming my next novel with my older daughter and the long walks with her on the few times I’ve seen her all summer.  I loved the passion of writing and its feeling of channeling something direct from the Gods, too.
 
My home—a very physical foundation—has been a source of delight as I’ve listened to audiobooks on The History of the English Language  and such while painting and decorating, even cleaning the garage.  Every day that I turn into my driveway and see the huge tufts of gaura on one side and rudbekia on the other,  I feel uplifted. 
 
And then there’s my personal foundation—my physical health.  I’m enjoying the euphoria of finishing a hardcore workout, sleeping soundly through the night, becoming stronger and more flexible every day.  I never thought I’d love Cardio-X so much or look forward to an hour of bicep curls or kick-boxing but I’m feeling GREAT.  And I love that about this summer—that every day I felt better than the day before. 
 
So this season passes, and I honor it and the completion of new building blocks in my life.  Autumn will be even better.

For 9 years and 11 months, I looked forward to this high school reunion.  On the last night to turn in my paperwork, I decided not to go.

It was a surprise, mostly to me. 

There are lots of tales of people who go back to high school reunions to put ghosts to rest.  I’m not one of those.  I put those ghosts to rest at my first high school reunion.  They haven’t bothered me since.

People go back to reunions because they feel they have something to prove.   I’m not one of those either.  I don’t have to prove my successes or show that I’m worthy or make anyone notice me.

A lot of people go back to reunions to find out what happened to people from “back then” and see how life and time have treated them, often compare notes because they need some kind of baseline.   I’m not one of those.  Anyone I’ve wanted to find out about, I’ve done so online–and renewed some very nice friendships.

Some people actually go back to high school reunions because they had such a great time in high school and can’t wait to catch up with old friends and relive their fantastic teen years.  Sadly, I’m not one of those either.

Some people are assuming that something dreadful is wrong because I didn’t attend.  No, nothing’s wrong.  Everything is plenty all right!  I’m happy, serene, prosperous.  If I take a quick self-assessment, I am very close to where I’ve always wanted to be.  Health is very good and ever improving with some hardcore P90x.  A beautiful home with frequent social gatherings and a garden I love.  Frequent travel to regional fun places with a big exotic trip planned.  Feeling productive in my career and passionate about my writing.  Enjoying the company of sexy, loving, adoring men half my age.   Mixing both new and old friendships.  Two amazing daughters who are successful in their own efforts as well as compassionate, intelligent, creative.  Constantly expanding my mind with new courses, workshops,  and audiobooks.  Income appearing from unexpected streams while  maintaining minimum to no debt.  Just…having fun.  No, there is nothing wrong at all.  I can’t think of any area of my life that is dismal or unfulfilling in some way.  Life is good.

So why not show up at a reunion to show that off or celebrate it as I’ve been urged to do?

A couple of days before the decision deadline, I was in the kitchen, preparing a meal for the night’s dinner party, enjoying incense and candles, and listening to an mp4 download of an Abraham-Hicks workshop.  I don’t even remember which one, but it was one of the ones from the late Spring/early Summer of 2010.  If you’ve read my blog for a while, you know that I find the Teachings of Abraham to be very inspirational in my spiritual work, and they’ve helped me ease into a life of serenity.  All I remember is that the subject morphed into a discussion of family reunions and other types of reunions.  I perked up at the sound of this because I had a reunion with writer friends coming up in the next couple of weeks and I just couldn’t wait to see these friends again, even though we keep track of each other online daily.  I also had a high schol reunion coming up less than a month later, but my excitement factor wasn’t anywhere near as high for some reason.

Abraham talked about how family reunions throw us out of our “vortex”– our happy place where we have no trouble bringing wonderful things to us–because no matter how great things are going now, a reunion takes us back to where we once were, to other people’s old expectations of us,  to a place we’re no longer aligned with, and the results can be upsetting.  We go back to how we felt with that group or during that time because that’s where the focus is.

That’s when it hit me that even though I was excited about seeing my writer friends in July, I had no desire to attend my high school reunion in August.  You see, high school wasn’t any fun for me.  It was a time of high misery.  Back then, I didn’t fit in and felt as if I were a visitor from another planet.  My way of thinking was different and unappreciated–including by teachers I admired but shouldn’t have–and I spent most of my teen years in despair, being told to be myself but the “myself” that others wanted me to be.  I was actually a really good kid but misunderstood by just about everyone who knew or knew of me.    You know the BREAKFAST CLUB movie from the 80’s?  I always identified with Ally Sheedy’s character.  It wasn’t until college that I met others (a few) who thought like I did.  Now the Internet connects me with plenty of like-minded people, but back then, I was quite alone.  Maybe that’s why I so appreciate people who are different and “unique” and why I’m so accepting of diversity in my friends.

I also find it amusing that I was so sincere about my Christian religion in high school and an outcast among students who weren’t Christian.  Now they’ve joined the ranks of the churched and become Christians whereas I’ve converted to Wicca….so I’m still an outcast among them.

My high school years were so different from my life now.  I’m still that same person inside, still with the brain wired differently, still the visionary–though 20-somethings don’t seem to have any problem understanding my way of thinking and hence, that’s where I find the most date-able men.  In spite of all the body-switch movies where middle-aged moms swap with their teen daughters, I would not want the same.  I’m so much happier in my life now when it is “half over” than when it was just beginning.  I decided I didn’t want to relive memories of an unhappy time and to align myself now with where I was then.    Reunions are about going back to that place where we last left off…and I have no desire to go back there. 

I may not be 18 anymore, but there’s really no place better in my life to be than I am right now…unless it’s where I’ll be tomorrow.

Today, I read with confusion that the rain that fell here on the Gulf Coast yesterday was black with oil and that I’m being prohibited from speaking out about the true conditions here  in the Northwest corner of Florida because I’m secretly under martial law and some sort of lockdown.  Really? 

These words were spoken with authority by some guy who’s never stepped foot in the area I’ve lived in since 1985 and still live, work, and have the freedom to say pretty much whatever I damn well please.  But he read it somewhere, or saw it in a conspiracy-theory website somewhere, and therefore it must be true.  As my readers know, I have nothing positive whatsoever to say about BP or the oil spill (just search oil spill in the search box to the right).  However, some of the spewing of rumors is ridiculous, baseless, and deeply upsetting to people who aren’t getting balanced coverage, no reference to FOX News intended.  Some are, however, quite fascinating as conspiracy theories.

I’m not a big fan of fear-mongering, but I am a big fan of conspiracy theories.  I love to write them, love to read them, love to watch them in movies.  Maybe that’s because I like the kernel of truth, the plausibility, the drama and excitement of it, and yet it’s just outlandish enough that I can recognize the paranoia and know that it’s not wholly the truth.    In other words, I’m not so focused on the barely disguised hope of conspiracy theories  being true that I see conspiracy in every utterance of life.

Something about the human race seems to crave End of the World catastrophe and apocalypse.  In my non-writing career and in my Southern Baptist the-last-days-are-upon-us childhood, I’ve heard thousands of theories, all focused gleefully on doomsday.  Maybe there’s some fantasy of who might survive such a doomsday–certainly the characters in my books don’t perish and somehow manage to stop it or delay it and save the world.  Maybe it’s our ultimate fantasy to get out of this world alive, even if we’re the ones fleeing the planet on a spaceship, saved by an alien race or whatever the current movie of the week delights in.

And yet, it’s disturbing to watch people focus so much on disaster that they  spin themselves into nothing but disaster.  The Law of Attraction would say they bring it to them…and I’ve seen that more than once–which is what scares me more than anything else.

I work with many different individuals and teams, and one group in particular makes me want to run screaming from the room every time I meet with them.  They’re skilled, competent, nice people who had a few distractions early in their project, resulting in what seemed like a short run of bad luck.  Yes, these things happen. Most professionals push ahead and focus on a positive outcome. Not these good folks.  They got into a downward spiral of “how much worse can it get?” to “we’re cursed” to “nothing ever goes right.”  On that last count, it became a reality.

The group wasn’t focused on conspiracy theories but most of my social time with them was spent listening to BP oil spill comments and watching them spin themselves into tizzies over things none of us can control.  From there, it became a huge what-if list that stressed them out.  These attitudes spilled over into their professional demeanor.  They began cataloging daily earthquakes around the world, not quite understanding that the planet moves within and always has but now we have the technology to record tremors we never knew existed before.  Then they added various catastrophes– tsunamis, hurricanes, airplane crashes.  They had a whole wall of one room dedicated to disaster after disaster after disaster. 

Were they a positive bunch to be around?  No.  Did they have the slightest belief that they would finish their project without a hitch?  No.  In fact, I have never seen a project have as many unforeseen glitches and disasters as theirs.  In spite of their competence, they constantly spun themselves into worry and upset.

I do believe that we fulfill our own prophecies.  If we look for flaws, we will find them.  If we look for disaster, we’ll find that, too. 

In regard to all the reporting on the Gulf oil spill, I guess I’d just like to hear and see the truth, without the spin of fantasy, and keep all my conspiracy theories and wild-eyed reports of apocalypse by non-witnesses on the screen or in books where I like them to be.

One of the hardest things for me to do, up until recently, was to relax and enjoy the moment–something that greatly hindered my happiness quotient.

Sure, I would see all the beauty around me, but instead of enjoying it, I would immediately find something to worry about and skip ahead to what I “needed” to do.  Perhaps I would see an Eastern Bluebird–a rarity–and instead of marvelling at it, my mind would skip back to people who interfered with my mom’s bluebird trail 15 years ago or skip ahead to wondering what might kill off this little bird’s fledglings–snakes, ants, drought, predatory birds,  ignorant kids, you name it. 

Perhaps I’d notice the blue hydrangeas beginning to bloom in my back yard and instead of glorying in their beauty, I’d acknowledge them and then immediately remind myself that I needed to haul some limbs to the curb or burn some trash left over from trimming an oak. 

Instead of enjoying the afterglow in the arms of my very sexy lover, I would soon find my mind wandering to the morning, whether the clock would go off and he’d make it back home in time for work,  whether I’d oversleep, how the next afternoon’s business  meeting would go, and what time he was coming over the next night and if we’d have time to drive out to Seaside together.  Yes, my mind would be too busy plotting every possible fix to any possible problem that might arise. 

Staying “in the moment” was awfully hard.  If I wasn’t flitting back to the past to something that usually wasn’t near as pleasant, then I was trying on different possible futures…none of which tended to be as pleasant.

The biggest difference is that I’ve learned to milk it.  Milk the moment.  Enjoy it.  Glory in it.  Several of my friends refer to it as “basking,” which is a verb I like. 

Instead of noting something sweet and then marching full speed ahead into something not so sweet, I linger on it now, marvel at it. I stay focused on it for as long as I can.

For example, while walking down by the lake at sunset, I spotted a flurry of blue flying from the woods to a bird box someone had put up at a quiet spot on the bank of the lake.  Instead of thinking, “Oh, a pretty bluebird!” and either walking on or diving into a whirlpool of what-if, I took out my camera with the telephoto lens and started taking pictures.  I got this profile shot and that one, one of him with his mate in the box, and couldn’t stop grinning as he seemed to pose for me.  When a car passed us slowly, he flew to a sign that had been put up about 20 feet away.  I followed and had to laugh at the sign he’d chosen:”  FISHING BY CATCH & RELEASE ONLY.   I let all sorts of fun scenarios play out in my head, most of them ending with that tiny bluebird tossing a big fish back into the lake.   A man and his son, who were fishing nearby, chatted with me about bluebirds and photography, and by the time the bird finally flew out of sight, I had spent a good 10 minutes soaking up the beauty of the moment.    I focused on enjoying nothing but that moment and its beauty, and a single moment of beauty turned into 10 minutes of it. 

So now when I see something or hear something or feel something glorious, I don’t rush ahead to my daily life or the future.  The side effect is that my daily life overall is happier, as long as I remember to milk the sweetest moments.

Honestly, the worst of it is trying to figure out how to make both a movie date and a yoga workout in the same evening.  I’m blissfully busy!

My daughters are vacationing with relatives in Canada, and within the first two days, concerned friends and colleagues are already in the empty-nest mindset, worrying about me now and what will happen when Aislinn leaves for college in a year.  I’m shocked by the number of people who suggest I sell my house and buy a smaller one–as if I must justify my space with children rather than houseguests or a live-in lover or…pets?  Really, if I sell my home, I’ll be moving to some exotic place or planning a long-term round-the-world trip, not a scaled-down version of life.

I’ve focused on not living my life through my children or making them the center of my world, especiallty now that they’re older and becoming independent.  I’d love to save them from mistakes, but I fullly recognize that that’s how they learn and they’re not here to be a do-over for the way I’ve lived my life and dreams.  I don’t hound them about what to do with their lives.  It’s their lives–and I’m instead focusing on mine while very much enjoying them. 

So my well-meaning friends amuse me as they fret over me and invite me to more social events than I could fit into the next six months in order to fill up some void they think I must have in my time or heart.  They don’t need to worry– my life is full, busy, and fun.  And I’m thankful to have good friends who would certainly help to fill a gap if there should be one.

“You cannot have a big house and lots of stuff and be spiritual,” the girl tells me.  “You’re either materialistic or you’re spiritual but you can’t be both.”

This is the eye-rolling wisdom of a girl who’s all of 22 and is, for the first time in her life, trying to make ends meet all by herself.  She looks at my big house in a nice neighborhood and immediately jumps to conclusions.  She doesn’t know why I’m in this house or what I had to do to keep it when I divorced.  She’s struggling on minimum wage and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and has no idea that I’ve been where she is now.   I’m not wealthy, but yes, I do like my “stuff.”   All she sees is my “stuff,”  and she is painfully aware that she does not have “stuff,” and that makes me materialistic in her eyes.

She’s one of many spiritual people who cannot reconcile the idea of a spiritual person owning much of anything.  She’s impoverished, both in her bank account and in her mindset.

The fact that I have “stuff” is something I’ve struggled with, too.   I’ve never been one to demand a designer home with pricey furniture but I certainly do have a psychological need to have a home that feels like a sanctuary to me.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a mansion-sized house or a one-bedroom cottage–I LIKE having a space that reflects my personality in all its eclectic facets.  And whatever space I have, I’m going to fill it with “stuff” I like, whether it’s from a thrift store or hand-made or an expensive antique shop.

It’s easy to pass judgment on how people spend THEIR money and insist that WE spend our money on much more important and justified things than they do.  I’ve been told I should, instead of making a nest for myself that feels joyous to me, spend my money on a mission trip to another country or give it charity because that would be a more spiritual thing to do with my money.  Never mind that the people telling me this aren’t exactly practicing what they preach.  It’s a way to feel superior spiritually.

I’ve given a tremendous amount of time to charities in the past and now give more of that time to my own spiritual pursuits while still making time to teach and share freely.  I’ve given a  lot of money and donations to good causes, too.    So why should I feel guilty for spending money to create a wonderful space for me to enjoy my life?  Some people find that kind of security through money in the bank or freedom to travel where they want to go or socializing with friends  or even a relationship.  My psychological security is in the roots I create and the safe haven my “stuff” creates for me.

As for spending money on stuff, I’m contributing in a way that most spiritual people don’t usually think about.  Here’s how: 

Let’s say I want to buy a new sofa to replace the broken one I’ve had for 15 years.  Instead of going to a chain furniture store, I decide I want a hand-crafted piece of furniture that costs less but doesn’t fit into any typical expectation of what my home should look like.   I  AM getting something material, something I love, but I’m also giving money for it as a fair exchange for the time, energy, and love put into that piece of furniture created by someone who is eking out a living.  I am helping them to keep their livelihood afloat in a bad economy, to feed their kids, to put a roof over their heads by supporting their handiwork with an exchange of cash.  I could give the same amount of money to a local charity or a charity far away and part of it would go administrative costs and very little, if any, would support that craftsman.   Since I have no problem giving money to charity, why should I feel bad or guilty for giving money that supports a craftsman in a way we can both feel good about? It’s my way of passing along my prosperity and honoring that connection we all have to each other as well as the  exchange of energy and coin in the transaction between us.

Eventually, in a few months, I’ll have to give serious thought to buying a big-ticket item–a  car–but this time I’ll see it differently.  I’ll understand that my purchase will help the income of the person selling me the car, and that person will be able to buy groceries or pay tuition or maybe even purchase another car from someone else who needs the money to  buy groceries or pay tuition or…..  The money I pay goes back into the economy, like energy spreading out from me to many, many others.

One of my friends worries that her version of God isn’t taking care of me, but my version of God is.

There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t recognize that I am taken care of.  Nowhere is that more obvious than after a near-miss with disaster.  Many times, I’ve followed a path right up to a major life-changing catastrophe–including falling in love with the wrong person or trusting the wrong guy–and I’ve been pulled back from the precipice.

More than once, I have been stopped cold when I was within days or hours of making a decision that would have destroyed my family, my career, my relationship, my health, my reputation, or my life.  It’s been as if an huge, unseen hand has cupped around me, protecting me.  It’s not punitive–I’m not being punished for wrong decisions or living with an open mind or opening my heart.  Instead, I’m given all the freedom I could want and then, when things might turn badly, I am saved from disastrous results.

Sometimes, being saved from unpleasant things is completely joyous, and other times, it’s upsetting if losing what I’d wanted is part of the process of saving me from what would have happened if I’d gotten it.

It helps me to trust a little bit more in the Universe that I’ll be taken care of.  All I have to do is look back on all the times I came so close to getting what I’d thought was a wonderful thing but was no more than a puff of smoke.

 A small, dense object only twelve miles in diameter is responsible for this beautiful X-ray nebula that spans 150 light years.

At the center of this image made by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory is a very young and powerful pulsar, known as PSR B1509-58, or B1509 for short…..

Photo copyright and more info at 

 http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2009/b1509/.

Huh?  What am I working on?

Maybe it’s just a writer thing—because I don’t usually hear it asked of “normal” people within 10 seconds of someone meeting them  or reconnecting with them—but I often run into people who immediately after saying hello launch into questions of what I’m working on.  They don’t mean the multi-million dollar projects I’m working on in my non-writing career or my latest home repair-refurb-redecoration. You writers, artists, and musicians know what I’m talking about.

I don’t get the question from people who are very, very close to me.  They already know what I’m working on.  They hear it all the time because I’m excited about it, Gods help them.  The question is always from acquaintances or friends outside my small inner circle.  They know how much I love writing but don’t keep in touch that often…or just stay out of earshot when I start plotting a novel.

What I’m currently working on, writing-wise, is editing a Lauren Hartford project and several non-fiction ebooks, including 23 Ways I Screwed Up My Life  with the Law of Attraction—and How I Fixed It.  And I’m almost done with some last-minute tweaking of  Waiting on the Thunder.  I’m done, but I’m having a hard time letting that one go.

But I’ve started a new novel, too.  First time in a long time that I’ve started a new project.  I still have three finished books yet to edit since I started my last new novel, and I wrote all three of those while power-walking daily with a digital recorder, busy girl that I am.

It’s hard to explain what this new fiction project is, but it’s a suspense novel with the working title The Hand of God.  It’s not a religious book, though I’ve definitely thrown in some Law of Attraction.   The title refers to a specific image, and that’s the genesis of this new novel.  You want to know how I get my ideas?  Right here. 

Last week, while visiting with family out of state, I drove past an out-of-the-way spot that had a really strong visual allure to me.  An image there stood out, and to me, it looked like a “Hand of God.”   Later on the trip, I took my family out to dinner, to a place I’d never been—a hole in the road that served everything fried, including gator tail.  On the wall behind us was the same symbol I’d seen earlier, several miles away, painted into a mural.  That’s when the story began to form. 

I’m not sure how to explain it yet without giving away the story, but I know who the villains are…and the victims…and the protagonist.  The protagonist is not in any way based on me, but she’s the imagined adult version of a child I observed earlier this year.   The crime is based on something that never happened to me because, wow, am I ever being watched over!  But I came close enough that it got my attention and this novel will put it to bed for me in a therapeutic way.  The 24-year-old protagonist has abandonment issues—both the constant abandonment throughout her childhood and her adult patterns of abandoning others before they can abandon her—and those abandonment issues from her childhood are tied to someone else’s dark secret and even darker revenge.  Yep, my kind of story. 

The best part is that I’m not writing it according to any guidelines or any preferred market.  I’m just lettin’ ‘er rip.  Having a blast with discovering the twisted past she’s repressed and how it endangers her.  I’m not writing it for any particular audience or publisher.  I’m doing it for me.  It puts me into a joyous place, all this creativity, and when I’m done, people who love it will recognize the spark in it and love it, too.  It’s not the path to money or fame or anything but my enjoyment.  Anything more that it turns into is just gravy.

So what are you working on?  And is it for you?