Moving Through a Writer's Block

   I am working to break a bad habit. I have had myself convinced that waking up in the morning and checking my email and Facebook accounts is a good thing. The check-in keeps me connected, right? Reading the astrological and numerological projections for the day offer me a perspective of what will be what, right?

   Finding out what’s happening in the world at large and with my friends, who are still included in my news feed, is good, right? Clicking through the various quotes, news articles, animal pictures, etc. opens my mind, right? At least that’s what I’ve been telling myself for almost a year now.

   What I am noticing though is that the quotes and stories are repeating themselves. More and more bits of news of friends and family are becoming less and less. Instead I am seeing advertisements for bags and tunics, diets, courses, exercises. Thank goodness I am no longer getting all the anti-aging cream ads. I fell for that once and was $400 in debt before the end of the month because there was no fine print that told me to withdraw from the weekly automatic ordering and payment options (after the first free sample).

   I have learned many lessons on Facebook. If it’s advertised for free, it probably isn’t. If it said only one left, it is only one of many.

   An increasing annoyance is the assumption that I want to join someone’s group. I find myself signed up and then I do not know how to get off the frequent postings of those who are members. One woman’s group had over 1500 members. They all seemed to have nothing better to do than chat all day. I got every one of them until I begged out of that endless conversation.

   The reason I jumped on to the FB bandwagon was to keep up with family. In recent months they have not been posting at all. Perhaps they changed to Twitter or Instagram. This grandmother has decided to let it go. If they want to communicate with me, we can text, email, or, prepare for a heretical thought, talk on the phone.

   Over this last month, I have fallen into the bad habit of lying in bed first thing in the morning and checking messages and posts because of, well, many reasons. In the first place, it’s cold before the furnace heats the house. But that's only one of them.  I also believe I was trying to ignore the empty feeling of being disconnected from individuals I hold dear. I wanted to stave off the hunger for connection to human contact without leaving home. I did not realize I was stuffing my mind with other’s thoughts rather than mining the fields of my own memories and creativity.

   In effect, I was negating my personal observations, perceptions, and creativity. I was also losing precious time by not living in my moment.

   The last two books of my series are in disarray and unfinished while I have paid sole attention to what other people were and are creating.

   A quote this morning from Suzanne Wagner’s “Daily Ideas and Aspirations” hit me between the eyes: “You are special because you have been given the greatest gift of life. And that gift requires you to give back.”

Giving Thanks

Instead of orange and brown leaves, drops of rain clothe the tangled branches on the plum tree outside my front door. Blessed moisture. Long awaited liquid. During the night I heard the metered drip from a broken seam in the roof gutter near my bedroom window call cadence while the dark hours passed in review. Once I awoke to the mild roar of a deluge pounding on my roof. I gave thanks for that roof and its protection.

Now, looking at this natural scene, I see there are measured spaces between the drops on the branches. The only deviation comes where a twig has broken off. These pearls of water cling there, until a wind or a bird bumps the tree and scatters water everywhere.

I am thinking about the value of repetition, of routines too. I have not been one who liked schedules or measured configurations as I am seeing. I never wanted to color inside the lines. I wanted to draw or paint my own picture.

In fact, I’ve been known as a rebel from an early age, looking for different ways to accomplish the same task. I have mixed different combinations of ingredients whether it be for casseroles, facial products, color coordination. I have rarely followed the same recipe twice.

Yet as I have aged, I have begun to understand there is a value to routine, doing the same thing in the same way every time. I learned early in my nurse’s training that I couldn’t ad lib a catheterization. Making a bed was best done a certain way with the least amount of effort especially with a patient in the middle of soiled linen. Preparation for a bedside procedure in 1965 demanded organization because the handy tools did not come packaged in a plastic container. I had to gather each item from different sterilized pots and bring them safely to the patient’s room. If a doctor found that I had forgotten something, his scowl chased me back through the cubicle ward and then the public ward to the nurses’ station. We weren’t allowed to run either.

SO, with 50 years of nursing under my belt, thirty-three years of participating in Native American prayer ceremonies, and 34 years as a Reiki Master/practitioner, I am definitely seeing the value of established patterns and routines.

In churches and synagogues, with yoga, qigong, Tai Chi, chanting etc., a certain set of movements, prayers, sounds … brings us all an opportunity to join our voice, our energies, our focus and intent towards the same ends.

We bond in a way with consciousness and yet also within a magical form of non-consciousness, even if we are miles away from each other, even when doing the same thing at different times.

Today is Thanksgiving. We may not all be doing the same thing, eating the same recipes but there are so many of us who are giving thanks: for our homes or any form of weather protection, our survival if we have lost everything, our family, warm coats, and, well, just all of those things which bring us whatever comfort we can feel. Gratitude for what is right around us is the best thing we can do to gird our loins, so to speak, for whatever is coming next. Giving thanks just takes a deep breath and an awareness of where and who we are. I have a long list tonight.

May the blessings we can count continue. May the wounds and sorrows, joys and possibilities be embraced. May we know we are each unique and special. May we join voices to sing or hum or speak our gratitude for All That Is, All That Has Been, and All That Can Be.

May we all be kind to one another and to ourselves and to the wondrous elements of our world: water, earth, air and fire. May these life-affirming essentials be allowed to come into Balance.

Changing the Image

It never occurred to me in the now eight years since my late husband died that I wouldn’t find a comparable kind of companionship with another man.

I admit, in the beginning, when I was 65 and still had a bit of a figure, a whole lot of energy (whenever I wasn’t sobbing in bed), and less wrinkles, that my mind was set on replicating my marriage. I think I wanted someone to come out of the woods, maybe even on a white charging horse and take up the space that was so gapingly open in my life and heart.

Was it because after 33 years, I had become comfortable with the routine? Was it that we had worked through so many levels of misunderstandings and miscommunications that I thought The Universe owed me a little more time in the zone of compatibility with another human being?

Losing Yuwach in 2010 was also when I felt I was in the prime of my sexuality. Physical contact had become a soothing pattern of touches; kisses were shared as he went out the door to get the mail and when he returned. I took the time to seek him out before I went to the store to tell him where I was going and catch a smooch. He met me at the door when I came back with my arms full.

I didn’t think. I knew I had lost him, but I didn’t think I might have lost the possibility of never being able to recreate that pattern.

There has been a short-term relationship in the meantime. I look back and realize, I didn’t accept this new man as just that. I attempted to mold him into the form with which I was comfortable. He protested but I was blind, and my attitude blindsided me. Eventually, we had to break apart. Only then did I realize what I had done. Fortunately, we have been able to talk and laugh at the experience and be grateful for what we learned. We have worked at our friendship, but we admit we don’t want to step again into partnership.

For all these years alone, it has been as if I had a hologram attached to my being that was designed to retain a mandated shape of a partner which could be filled by the vapors of any other man’s energy. This kind of expectation isn’t fair, and now I know it.

I’ve had to look at myself as one unit and one unit alone. I’ve had to drop all my assumptions of what another partner might look like, be like, and do.

But first, I’ve had to be with myself.

When the substitute relationship ended, I now know I suffered an even more painful period of grief. I was profoundly placed in the cauldron of fire to finally rearrange my atoms into being a single individual. No props. No pretending. No fantasies of rescue. Ridiculously plain and simple self-acceptance and self-love.

Now I look out my window into life as a 73-year-old and realize, “This just might be it.” Living on my own might be what is here and on the horizon.

Do I mind? You bet I do.

However, I am beginning to believe I can be authentically me and draw friendships, events, and activities of all kinds to me which will help me experience not just fulfillment but a full-feeling too.