my new journey

I'm heading in a new direction and hopefully it will take me to the destination I desire. In the meantime I am working on a book - a non-fict combination memoir and self help book to keep me busy. my other writing is on hold-ish, except for revisions of already finished stuff.

I've started taking a new herb and it's hard not to get impatient, but I understand it takes a few months to see if anything is happening. I'm also trying hyperthermia treatments as heat is the enemy of what plagues me. I'm beginning to like it.

other notes: we had a spectacular holiday, with parties galore and a lot of visiting with friends. I almost lost myself in the process by not taking time to center and meditate, but I've had time to come around the past couple of days. happy New Yearto everyone! I hope to be more regular now with my postings!

10-31-10
Today I realised I found my answer for my 10-12 posting below. When you have ears to hear and eyes to see... I've never stopped researching and looking for answers for Systemic Lyme, but today I found something I've never seen before, whereas before nothing gave me the answers I sought and all as repetitive. I feel like I can finally breathe! Never give up, never give in!

10-15-10
You know, sometimes the Universe gives us gentle guidance, like a sigh of rightness. Other times we get a slap-in-the-face wake up call, more like ‘truth coming through’- look out or get outta the way! This past week was the second type of week. Very difficult and I am battle weary but I survived. Now I just hope to demonstrate the lessons learned. I must make some adjustments to my well-worn schedule and some different habits. Very hard to do.


10-12-10
I’m feeling discouraged right now. Months of doing this new protocol and still nothing happens. It is hard to just continue on day after day with no results like this. My heart cries and yet I go on because I don’t know what else to do. I figure I’ll write more later…

Drumming for the equinox!

This past weekend we had our drumming group over to our house for the fall equinox/Mabon gathering. I was so amazed! We had *25* people show up to our house – our house in the middle of nowhere on a dirt road that no one usually wants to drive.

The ceremony was really nice, though. I called the directions after our friend smudged and another smoked a peace pipe. We did a little ritual to celebrate the harvest, and our personal harvests, where we sprinkled a cornhusk with a little bit of ground corn flour and put it in the fire while recognizing our blessings. The formality of this simple ritual really spoke to my heart. I guess it spoke to many people as they all commented on it at the end of the evening, saying how wonderful it was. Then we drummed about five rounds, before dismissing the circle and pulling out the telescope to look at the stars.

All in all, it was a perfect evening. Even the weather cooperated. I had a thought at one point during the evening. We often do meditation and I feel very unified with this group. It’s become my church and many ways, my family in others, and I feel like I truly have friends who know me. That was one of the things I was grateful for.

counting calories?

I had the flu last week so I’ve been trying to catch up on life and decided I need to be more regular about this. Except it comes time to write it and I can’t remember all the cool things I thought of to write.

Oh, I remember one. The past few weeks we’ve been doing an experiment that’s actually turned out to be rather fun.

We’ve been calorie counting. I know, I know. It doesn’t sound like fun but it has been. I found out that I wasn’t eating enough and started eating more. DH decided he was going to restrict his calories by 500/day to see if it was really true that a certain number of calories, if below your BMI, makes you lose weight. We’ve had a lot of fun with this.

… and then I came down with the flu. During which, I ran a fever and didn’t eat which is bad when you’re trying to gain weight. But the counting calories has been very useful, because I know how many I need every day to try and gain back the weight I lost. Onward.

I have to say, even when I was really thin I was never this skinny, and it has honestly scared me. For those curious, I am almost 5’9” tall. I was 120, which was thin but not terrible. I am now 106 pounds – WAY too skinny in my opinion. But I am being conscious of what I eat, making sure its quality, and making sure it’s enough. I hope to be back up to 120 plus very soon.

I have to say DH's experiment has worked fabulously so far and I'm enjoying the Eye Candy a lot, now that he's lost his 'inner tube' and is exercising more... :]

True compassion

What an interesting couple of weeks I’ve had. After my friend died, my brother’s children came unexpectedly to stay with us. At a multitude of other things happened as well. I must be doing some sort of adjustment because my energies have been reversed more often than not. This has made things difficult and at times impossible to deal with. But enough about me.

I have been thinking about a question that was asked me recently. Often times when we are ill and we get better we tend to think now our job is to heal others. I used to be that person, and even though I’m still on the healing journey I used to impose my opinions on other people. I collected a wealth of knowledge, thinking that I needed it to help cure people. Now I begin to understand that it’s not tools that I needed all along. It was compassion.

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares. “ ~Henri Nouwen

Now, having been on the other end of things for so long, I’ve learned that what people need is simply love and compassion. They do not need someone to give or sell them a cure, they do not need someone to fix them. We are not the ones to judge another person’s path and find it wanting because they do not fit where we think they ought to be. What if the very challenge they are undertaking is exactly what they need in the eternal scheme of things. What if all they need from you is simply support for the journey they have undertaken? Food for thought.

I'll be back...

I have been grieving. We were expecting our dear friend to come stay with us when she returned from being out of town this month. I wondered why she didn’t call me to confirm things. Another friend called me 2w ago to tell me she died unexpectedly while visiting in Montana. I will be back in a week or so when I have processed more. In Memoriam: Joanne Lynda Deese, Aug 6 1945 to June 6 2010

On kindness and blessings...

I have been much kinder to my self in the past couple of weeks and much kinder to others. I made the decision to cultivate love and nothing more and not to judge other people. If I was brave I would put a rubber band around my wrist and snapped it every time I tend to judge someone, but I’m afraid I would have a permanent red mark on my wrist. :]

So instead, I made a rule that every time I find myself wanting to judge another person instead I have to bless them. I’m blessing many people and so far it feels really good. I’m finding that I have a lot more patience and compassion for others this is extending to the way I view myself. I’m really trying hard not to get frustrated and place expectations on myself, realizing that the expectation of perfection or “normalcy” causes me to compare myself to an ideal that I cannot currently reach.

The other day I was trying to get a shirt on and getting very frustrated because it was taking me longer than I thought it should. When I stepped back and asked myself why the frustration I realized that it was my expectations that were causing the frustration. At least I was getting my shirt on without help. That’s what it comes down to most days, at least lately.

And so I’m learning to be grateful and not compare myself to anyone, least of all myself. A very important lesson, and one that I’m still working on but hope I’m making progress.

our distress

Lately I’ve been learning an important lesson about being present. It is not the events or circumstances in our life that cause us distress. It is our EXPECTATIONS attached to them, whether it is that something is not what it used to be or that something is not what we want now. This has been a profound lesson for me and one that, as a ‘beginner’, is taking a little practice.

I read 2 books last week that have completely changed my perspectives on life. One is called “The Essential Laws of Fearless Living” by Guy Finley. The other was “Of Monkeys and Dragons” by Michelle L. O’Donnell. All I can say is Wow. And many thanks to my friend Beth Daniel for recommending them to me. I still have a ways to go but at least I feel some hope and empowerment towards my goal.

Vivid dreams

My dreams have been very vivid lately. In all of them I have been encouraged by the fact that I’m healthy and walking. To me, this symbolizes a change in my psyche, hopefully on a very deep level at which I will begin to see the manifestation of my desire. Only time will tell. But this comes on the tail end of a realization last week that I’ve been looking for something externally that I really need to find within.

It’s been a pretty painful realization, humiliating, mortifying, and one that, if I chose to, would be very harshly judged. In fact, I’ve tried not to judge myself and had a very difficult week battling it out with the parts of me that feel some recrimination is necessary. That, on top of the other events from last week concerning my cats, has made it a very difficult time. But, I trudge on.

Interestingly, my dreams are often imaginative and revealing. The other day I had a dream in which I answered the door (which is a sunken entryway that I cannot access from wheelchair) and met a construction worker. He told me about a job he was doing nearby and I ended up bartering with him to get Ed some work. Later that morning, a lady called with a job for Ed to bid on. I felt the dream was some sort of premonition, but I also thought it was funny.

That same night I also had a dream about my kids swimming in a hotel pool and claiming that people had been urinating in it. Go figure. I haven’t tried to interpret that one yet. What are your dreams saying to you?

changes...

***please note my older posts were accidently deleted. I cannot figure out how to reinstate them... so Ce' La Vie! I am not worried about starting over, are you?

I have this WONDERFUL new...

The other night a woman that I know minimally came up to me to chat after our drumming circle. She is really a genuine, sweet person, and she wanted to tell me about this new device that might help me, somehow. *sigh* I think she was selling them. It sounded like an MLM deal, to be honest.

But I guess the worst part was realizing once again the lesson that the Universe keeps illustrating over and over to me, whether just as a reminder, or for humor’s sake or some other hidden reason.

The lesson is this: One can never walk in another person’s shoes. Even if two people have similar experiences or are going through the same thing, the equation that got them there to the same answer or experience will be made up of different components.

No two realities are the same, plain and simple. So it stands to reason that what works for one person in a situation, or say with the dis-ease, will not work for someone else in the same situation.

I can’t count the number of times people have come up to me suggesting solutions or aids or products or [fill in the blank]. All because I happen to be in a wheelchair which means I have an obvious problem that they feel needs fixing. I’ve learned to smile and say thank you. And throw away the paraphernalia later. It’s easier than explaining or arguing the point.

The fact of the matter is I’m not looking for a miracle cure. I know what’s wrong with me and although I don’t know how long it will take, I know it’s not permanent. Now, if I could get the ‘easy target’ stamp off my forehead that came along with the wheelchair…