Inside Betty's Head

Just a Few Thoughts

2012-01-27T16:06:00.002-05:00

It is difficult to maintain equilibrium when life whirls around you with such change. 90% good things. Some loss. Some pain. But even the pain, is pain of growth, of moving forward. It's hard to know sometimes, when to let go; hard to know if you are being selfish by holding on; hard to know if you are impeding your own ability to heal, much less someone else's.

I play it by ear, mostly.

I trust my heart to guide me, to show me the path that is true to who I am and who I want to be. I step closely, I pull away. I let a bit of time pass and I step closely again, just to see if it still hurts or if it still pleasures, and I step away again. It's a dance, this process of growing.

I keep dancing. Joyfully.

I keep loving. Joyfully.

I keep moving forward. Joyfully.

I keep being Betty.

2012-01-27T11:33:00.001-05:00

Three stories, count them, THREE stories, just waiting to be told.

2012-01-27T11:28:00.000-05:00

Fading, but still lovely, even after two weeks.

2012-01-27T11:18:00.001-05:00

Betty's thought for the day: Only offer gifts of joy. Take not responsibility for their acceptance, for the choice of another's joy is not yours to assume. This is one of life's greatest beauties, and also greatest frustrations.

2012-01-26T10:13:00.001-05:00

Betty's thought for the day: Open your heart and you never know what other openings will be granted to you.

2012-01-25T09:56:00.000-05:00

Betty's thought for the day: Buckle your own seatbelt before you worry about anyone else's. Stop worrying; the Universe is unfolding as it should. Love yourself; first, foremost, forever.

Acceptance

2012-01-24T12:28:00.003-05:00

It's afternoon already, three hours after I opened my eyes from my visit with the universe. Phone calls, and hunger, and text messages and emails and Academy Award nominations got in the way of doing what I had set an intention to do, which was to write about my morning meditation. Much of what I saw is lost, now, but I do remember this: I remember the peacefulness with which I opened my eyes twenty minutes after I closed them. I remember the calm in my heart, the joy of being, the tremendous sense that all was right in my world.

For the first time, in my meditation, I allowed myself to be taken somewhere else. I asked about my guides, which I have never even inquired about although Psychic Gal assures me that I have them and they are with me all the time. Someone I couldn't see took me flying above a dense green forest and over a winding river. We were not gone long, just long enough for me to get a taste of what she was talking about. I may ask again.

I had sexual thoughts, as I am wont to do when I get a text from a certain someone, inquiring into the possibility of sharing a meal together. At first, I chided myself. Tsk, tsk, Ms. Betty. Then I thought, why not. Why not enjoy those beautiful thoughts, and the beautiful man that inspires them. So I did, with my eyes closed and a smile on my face. Just thoughts, mind you, but I enjoyed them.

Take those thoughts, add the spicy blue dot that I seek every morning that makes my body tingle, and as you can imagine, meditation in the morning reminds me how very sensual my psyche is. I accept that about myself. I more than accept, I embrace and applaud that part of me.

My method of meditation is to invite silence, to listen to my breathing, to pay extra attention to my environment, to center myself inside. Thoughts come and I let them go. I don't try to push them away, nor pull them in. I let them flow. I enjoy them. And then I direct my attention back to my breathing, to the pulsing blue dot, to the sensations of all of my other senses.

Even the sexual thoughts are calming and peaceful.

I'm not so hormonal today.

I accept that part of my life, too.

I accept it, I love it, I embrace it, I let it go.

Like so many people in my life.

2012-01-24T11:10:00.001-05:00

Betty's non philosophical thought for the day: The Oscar nominations are out, and avid movie goer that I am, I have only five movies to see and I will have seen every movie nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor and Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Actress, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. I ♥ the Academy Awards!

Meditating

2012-01-23T08:51:00.002-05:00

In addition to the reading, and the meditating, last night I posted the thoughts that came to me while I was meditating. I hope to do that every day. I will still post stories, and of course, my thoughts for the day. Perhaps this site will have even more frequent postings. I hope so. I've missed the daily capturing of my thoughts on the keyboard.

Today, I closed my eyes and listened to the silence. I searched for the little blue dot and when I found it, felt a thrill close to sexual excitement. It lasts only a moment, but as I meditated, the little blue dot came and went, and filled my body with excitement and delight each time.

My house was completely silent, or so I thought. I paid attention to my breathing, noticing the song bird entertaining in my back yard. I heard the ticking of the clock mounted high on the wall above my sink. My cat yawned next to me and I heard the tiny click of sound she made. The bird continued to sing, the clock continued to tock and I sank into my thoughts. I took myself inside, inside the words of the books I've been reading, into the reality of who I am and where I am in this life I'm living. I was overcome with a beautiful blanket of appreciation and gratitude. I reflected on the previous evening, observing my son with his new girlfriend, who I enjoy very much. She's lively and vivacious and brings out the liveliness of my son. I thanked Gardening Gal for encouraging me to try steel cut oats, seasoned with blueberries, almonds and maple syrup, which I have been enjoying for the past week. I prepared some for my son's breakfast this morning, paying that goodness forward. I reflected with wonder at the activities of my social life, noting that both of the men that had shown such serious interest in my company had bowed out without ever experiencing any of my physical delights beyond a simple taste of my lips. I chuckled to myself, silently, in my meditation, because I know, I KNOW that such omission is 100% totally their loss.

For the first time in my life, the very first time, I don't care if I find a partner. I have 100% faith that the universe is unfolding as she should and if I am meant to live as I am now, in the beauty, joy and comfort of my non romantic companions, then so be it. I am happy. I am joyful. I have more than I could have ever imagined for myself, even without a romantic partner.

I listened to another bird add to the other's soliloquy, just as the refrigerator kicked in, cuing the furnace to add to the duet. I could no longer hear the tock of the clock, nor the birds singing outside. I could hear only my thoughts. I returned to the blue dot, which grew in intensity and power and felt again the tingle of recognition. There you are, you beautiful Betty, you.

2012-01-23T08:22:00.001-05:00

Betty's thought for the day: Joy can be found in the hum of the furnace, the trill of the robin on a warm, springlike day in January, in the realization and acceptance that the Universe is unfolding as it should, in the falling in love with one's own beautiful self.

Pay It Forward

2012-01-22T22:24:00.004-05:00

For the past several weeks I have included in my morning ritual, the reading of three passages from Melodie Beattie's book, Journey to the Heart, Daily Meditations on the Path to Freeing Your Soul as well as meditation for as long as I can until my mind wanders too far away to focus back. Recently, I added reading a chapter from the book Zen and the Art of Happiness. This morning, I did all three activities, and as I meditated, tears streamed down my face.

I felt so wonderful from the meditation. I'd read in the Zen book that the Universe functions on very specific laws, one of which is the notion that to every action, there is an equal reaction. This doesn't just pertain to physical laws, but also emotional energy as well. I sat there meditating and it occurred to me that the love I have felt over the past couple of years was not unrequited love at all. It wasn't un-anything. Perhaps it wasn't deflected directly back to me, but the recipients of those feelings passed them on to others, paid the love forward, if you will, or perhaps, internalized those love feelings I gave to them to help themselves love themselves. It wasn't wasted energy, it couldn't be because energy is never wasted, cannot be destroyed; another law of the Universe that I had not considered in an emotional context.

I decided this morning to stop fussing about whether or not love is returned to me. I want to simply love. I want to put out into the Universe as much love as I possibly can. I want to be a fountain of it, and let whomever needs it draw from it as they need. I have an abundant supply. It is reassuring to think that the love I give is not wasted. Perhaps ERG passed it on to his daughter or one of his sons. Perhaps FG passed it on to his girlfriend. Perhaps they will pass it on in the future to a new romantic interest. It matters not to me. What matters is that I loved.

I loved.

And I will love again.

2012-01-21T14:31:00.001-05:00

They were beautiful the day he brought them.

They are still lovely a week later.

2012-01-21T13:04:00.001-05:00

As a self proclaimed wordsmith, I just had to post these....

Mensa Invitational

*The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again invited readers to
take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or
changing one letter, and supply a new definition.*

*Here are the winners:*

1.* **Cashtration* (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the
subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.

3.* **Intaxicaton* : Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until
you realize it was your money to start with.

4.* **Reintarnation* : Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

5.* **Bozone* ( n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops
bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows
little sign of breaking down in the near future.

7.* **Giraffiti* : Vandalism spray-painted very, very high

8.* **Sarchasm* : The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the
person who doesn't get it.

9.* **Inoculatte* : To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

10.* **Osteopornosis* : A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

11.* **Karmageddon* : It's like, when everybody is sending off all these
really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like,
a serious bummer.

12.* **Decafalon* (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day
consuming only things that are good for you.

13.* **Glibido* : All talk and no action.

14.* **Dopeler Effect*: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when
they come at you rapidly.

15.* **Arachnoleptic Fit* (n.): The frantic dance performed just after
you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

16.* **Beelzebug* (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into
your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

17.* **Caterpallor* ( n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in
the fruit you're eating.

*The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its
yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for
common words.

And the winners are:
*
1.* **Coffee*, n.. The person upon whom one coughs.

2.* **Flabbergasted*, adj. Appalled by discovering how much weight one has
gained.

3..* **Abdicate*, v. To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4* **esplanade*, v. To attempt an explanation while drunk.

5.* **Willy-nilly*, adj. Impotent.

6..* **Negligent*, adj. Absentmindedly answering the door when wearing
only a nightgown.

7.* **Lymph*, v.. To walk with a lisp.

8.* **Gargoyle*, n. Olive-flavored mouthwash.

9.* **Flatulence*, n. Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has
been run over by a steamroller.

10.* **Balderdash*, n. A rapidly receding hairline.

11.* **Testicle*, n. A humorous question on an exam.

12.* **Rectitude*, n. The formal, dignified bearing adopted by
proctologists.

13.* **Pokemon*, n. A Rastafarian proctologist.

14.* **Oyster*, n. A person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.

15.* **Frisbeetarianism*, n. The belief that, after death, the soul flies
up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

16.* **Circumvent*, n. An opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by
Jewish men.

2012-01-21T13:02:00.000-05:00

As it turns out, something I keep having to learn over and over again...

2012-01-21T13:01:00.000-05:00

Betty's thought for the day: The ice is as beautiful as it is treacherous...as are so many things of beauty in life.

Reading

2012-01-18T13:00:00.005-05:00

I'm going to try to keep track of the books I've read in 2012. I don't know why, perhaps just to reassure myself that I'm keeping my mind active during this period of self imposed exile from anything resembling work. I consider reading to be a form of training for my writing, so as long as I'm either reading or writing, I'm not goofing off.

I finished The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein on New Year's Day. I loved that book, sobbed at the beautiful, beautiful ending. It was written from the point of view of a devoted dog whose master was an amateur race car driver. It was a book on spirituality, silly as that sounds, written by a dog. The author combined the spirituality of unconditional love imbued by a dog with the spiritual aspects of driving a race car. One of his main points is that the car follows where the eyes lead. In other words, set your sights and your future will follow.

I've thought a lot about that over the past few weeks since I finished the book. I never envisioned anything other than letting go of Easy Rider Guy. I'm not blaming myself (although I accept responsibility) but it is hard not to wonder what would have happened if I had been capable of envisioning a different outcome. Lesson learned.

Next, I read three Janet Evanovich books, Fingerlickin' Fifteen, Sizzling Sixteen and Smokin' Seventeen. Brain candy, but fun. I'm looking forward to Explosive Eighteen, but I'll wait until it's out in paperback.

Instead, I am currently reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I have Meditations In An Emergency in the queue. Both books were featured in the first season of Mad Men, a show I loved, loved, loved and may have to watch again in preparation of the new season beginning in two months.

On my nightstand, before I go to bed, I've been reading Zen and the Art of Happiness by Chris Prentiss. The man says, over and over again: "Every event that befalls me is absolutely the best possible event that could occur." It takes some getting used to, but outside of my nephew dying, I can see how this could be true. He goes on to say that this outlook basically makes even the worst happenings full of hope.

Each morning, I read the daily meditation from Melody Beattie's book, Journey to the Heart, Daily Meditations on the Path to Freeing Your Soul. Actually, I read the previous day, the current day and the next day, so that I eventually read each passage three times.

I am working hard on figuring out how to keep this peacefulness in my heart that I found on November 4th. There are certainly times when it is more work at staying there than others, times when I'd like to drown myself in a bowl of ice cream or a bag of chips. I keep plugging along, keep getting myself to the gym every day, keep looking at myself in the mirror and seeing my own beauty, as well as the beauty outside my window.

I am happy. I am joyously grieving that letting go of ERG was "absolutely the best possible event that could occur" if that makes any sense at all. I'm trusting that the Universe knows what she is doing.

So, final tally to date: four books finished, three in the works as of January 18, 2012.

2012-01-18T09:15:00.000-05:00

Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes, it hurts instead. -Adele

2012-01-18T09:10:00.001-05:00

Betty's thought for the day: Don't spend one more moment feeling sorry for yourself. There will always be people to envy, people for whom you feel compassion. Instead, see the beauty that surrounds you and find the well of gratitude that resides in your heart.

Update

2012-01-17T12:51:00.002-05:00

I haven't posted about anything going on in my life for a couple weeks. I'm not sure why. Do my thoughts for the day count? Perhaps it was because I had two hard tasks to do and I didn't want to do them, and I put them off and couldn't really write until those two tasks were taken care of.

I'm moving forward.

I'm taking care of Betty.

I'm back on Match.com...and OKCupid.

I'm grieving the losses resulting from the two hard tasks, but I'm grieving joyfully. I would have never thought that was possible, but I am grieving joyfully. Both tasks involved letting go of people and in the letting go, I knew I was moving myself forward, but I was also helping them move forward as well. And in neither case did I entirely let go. In both cases, my love for each of them just grew stronger. What happens next is up to the Universe. We will all be stronger for it.

Speaking of strength, can I talk about the incredible strength it took for me to let go? How deeply I struggled with making the forward movement? How proud I am of myself for finding that strength, for following through, for taking care of Betty?

I know that the Universe has many surprises in store for me. I know that I have adventures ahead. I know that I will be better than fine, that I will grow and benefit from each of these experiences, as will those that I love.

I'm dating again.

I'm not enjoying it as much as I have in the past, perhaps because I am older, more cynical, more picky.

Perhaps it is because I have loved a very fine man, and he will be a hard act to follow. I've decided to give it my best shot, though. I've decided to let the swains wine and dine me, charm and compliment me. I've decided to let these men buzzing on my phone "Bettify" me. I've coined this word to describe how I treat a love interest...how I try so very hard to please the object of my desire, how I cook and dress and buy little gifts designed to please. I'm ready to be the one being pleased.

I think it's my turn.

Of course, how many men are there out there who really know how to do that?

I intend to find out.

2012-01-17T10:52:00.000-05:00

I loved this!

2012-01-17T10:06:00.000-05:00

Betty's thought for the day: Rainstorms are necessary for growth of the heart every bit as much as for flowers.

2012-01-16T22:01:00.002-05:00

I miss him.

He will be a tough act to follow.

2012-01-15T10:34:00.001-05:00

Betty's thought for the day: The twists and turns of our life's trajectory cannot be anticipated any more than can the temperature of tomorrow a year from today. So, take each moment, for it is only in each moment that we have the ability to choose wisely.

2012-01-13T19:29:00.001-05:00

Betty's thought for the day: There is no such thing as having loved and lost, for truly loving someone is an accomplishment worthy of congratulations, regardless of what comes next.

2012-01-12T11:07:00.001-05:00

Betty's thought for the day: Imagine the most magnificent day; scents, sounds, textures and tastes; laughter, loving and letting go. And then make it happen.

2012-01-11T14:10:00.000-05:00

Anyone who has been in a bad marriage knows that its defining characteristic is the unspeakable loneliness in which one feels shrouded, a sense of isolation amplified by not being alone. -By DOMINIQUE BROWNING
Published: January 5, 2012 NYT

I've never been in a bad marriage, but this rings true, nonetheless.

2012-01-11T10:25:00.000-05:00

Betty's thought for the day: Does the day ever worry that it will rain forever when the drops fall for hours on end? Of course not. The day knows without fail or doubt that the sunshine will return. There is a place and a need for both in the world.

2012-01-10T08:49:00.000-05:00

Betty's thought for the day: It is time to sweep the dry, withered leaves from my patio for their usefulness as collectors of sunlight for the trees has passed. This does not mean they are no longer useful, only that they now have a different use. Sometimes relationships are like that, too...not meant to gather sunlight now, but still providing nourishment as they fade to dust.

2012-01-09T09:48:00.001-05:00

Betty's thought for the day: Letting go and moving on are joined at the hip.

2012-01-08T12:02:00.000-05:00

Betty's thought for the day: Grasp joy where ever you can find her.

2012-01-07T15:31:00.002-05:00

Betty's thought for the day: Trust that the universe is not leading you astray, that what lies in store for you will be filled with bountiful lessons. Sharpen your pencil, open your mind, pay attention to the page and remember what you've learned before.

2012-01-06T12:23:00.001-05:00

Betty's thought for the day: Sometimes, I wish for a crystal ball, wish I had knowledge of what comes next. But, if I had said ball, I would not learn the lesson that what comes next must teach, and without the lesson, I would not grow. I'd rather grow.

2012-01-05T08:57:00.000-05:00

Betty's thought for the day: Seek to fill your heart not with memories of what was but with the visage of what is in front of you now. Pay attention. Life isn't waiting. It's here. Now. All around you.

Therapeutic

2012-01-04T11:40:00.003-05:00

I've been seeing a therapist for the past couple of months. I saw her once a week for the first six weeks, then once every two weeks. I saw her last night, and I'll see her next in a month. Who knows after that.

Every time I see her, she gives me homework, and every week, I faithfully sit here at the computer and tip tap away, emailing her the results the day before my appointment. This time, I didn't do my homework until two hours before my scheduled time with her.

Her homework was hard.

It's done now. It was painful, but necessary work to propel me forward.

She gave me another assignment to work on over the next four weeks before I see her again. I am supposed to come up with a list of 20 things I need in a relationship. And, if the guy I'm seeing is not meeting at least 10 items on that list, I next him. Conversely, if the guy is meeting 10 or more and I feel my flight reflex activated, I have to immediately go back to see her. The converse of my pattern is just as detrimental as loving someone who doesn't love me back.

I've joined Match.com and OKCupid. Again. I have a date on Saturday with a man who is very promising on paper. We laughed together on the phone for 45 minutes on Monday, and our first date will be on a Saturday.

Saturdays are on my list of things I need in a relationship.

Any other suggestions?

2012-01-04T09:07:00.000-05:00

Betty's thought for the day: The opposite of love is fear. Stop fearing. Start loving.

Resolved

2012-01-02T14:58:00.002-05:00

Here are a few questions to resolve as you move towards your 2012 goals.
1-Who or what have I been tolerating that I must stop?
2-Who or what have I been avoiding that I must face?
3-Who or what have I been blaming that I must release or stop?
4-What blame, shame or guilt must I release now to get on with my life and goals?
5- And finally... what am I committed to in my life and from myself this year?
Answer these questions, pay attention to the answers, then take appropriate actions immediately. Delaying action is a stall tactic you must override and overcome. You can do it. I have total faith in you and your abilities.
By John Assaraf

In addition to the above, I am making this resolution: I resolve to not let the actions or words of others determine whether I have a good day or a bad day. I will keep that responsibility for my own actions and words.

I posted this last January 1st: May 2011 be the year that you experience the best part of yourself. May you love more freely, give as wholly to yourself as you do to others, find beauty and joy in the moments. May 2011 be the year that you find peace.

I look back at 2011 and peace is what I think of. Peace in my heart. Acceptance. Joy. Love. Gratitude.

I enjoyed so many, many moments with ERG.

I started doing Hospice work.

I sold my accounting practice and since then, have been exploring Betty, and liking what I am finding.

I rekindled my friendship with Rexford.

I found peace. Somewhere in the midst of the angsting of 2010, and in the growth of 2011, something stuck. Something took hold and sank roots inside my psyche and upshot green and growth within my heart.

I feel more alive than I've ever been. More loving. More beautiful inside and out.

I look forward to 2012 with grace, excitement, and delight. Bring it on. I'm ready.

Oh, and I cut my hair.

Dramatically.

In Chicago.

The most expensive haircut I've ever had.

I like it.

Mostly.

30 Things I Did to Keep the Holiday Spirit This Year

2011-12-27T15:20:00.003-05:00

1. Decorated my house with pine boughs and holly with big red bows.
2. Bought a string of LED lights to put outside. I'm going to add to it each year.
3. Lit candles many many times so my house always smelled lovely.
4. Used the Christmas towels and Christmas cups all season long.
5. Put a $20 bill into every Salvation Army bucket I saw...every panhandler, too.
6. Boiled pot pourrie on the stove whenever I was cooking.
7. Listened to music (not always Christmas) whenever I was cooking or doing housework.
8. Read something meaningful and meditated every morning.
9. Baked 17 different kinds of cookies and had a cookie baking party with my BFFs.
10. Did my calendar, which I've wanted to do for 5 years.
11. Sent a package to my sister in law, who has sent my boys a package every year, for Christmas, Easter, Valentine's Day, birthday month and Halloween since they were born. This is the first year I actually got around to sending one back to her.
12. Had dinners, lunches, coffee, parties with 24 friends, with whom I exchanged gifts.
13. Sang Christmas carols at a party on Christmas Day.
14. Watched Christmas movies while I wrapped presents.
15. Went Christmas shopping with my sons and my friends and ENJOYED the crowds.
16. Stayed happy and at peace with myself.
17. Bought myself something I really wanted that I ordinarily would never buy for myself.
18. Bought thoughtful gifts for people I loved.
19. Decorated my mother's room in the nursing home.
20. Bought a gift for my mother's roommate, even though they don't like each other much.
21. Kept my Christmas lights on all the time.
22. Put up natural wreaths on the front and back door.
23. Exercised almost every day.
24. Ate lots of cookies.
25. Let go of trying to control other's decisions....chose to not take those decisions personally.
26. Made my own plans.
27. Went out to a tree farm for my tree the Saturday after Thanksgiving so I started the holiday season earlier than usual.
28. Took all three sons to see the Muppet Movie. They all LOVED it.
29. Texted my favorite people Christmas morning.
30. Stayed calm in my heart.

The Gift of Giving

2011-12-26T11:10:00.002-05:00

Everyone slept in on Christmas Day, myself included. I woke with a rainbow above my bed around 8:30 am and laid there luxuriating in the silence. I picked up my phone and texted a holiday greeting to twelve of my closest family and friends and then spent the next hour still snuggled under the covers, answering their replies.

What a beautiful way to start the day and it just got better from there.

At the Waite estate, we like to make Christmas last all day long. The boys and I opened a few gifts around 11:00, then some more around 5:00, then opened stockings at 8:00. We had filet mignon around the dining room table on the good china. We toasted each other and appreciated the love that flowed more freely than the wine.

I spent a little time analyzing what made Christmas so wonderful this year. I think it has something to do with the peace and calm I've finally found in my heart...perhaps finally falling in love with myself has helped. I actually took some effort to decorate this year...nothing fancy....just some left over pine and holly boughs attached to my window tops with bright red bows, but the effect was lovely. I left everything artificial in the attic and used only the real thing.

Perhaps it is because this year, my boys are older and as I sat here I realized that I did not purchase even one video game, or any other sort of electronic entertainment device. Kevin got a chess set and a new drum. Greg got a new suit and all the trimmings. Scott got the makings of a new apartment. I got a coffee maker, a new mixer, a butter dish and a lovely green sweater.

Perhaps it is because this year, I did my shopping and wrapping at a leisurely pace, no rush to the finish, no stress. I did all of the holiday things I love so much, stuffing $20 bills into each Salvation Army bucket I came across, listening to Christmas music on the radio. The only thing I didn't do was sing Christmas carols, but at the party I went to last night, that got taken care of, too.

Perhaps this year was so incredibly good because of all the giving...both to me and from me. I gave away 24 Betty calendars with pictures from my garden to people outside of my family, and 20 tins of homemade cookies. I donated blood on Christmas Eve. I fed 11 people around my table on Christmas Day.

There is something to be said for the gift of giving.

Elusive

2011-12-24T10:56:00.003-05:00

The sun is shining on the crusty leaves that still adorn my patio. Gifts are wrapped for hopeful sons, although no babies abound in my household anymore. This has been the best holiday season ever! Thank you to all who have enriched my life so beautifully. May the holidays bring you closer to knowing who you really are.

I look back at this season, trying to figure out why this year has been so incredibly JOYFUL. I have always experienced the holidays with a mixture of merry and melancholy, but this year...this year the melancholy has left the manger scene. It's not that I have a new love in my life, or that an old one has come to his senses. It's not that I have a newfound financial fountain. It's not that any of my children have reached new milestones.

Somewhere in the midst of 2011, I fell in love with myself. I remember waking up happy on November 4th, but that was simply the culmination of a year of hard work and self examination. Of course, selling the accounting firm gave me peace, and that oh so elusive luxury of time...time for self reflection and self care. I've taken good care of myself this year. I've learned how to enjoy being with just me. This is not to say that last night, as all three of my sons fled the family home, leaving me to wrap presents by myself, that I didn't feel a niggle of worry that the melancholy would come to visit. I thought about being sad. But, I decided not to be. And I wasn't.

I was joyful.

I watched a silly Christmas movie based on a Truman Capote novel, and I watched a few episodes of Roseanne on Netflix, and I had a cup of hot chocolate with just a little Baileys, and some almonds at midnight because I was STARVING, but mostly, I wrapped presents for my three beautiful boys, for their father, who will join us this year for the first time in 8 years, for my mother. I even wrapped the silly gifts I will use to stuff their stockings, hung now by the chimney with care.

I didn't wrap my own gifts. I bought myself a few. I'll tell you about them tomorrow. I will ask one of the boys to do that honor sometime today.

Today, I make pies. Gardening Gal and her family are coming over tonight for coffee and dessert after we view the beauty of the lights of Sharon Woods. Today, I enjoy.

Tomorrow, I enjoy.

And the next day.

And later, I go off for a big adventure for the New Year, leaving my sons and my cares behind.

More on that later.

In the meantime, I hope each of you finds something beautiful in the next few days, something that takes your breath away, reminds you why you are here, why it is important for you to be alive this very moment.

Disclosure

2011-12-18T12:35:00.003-05:00

I had drinks around a campfire last night with three other women. The hostess was my oldest son's former boss, and her two friends were other women that live in Wyoming. We had so much fun. I'd never before met the other two women, and didn't know the hostess all that well, but we talked intimately and honestly about the deepest regions of our hearts, souls and bodies like only women can. I can't imagine men, any men, being able to relate to each other the way we did.

I wonder why that is.

I have been on dates, often first dates, where the men will reveal their deepest secrets, the pinings of their hearts, to my willing ears. I don't know if it is me that gives them the safety to do this, or if they reveal these secrets to other women as well.

What is it about women that makes secret sharing so easy, and what is it about men that makes it so difficult, unless they are sharing with a woman?

Of course, I've shared deep secrets with men, too, sometimes on a first date but not often. Mostly, I listen and let them talk, adding my own spice only as a means to maintain balance...kind of a quid pro quo so that they won't feel embarrassed. I ask alot of questions, and maybe it is because I am so inquisitive that they share so much. Maybe it is because I genuinely care that gives them the safety to share.

Anyway, last night we were four women in our early fifties, sitting around a campfire, shivering over glasses of wine, sharing blankets, talking about our libidos. We had quite a range of them, too. We talked about husbands, ex husbands, boyfriends, ex boyfriends, and all of those partners in between...and how they behaved in the bedroom. It was strangely reassuring.

I wanna do it again.

I thought to myself that most of the men I know would have given their eyeteeth to have been privy to that discussion, although I can't think of any who would have wanted to participate.

I find myself waking up happy every morning. I wake when I want to on the weekends, and lounge like a cat for as long as I can. I go over my to do list in my head as I lie there, and the list makes me smile. I will hold onto to this good feeling for as long as I can. I feel so strangely optimistic about life right now, feel as if I have surpassed a summit and learned something very important.

I have therapy tomorrow instead of on Tuesday, and she gave me some difficult homework. I am to create a grid of peaks....high and low, for both ERG and my oldest son, and give them emotional intensity ratings. She thinks there is a correlation between my inability to express anger to love interests and my willingness to do so with my oldest son. She thinks that there is some trigger that Scott has been allowed to pull in my psyche that no one else has, because I am virtually never angry at ANYONE except my oldest son. With no one else do I ever lose my temper.

I want to be able to control my temper with him. I am not seeking to learn how to unleash the demon on anyone else, but it would be nice to be able to express disappointment or to share concerns about some else's behavior, or even to let them know when I have felt pain from something they've done. I always make excuses for the behavior of a love interest, and on the occasions when I actually express displeasure, because it happens so rarely, I guess, they usually freak out. It's easy to see why I've learned to not do it.

My thinking has always been that if I CHOOSE to let my feelings get hurt over something, then it was my choice, and not something for which they should share blame. It's the whole expect nothing, enjoy everything work that I have been striving to achieve.

On the other hand, if I am to allow someone to know me, to really know me, then I should let them know when I have to struggle to choose to not feel pain. Informing is different from blaming. That is my goal. To figure out how to show more parts of myself to those I love, to share more of me, instead of just being a receptacle of their sharing.

2011-12-18T12:33:00.000-05:00

Making Sense

2011-12-16T11:40:00.002-05:00

A little over a year ago, my nephew died, tragically and suddenly. A few days ago, ERG's family suffered a similar tragedy. I started thinking, remembering, processing again all the confusion I had when Nick died. A year ago, I struggled, struggled, struggled trying to figure out the why. Why?? For what possible purpose would it make sense for a young man's life to end, a young man still in his prime, just beginning to experience life, who had not yet had the wonder of children to carry on after him. I figured, after a few months had passed, that events such as these happen to teach us something.

I sat here today, remembering, sifting through those questions, and I realized that my conclusion was incorrect. Tragedies such as Nick's happen because there are laws of physics, because when you come right down to it, our bodies are fragile. Nick died because the walls of his heart had thinned to the point that they could no longer accommodate the beating of his huge and gentle heart. He did not die to teach me or anyone else a lesson. It was a matter of physics, faulty mechanical engineering. There was no other reason.

Deaths like these defy reason.

But...they are not without lessons. Nick did not die to teach me a lesson, but we can each choose to learn from our experience. We may each learn to pay a bit more attention to the beauty around us. We may each choose to hold our loved ones a bit closer to us, to remember to make the phone call, to profess our love, to send the email or text reminding those who are important to us that we care. We may each choose to take the pain of the unknowable and learn a little more about ourselves, to pay attention to our own grieving process and discover new ways to comfort ourselves.

And each other.

We may, in fact, learn how to live more fully, love more deeply, in the process of learning how to let go.

Death teaches us hard lessons about letting go.

Especially when the person who dies is so very young. We have to let go of our hopes and aspirations and dreams for that person. We have to let go of our complacency that they will always be at the family Thanksgiving, at the other end of the telephone. We have to learn, abruptly, that letting go hurts like hell.

But that's not why they die. We learn those lessons in many other ways every day. They die because of physics or biology or chemistry. They die because there are laws of nature.

We learn because we are human and we choose to pay attention to the lesson. We learn because we love and we long for them not to have died in vain. We learn to bring order to the chaos and to go on afterwards.

One day, we wake up and the pain has dissipated. The fragrance of their life, their affect on you, lingers, but the intensity of the pain subsides to the point where you can say, "Ah. Yes. I did learn something. Thank you."

ERG's tragedy brought all this home. I realized that I have waded through the river of my grief, and have reached the other shore. I stand at the bank now, waving to my nephew, wishing him well, realizing all that I've lost, but also the wisdom I chose to bring with me on my journey to the shore.

I think of the young man's mother who has a river ahead of her now. I don't envy her the task ahead, but somehow, without knowing anything about her, feel a sense of assurance that the universe will take care of her, will guide her feet into the waters, will encourage and comfort her until she gets to the other side. I am confident that in exchange for her pain, beauty will be put in front of her again, and she will inherent new eyes with which to view it.

It will never make sense. It's not supposed to. There is no sense to be made. There is only life and choices of ways to learn each step of the way.

2011-12-16T10:13:00.002-05:00

Christina Perri - A Thousand Years (Official Music Video)

2011-12-13T08:31:00.002-05:00

I'm not crazy about the video, but I love the song.

I heard it on the radio a couple weeks ago, and listened intently. I have met people, men and women, who I feel I have known and loved for a thousand years. Grocery Gal is one of them, and I only met her about five months ago. I don't like the idea that we are waiting to meet these people. I'm not waiting. I rejoice when I find them, but I'm not waiting, I'm not incomplete or less than whole in the process of finding them.

I am complete and whole now, just as I am.

Of course, when I heard the song, I didn't think about Grocery Gal, or Gardening Gal, or Sunshine Gal, or Psychic Gal, I thought about ERG. Sometimes, we get it stuck in our heads that romantic love is the only worthwhile love for which to long. What a bunch of bullshit. The love that I receive from these four women sustains me so much more than the romantic love I've ever received from a guy.

Of course, there is the possibility that I've simply been loving the wrong guys.

I accept that.

My point, in this post, is that when I love, it is with a rather scary intensity. It is unconditional and unassuming, and for me to love you, you don't even have to love me back. So, when I love, it is as if I have loved you for a thousand years and will continue loving you for a thousand more....even if I never see you again.

Aren't you lucky...

Yesterday, I finished my Christmas present to my friends. It's a calendar of my pictures and corresponding selections from my quotes of the day. I not only made the selections, added the whimsical holidays, but also took it to the printer. It should be ready for distribution by the end of the week.

Today, I will finish the cookie baking. Only seven more kinds of cookies to bake. Then I can package them up and get them out of the house.

I love this time of year.

Sometimes Love Lasts

2011-12-12T10:07:00.004-05:00

The weekend began with a bang.

I spent Thursday mulling over menus, figuring out how to hang pine boughs from my curtain rods, putting up an artificial tree to complement my live Charlie Brown tree, grocery shopping and reveling in anticipation of the following day.

Friday was the best Friday I'd had in a very long time.

Saturday I drove to Detroit with Grocery Gal, and had the most wonderful time laughing and sharing and talking and texting and bonding as only two women with shared life philosophies can. We went to a party with other Str8s and felt the warmth of connection and camaraderie. When it was my turn to talk, I spoke about the spiritual growth I've experienced post divorce, how it was the worst pain I'd ever experienced, but the pain propelled me towards a tapestry of spiritual growth beyond my wildest imaginings. I am happier now than I've ever been in my life.

It's only taken eleven years to get here.

One of the men was a dashingly handsome 23 year old man. He sought me out before he left to thank me for reciting such a positive story. In our group, sometimes it's easy to fall prey to the pity party of sadness that engulfs those dealing with divorce. It's understandable, even expected, but it's not the only way to deal with the particular hand some of us are dealt. I've indulged in my own pity party a time or two, but no longer.

During the course of the evening, I pondered the course of love in my life over the past eleven years. Grocery Gal asked me a question. Of all the men who I have loved post divorce, who was the best suited for me? I didn't hesitate to answer. I've only loved one man who was part of our group, and I loved him back in 2003. He was the one man who's values and temperament most closely matched mine. I think he loved me, as best he could for a man newly separated and still in love with his lesbian wife. He loved me until he couldn't anymore. I still hold him in my heart.

That discussion got me thinking.

Sometimes, love lasts. Even when love disappoints, it can still last. Even when love acts impatiently, it can still last. Even when love tries to control, it can still last. Even when love lies neglected and malnourished, like a dry seed through a long winter, it can still last.

Sometimes, when the will is strong enough and the well is deep enough, love can withstand all sorts of storms. I have been given a hundred reasons not to love some of the men I still hold in my heart.

I hold them anyway.

I hold them because I refuse to give up on the beauty of the divine I have seen in their souls. I may not pursue their attention, I may not try to control the outcome, I may not want them back front and center in my life, but I hold them up to the light in my heart and hope that the radiance found there will give them vicarious comfort, nonetheless.

Sometimes, love can outlast all of the fears that keep love at arm's length. Sometimes, the strength of affection; quietly, gently, compassionately; melts the armor, removes the tangled mess of entrapment, clears the way for new growth.

Sometimes, love lasts. It doesn't always abandon when the going gets tough. It doesn't always punish, doesn't always pull away. Sometimes, it just sits and waits, for as long as it needs to.

Love doesn't always last forever, but sometimes it lasts just long enough to get you through to where you need to go.

Sometimes, if you are lucky, it lasts long enough to teach you to love yourself.

2011-12-06T09:35:00.005-05:00

“People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.
If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway.
If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway.
The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway.
For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.”- Mother Teresa

Early Christmas

2011-12-05T18:38:00.006-05:00

The house is quiet, but for the tip tap of rain on the roof. My youngest son is at work, my oldest son still slumbering. The dog is somewhere else, and if my guess is correct, the rain has seeped into the chimney, probably because of the leaves that still rest on the roof. It's on my list of things to do this week, if the rain ever stops.

Have I mentioned how much I am enjoying this time off? This time of no responsibility other than to my youngest son? I am loving it. I am busy much of the day, don't take naps, watch very little television, get lots of exercise, and my house has never looked better, but I'm not writing like I could be (I refuse to say "should"). I'm not doing what I've taken this time to do.

I've decided not to stress over it. I'm choosing not to worry. I see a therapist once a week, at least for now, and am comfortable that when the time comes to make the novel happen, it will happen. A part of me is thinking that when I push, it will come quickly. I still have a goal to have something in hand by the end of the year.

I am reveling in the season this year. I don't know exactly why. It feels good. It feels like the start of something good. I recognize that I'm basically in the same place I was last year, but feel like I have closer friends around me now. Some of the faces have changed, it's true, but the ones that are here are less demanding, more comfortable. Easier.

I like easy.

I've done very little shopping. For me, this time of year isn't about gifts, although I can't say that's the way it's always been. My first argument with Rexford was over the fact that there was nothing under the tree for me a week before Christmas. The first few years post divorce, I bought myself jewelry, which I'd never buy myself in real life, just to ensure that I had something sparkly under the tree.

I've gotten over that. I've grown up.

I'm giving homemade gifts again this year; gifts depicting my own special talents. No more clues than that, but I look forward to the faces of my friends when they see my handiwork. That's the best gift they can give me in return.

This past year has been a year of such monumental growth for me. Who'd a thunk, this time last year, that I would have found such a peaceful place inside my own head, not to mention my own heart? The woman so full of angst last year, who was she? I like this one so much better. She's much easier to live with.

Three friends came over on Sunday to bake cookies with me. We are so doing it again next year. It was such fun! Solo baking is fine, but girlfriend baking is better. I have said that after Kevin graduates from high school, I will move myself back into the bosom of my family because there, I will always have a social network. Yesterday, I thought to myself that maybe I already have a pretty good one, here. Gardening Gal is such a well suited companion to me, although a part of me assumes that once she finds a guy, we'll lose the closeness we share now. On the other hand, Sunshine Gal is tightly partnered and we are still as close as ever, despite my single status. Perhaps it can be done again.

And perhaps I will not always be by myself.

I look ahead to the next year, and to be honest, if I'm still sleeping alone almost all the time next year, I'm ok with that. When it's ready to happen, it will happen. I have let go of heart related angst.

I'm so fucking proud of myself, so grateful for having the grit to do the work that has brought me here.

I appreciate that you all have walked this road with me. I know it hasn't been easy, know I've written some stuff that was painful to read. I make no apologies, I wrote what I had to write. I am grateful, though, for I've felt the waves of affection you've sent my way, affirmation of my journey.

Usually I save this post for the end of December.

I guess Christmas comes early this year.

Letting Go

2011-12-04T10:40:00.002-05:00

You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go

... "How much do we need to let go of?" a friend asked one day.

"I'm not certain," I replied, "but maybe everything."

Letting go is a spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical process, a sometimes mysterious metaphysical process of releasing to God and the Universe that which we are clinging to so tightly.

We let go of our grasp on people, outcomes, ideas, feelings, wants, needs, desires - everything. We let go of trying to control our progress in recovery. Yes, it's important to acknowledge and accept what we want and what we want to happen. But it's equally important to follow through by letting go.

Letting go is the action part of faith. It is a behavior that gives God and the Universe permission to send us what we're meant to have.

Letting go means we acknowledge that hanging on so tightly isn't helping to solve the problem, change the person, or get the outcome we desire. It isn't helping us. In fact, we learn that hanging on often blocks us from getting what we want and need.

Who are we to say that things aren't happening exactly as they need to happen?

There is magic in letting go. Sometimes we get what we want soon after we let go. Sometimes it takes longer. Sometimes the specific outcome we desire doesn't happen. Something better does.

Letting go sets us free and connects us to our Source.

Letting go creates the optimum environment for the best possible outcomes and solutions.

Today, I will relax. I will let go of that which is upsetting me the most. I will trust that by letting go, I have started the wheels in motion for things to work out in the best possible way.

From The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie ©1990

How I have STRUGGLED with this lesson, the one I needed most to learn. Finally, after all these years, I think it is sinking in. I'm in such a better place now.

Cocktail

2011-12-01T09:01:00.004-05:00

I contemplated on the elliptical yesterday the progress I've made, the evolution of my soul over the past decade, and actually, the trajectory of my whole life. I have not had an easy life, but seriously, who does? I don't think life was meant to be easy, it was meant to be experienced.

I have done my share of throwing caution to the wind, but for the most part, I keep my head pretty squarely between my shoulders. I'm a thinker; always have been, always will be. A major shift happened a few weeks ago, and I can't really explain it, although I'm going to try to, right here, right now. I spent the bulk of October feeling really, really sad. The man in my life was paying almost no attention to me, I was arguing with my son, I was not writing, I was feeling unfulfilled and frustrated.

And then...one day I woke up and decided that I was no longer going to be sad. A veil of sorts lifted, a realization that I, Betty, was the real decision maker in my life. I, Betty, had the power to determine whether or not I was going to be happy. I have cried and laughed and felt agonizing emotional pain and breathtaking joy, but...I have not been sad since.

Perhaps it is all hormonal. It has been almost three months since Aunt Flo visited me. The hot flashes raged through September and October, but have waned in November. Depression and sadness has a chemical component, and combined with the exercise, talk therapy, and basically healthy diet, perhaps the resulting cocktail explains the change in my mindset.

I'm not going to argue with it. I'm going to breathe, relax, lean into the joy as long as I can, and hope it will rub off on those around me.

Love and Happiness

2011-11-30T10:10:00.005-05:00

I got a text message from SAHD Guy after my post yesterday, explaining to me why he disappeared from my life, saying it was just too painful to watch. I have come such a long way since 2010 and my year of angsting over Fabulous Guy. I have made such progress in the angst department, thanks to Psychic Gal, and Melody Beattie's books, and the easy way ERG handles me. He asks nothing from me. Granted, he doesn't give much either, but at least his approach is a balanced one. Of course, I still over counter the scales, but now it is without expectation of anything in return. I know and understand his limitations, and do my best to not ask for more than he can give.

I'm happy.

I'm happy by myself.

I'm happy with myself.

I have not responded to SAHD-Guy yet, need to think on it a little first. My path is different from his, but perhaps we have gotten to the same place. He sent me a song about a year ago called Love and Happiness by Emmylou Harris. I sent the song to ERG last week when I was feeling especially close to him. I am happy. I love.

Emmylou Harris & Mark Knopfler - Love and Happiness_Right Now

I had a thought the other day of how much I am learning to enjoy being by myself, and worried that if I became too comfortable in my aloneness, that I would give up my search for a life partner, and succumb to my greatest fear of ending up like my mother. Yesterday, Knight in Shining Armor Guy posted a similar fear to my support group. Great minds think alike.

I'm not really worried about it. They have yet to manufacture a BOB that can kiss, and I like to kiss too much to ever give up the quest. In fact, last night at movie group, I was texted by two gentlemen inquiring as to my presence that evening because both of them are desirous of my kisses. Gardening Gal and I were late to the movies, and ended up sitting with the one who had saved seats for us in the back. The fact that he had popcorn hardly entered into the equation.

I didn't kiss either one of them.

But I could have. And one of these days, soon, I will get my ass back on one of the dating sites and find myself someone who has time for me, who wants my kisses, who can recognize my beauty. I will find someone to love who can love me back. That is the whole purpose to my investment in therapy, despite my post yesterday.

The point of my post yesterday is that my love style is pure and I don't want to change it. That does not mean that I don't want to find someone who can love me back. It simply means that until that happens, I'm not going to beat myself up because I love someone who can't.

And I'm not going to be miserable until someone loves me back because I am learning to love myself.

I'm finding happiness, and I'm finding love...with me.

Some lucky guy is going to have a partner who is whole and complete, just as he is. I'm not looking for a better half. I'm not looking for a half at all. I will find the man who can appreciate my completeness, who can love me as a whole.

That sounds sexual.

I like that.

Love, Betty Style

2011-11-29T09:37:00.005-05:00

I had a strange dream last night, after a day of great exercise, long conversations, a few tears and strong emotions. I went to sleep thinking sexy thoughts about ERG, and dreamed that I was in a house with a bunch of people. I am not sure if they were family or co-workers or simply friends, but the entire group was worried about the physical decay of the house. Perhaps it was the cast of the "The Office" because there was a definite staged, comic feel to my interactions with them. A wall was bowed and in need of plaster/drywall repair. The kitchen and the bathroom needed work. I fixed it all, in typical, heroic Betty style. Without a fuss, without complaining, without expectation, I fixed it.

And put up new drapes.

I want to talk about my new found friendship with Rexford, but know that to do so would piss him off, so I won't. Instead I'm going to talk about love. Betty style. What it means to be loved by Betty. I thought about this while I was on the elliptical yesterday. I get my best inspiration on the elliptical. I should get a little tape recorder for these types of ideas. Somehow, I manage to lose so many of them in transition after I climb off. I'll put it on my Christmas list.

Betty love.

I read Neale Donald Walsch's Conversations with God, Parts I, II and III about two years ago. Then I read Eckhart Tolle's books, and Paulo Coehlo, and Don Ruiz. I read a bunch of books by some wise men. Usually, I prefer books written by women, but these books resonated with me, changed my life, changed the way I think about life.

They changed the way I think about love.

Truth be told, I don't think they changed the way I love, but rather gave me the freedom to accept the way I love, to accept that part of myself. I have found that when a love candle is lit inside of me, it is an eternal flame. The flame may flicker down to a tiny spark...for years sometimes...but the fire never dies. The flame can be made to flourish with just the tiniest bit of kindling and a puff of air.

I have also accepted my ability to forgive, stopped berating myself for foolishness. I forgive; quickly, easily, and completely. This is why: The books I have read have solidified my thoughts and beliefs about the components of love and life. I believe that we are all children of the divine, that we are comprised of the most beautiful aspects of the universe. Each of us. Inherent within us is goodness and light. Our purpose here on Earth is to determine who we really are, how we can each reflect the aspects of divinity within us. Each day, we have the opportunity to refine our own light. Each decision we make reflects our thoughts on who we really are, helps the rest of the world see that light. We get to decide. Each and every moment, we get to decide. We each have the power.

Our only obligation to each other is to assist each other in figuring out who we really are and how we can best reflect the light within each of us. I accept no one else's moral code, nor do I impinge my moral code on anyone else. We each get to decide for ourselves. That is why it is so easy for me to forgive. If I can accept that you get to decide your own moral code, then what do I have to forgive?

I simply have to accept, and that comes pretty easily for me.

When I love someone, it comes even more easily, because when I love someone, it is because the universe has granted me the gift of seeing that person's divinity with my own eyes. No one can dim that light for me. Once I have seen it, have lost my breath to its beauty, the image never dies. Perhaps it fades with time and distance, but the flame flickers forever within my heart.

And...just because they have been unable to glimpse the roaring furnace of my internal flame does not diminish the beauty I have beheld in theirs...which is what makes it ok for me love people who don't love me back.

How can that possibly be a bad thing?

My biggest challenge is teaching myself to let go of judgement of other people, which in fact, is the key to forgiving someone, and ultimately, to loving someone. It is something I struggle with every day. Once we let go of judgement, we are also better able to trust. If you aren't judging someone else's behavior, then you are naturally able to trust.

But it isn't easy.

ERG and I went to the convention center to serve Thanksgiving dinner to whomever wanted it last Thursday morning. We needed to leave before the event was over, and just as we were leaving, an elderly woman approached me.

"Excuse me, but could you help me?" she asked, her eyes sort of flickering around, not quite meeting mine. "I have a problem and I was hoping you could help me figure it out."

I stepped out of my hustle and bustle mode and stopped to listen to her.

"I had a bus token that got me here, but I don't have one to get home afterwards. Bus fare is $1.70 and I don't have it. What should I do?"

I put my arm on her shoulder and scanned the crowd. The event was set up to help people in need. There was a huge room dedicated to addressing health issues, give flu shots, take blood pressures. Another corner was stocked with winter coats, first come, first served. A playground was in the back for the kids. And we were serving food, as much food as you could eat. I did not remember seeing or hearing anything about a place taking care of transportation issues.

I felt myself judging her. I felt a moment of exasperation with her. Here were all these things being given away, and somehow, it wasn't enough for this woman. She wanted money, it dawned on me. She wanted me to give her bus fare, and I was probably not the first nor the last person she would ask for it.

I considered pawning her off on one of the organizers of the event, but really, I didn't see anyone who could help her, if her need was indeed, sincere. ERG had my wallet in his coat pocket. He saw me talking to the woman and approached.

"Sweetie, do you have $2? This woman needs bus fare."

"Sure. Here it is." he fumbled through a five and a twenty, finally getting to two singles, and put them in the woman's hand. "Happy Thanksgiving."

I left without another word to the woman, feeling my judgement and annoyance with her, and feeling ashamed of it. I didn't know that woman's story. I could imagine it, and it wasn't pretty, and red suffused my face as I saw my own bigotry on display before me.

ERG did not share my judgement nor my annoyance. He cheerfully, gently, compassionately, forked over the funds without a second thought. His divinity shined brightly in that moment and I fell in love with him all over again. I realized later that I could have asked him for my wallet and given her my own money, but instead I let him do the honors. I guess I was meant to be reminded of how brightly his light shines.

Or maybe he needed to see it for himself.

It wasn't the $2. It was the willingness. It was the lack of judgement of the request.

I want to be more like that.

I belong to a support group for whom forgiveness is a key topic. It comes so hard for some people. I don't get it. So many stones are cast in that group.

We may not all live in glass houses, but who doesn't have a few breakable windows? I want forgiveness for my ineptitudes, for my ignorance, for my occasional lapses in grace. And I want to give as much forgiveness as I can. I seek to NOT judge.

I seek to see the divinity within each of us, to recognize that no flame burns the same.

I seek to see the light in others, to help them become the grandest version of the greatest vision they've ever had of themselves, and I seek to do the same for myself.

I seek to love.

Purely, simply, unconditionally.

Making sense

2011-11-22T09:31:00.003-05:00

Seriously....

I never understood the whole withholding of sex thing....I always considered that a punishment of myself! Besides, as much as I hate to fight, the make up sex was something to look forward to.

Yesterday was such a joyful day for me. I went shopping with Sunshine Gal, and when I say shopping, I mean we went to seven different stores. I bought a little something at each one! I probably didn't spend more than $100, but oh, so much fun. I felt a calm and peacefulness and joy that I haven't felt for a long time. I think the lessons I've been learning about letting go are finally sinking in. I am prepared to enjoy, enjoy, enjoy this holiday season.

And it's not even Thanksgiving yet!

This afternoon is my second therapy appointment. I am so looking forward to seeing my therapist. This is the first time I've had a therapist younger than me. Can someone younger actually be wiser? Maybe. It feels like all these things that I've been reading and that Psychic Gal has been preaching and that I've been absorbing is all starting to gel. I did the therapy exercise yesterday and lo and behold, things just have started making sense. I have lots of good traits! I am a worthwhile human being! I will find love, and I will love myself. I do love myself. I'm awesome!

Deep breath.

Did I just say that?

I'm awesome. I'm worthy. I love myself.

I'm sitting with that.

I like it.

I believe it.

Life is good.

Falling

2011-11-21T10:04:00.005-05:00

The rain is dripping in a pitter patter rhythm, keeping time for the bevy of birds singing in the tops of the hickory trees. It feels surreal, sitting here in semi darkness, the cloud cover keeping the light to a dull gray. Leaves lay on the ground, awaiting the tynes of my boys' rakes next weekend as we do our annual post Thanksgiving fall cleanup.

I have finally embraced the fall; the color, the cold, the nudge of melancholy that always has accompanied the falling temperatures. This year feels differently, though. I have been actively seeking a means to keeping peace in my heart, regardless of the cacophony around me, regardless of the actions of others. I have achieved a modicum of success in learning this lesson, and I'm proud of myself for it.

What a weekend. I have been cleaning my house for the past two weeks in preparation for the baby shower that Sunshine Gal hosted at my house on Saturday. It has felt so good to clean. I had forgotten the sweet success that accompanies the feeling of accomplishment of something newly cleaned. I cleaned my room, dusted every stick of furniture I own, including legs and sides and drawers. I washed baseboards, used a toothbrush on the corners. I shampooed the carpet and all of my upholstered furniture. I washed walls. I cleaned the washing machine and the dryer. My sons both cleaned up their rooms. I scrubbed the tubs and the sinks and the toilets. I wiped down cobwebs. I spackled and sanded and touched up paint. I cleaned a cupboard. I sparkled up the chandelier.

I still have a few chores left. I need to clean the blades of the three ceiling fans in my house. I need to polish the silver. I have four closets left to clean. The spare bedroom became the repository of junk from my sons' rooms, so now that room has become a project unto itself.

And then there's the yard. The gardens to ready for winter, the pond to get a final cleaning. Leaves to rake.

I still have much to do.

The baby shower was fun, although there was too much lovely food, and I was liberal in my allotment. Gardening Gal and CEO Gal accompanied me to Jags for dancing later that evening, but we did no dancing. We sat at a bar table in our dresses and make up and people watched. We each took a turn of walking through the crowd to see if we saw anyone worth perusing further, but the pickings were pretty slim. A handsome African American man sitting across from our table had been ogling us, but it was hard to tell which of the three of us had caught his attention. When it was my turn to parade through the crowd, I chose to take a bathroom break as well. As I approached our table upon my return, he was standing nearby talking to the other two men he was with earlier.

He stopped me. "I have to tell you how much I like your dress. I'm not hitting on you, I just like your dress."

I furrowed my brow in confusion. Why was he telling me this if he wasn't hitting on me? He was tall. And handsome. I like tall and handsome.

"What, this old thing?" I put my hand on his arm and smiled up at him.

"I'm not coming on to you, but your dress is such a lovely shade of red and everyone else is in black. It was nice to see the contrast of color." He looked down at me and smiled another slow smile...and then left with his friends.

I sat back down at the table with my friends and pondered the exchange. I wanted a replay to demand an answer as to exactly why he was NOT hitting on me if he liked my dress enough to stop me to tell me.

Oh, the complexities of the male mind.

I was looking pretty hot, though, and was showing just a bit of cleavage. And truth be told, I think he was hitting on me. Perhaps he just didn't realize it himself.

I am in a good place. I am slowly, slowly, learning the lessons of letting go, and keeping the calm in my heart, regardless of others' actions. I am learning more deeply everyday that I can love without expectation, without condition, without pain. I have the capability of accepting people, just as they are, without needing them to change to accommodate me. I need no accommodation because I accommodate myself. I can feel myself growing.

I was talking to a friend of mine, a guy friend going through a divorce. We went to the Art Museum on Friday, and the subject came up of the growth he has experienced as a result of discovering his wife is gay. It occurred to me that the Miracle Grow of my spiritual awakening was my own divorce, and while I never, ever thought that I could ever find anything good about my divorce, the fact of the matter is that I am a much better person from having gone through it. I am more connected to myself. I have a more peaceful heart, am aware of so much more of my own inner strengths having come out the other side. As much as it pains me to say this, my divorce was good for me.

Now, onto my homework for my therapy session tomorrow. See below.

Therapy Exercise #1

2011-11-21T08:33:00.001-05:00

Me

Qualities/ Opposite

Compassionate/ Cruel
Intelligent/ Dumb
Self aware/ Obtuse
Positive sense of humor/ Negative or no sense of humor
Adventurous/ Safe
Curious/ Staid
Gentle/ Hurtful
Nurturing/ Stagnant
Accomodating/ Stifling
Non judgemental/ Hypocrit
Kind/ Mean
Generous/ Selfish
Thoughtful/ Thoughtless
Sensitive/ Cold
Optimistic/ Pessimistic
Outgoing/ Inhibited
Talkative/ Quiet
Creative/ Methodical
Open minded/ Close minded
Spiritual/ Analytical
Confident/ ashamed
Soft hearted/ Hard hearted
Patient/ Impatient

Procrastinator/ Punctual
Disorganized/ Organized
Undisciplined/ Disciplined
Lazy/ Hard worker
Weak willed with
love interest only/ Strong willed

My father

Qualities/ Opposite

Strong willed/ Weak willed
Hard hearted/ Soft hearted
Mean/ Kind
Selfish/ Generous
Racist/ Accepting
Closed minded/ Open minded
Obtuse/ Self aware
Ugly/ Beautiful
Dirty/ Clean
Gluttonous/ Temperate
Evil/ Goodness
Stubborn/ Compromising
Unforgiving/ Forgiving
Methodical/ Creative
Cruel/ Compassionate
Weak/ Strong
Bossy/ Concensus builder
Spiteful/ Gracious
Jealous/ Compersion
Hypocritical/ Non judgemental
Coward/ Brave

Intelligent/ Dumb
Willing to explain/ Impatient
Well read/ Ignorant
Analytical/ Creative

Okay, I think I get the point of the exercise. So many of my good qualities were developed as a result of observing my father's bad qualities and being determined to be his opposite. Hmmmm.

2011-11-17T08:15:00.001-05:00

2011-11-16T17:18:00.002-05:00

On my son's friend's girlfriend's button: Practice safe snacks. Always use a condiment.

tee hee.

Upstream

2011-11-16T09:59:00.004-05:00

The gym is crowded when I arrive, full of high school boys bulking up for the winter. They mill about around the weight machines as I saunter past. Just as I am placing my bag on the window ledge, I hear a loud "UUUUHHHH" emanate from the bench press. The trainer that works at the gym turns to me and smiles.

"I think we should all clap when he's finished."

I get my earplugs and armband attached to my phone and head over to the abs machine. A large, muscled bound boy lay supine under the bench press bar, legs spread, arms raised, hands resting on the metal pole. A much scrawnier kid stands behind the bar, hands out.

"UUUUHHHH" the boy grunts. "UUUUHHHH. UUUUHHHH"

With the third grunt, he pops up, and begins walking rapidly around the weight lifting area. Five minutes later, he is back at the bench press. A dozen high school boys stand at various weight machines, slack jawed in wonder as they surreptitiously watch him. I look at their envious faces and they smile sheepishly when they catch my glance.

The boy grunts at he lifts the bar for his first rep. He grunts again for the second, but falters as he pushes upwards. His spotter reaches forward, but the boy bellows, "Don't touch it!" He finishes the second rep and presses on for the third, settling the bar back onto the notches of the machine.

"See what I mean? If you touch the bar in a competition, I'd be disqualified!" The spotter shrinks back in terror.

After the muscled bound boy comes up for air the next time, I smile my pretty Betty smile and touch his arm.

"I see you are bench pressing about 300 pounds. Have you ever heard of the bench presser, Nick Winters?" I ask, still smiling.

He looks confused for a moment, then his face lights up. "Yeah, I've heard of him. He's only the greatest bench presser that ever lived!"

"Nick was my nephew, my brother's son. He died a year ago."

The boy's face falls. "What happened to him?"

"He died in his sleep. He had a congenital condition that resulted in his heart walls thinning, and with all the weight lifting, his heart just finally gave out. No one ever knew he had the condition. If you are going to pursue bench pressing, ask your doctor for an EKG the next time you go in, just to be sure."

He looks at me skeptically, but I keep my eyes locked with his. Finally, he breaks the gaze, and nods. "Ok. I mean, I'm sure I'm fine. But I've heard of this before, so yeah. I'll take care of it."

I go back to my weight lifting and he goes back to his. A few minutes later, I hear an agonized yelp from the bench press. The bench presser is clutching his chest, rolling around on the floor. Apparently, his last lift had failed and his spotter hadn't caught the bar in time. One of the other women on the elliptical is a doctor, and rushes over to check on him. Finally, he forces himself to his feet, shakes off the pain, and a few minutes later, is back at the bench press.

Boys.

They can be so stubborn.

I hope he takes my advice. It might give some rhyme or reason to why my nephew died.

I had my first therapy appointment yesterday. It was awesome. The hour flew by. I started by reading to her my post from Monday and she smiled indulgently. I spoke in rapid fire words, spitting out my worries, my concerns, my therapy goals, my fears, my tears. Has anyone in the history of man ever NOT gotten teary eyed at their first therapy appointment with a new therapist? I mean, isn't pain the propulsion that gets us to therapy in the first place? She spoke very little, other than to interject a question here or there, which would send me off on another monologue.

She gave me homework. I am to describe myself, all my qualities, good and bad, and then I am to describe my opposite. Next, I must do the same for my father. Good and bad qualities. Then describe his opposite.

Hmmmm.

Don't know if I'll post it here, but I probably will. Maybe will. Depends on what comes out.

Gardening Gal and I had a spectacular dinner afterwards. We bought the Broadway Series tickets and have been making dinner before the show rather than going out for dinner. We are both pretty good cooks, so we have restaurant quality cuisine, with a nice bottle of wine before each show. Last night was Wicked. I'd seen it on January 31, 2008 with Chemistry Guy. I knew every word to every song. Still, I cried at the end, had to purposefully stop myself from audibly sobbing. Gardening Gal didn't cry. I'm such a wimp.

After the show, we head over to Jeff Ruby's for a drink. Jeff Ruby is parading around in faded jeans and a white tshirt that says, "Occupy This". He is the only person in the entire place in jeans and a tshirt. I want to talk to him, but by the time the liquid courage in my martini glass has taken effect, he is gone.

On our way out, a four top of out of town business men stop us, invite us back in for a drink and a cigar.

"What kind of stone is that on your necklace?" asks the dark, curly headed man catty cornered from me.

I look down at the pink stone nestled just above my breasts. "It's rose quartz. I asked for a stone that would attract love to me. The woman said that rose quartz will help you love yourself, and that alone, would attract love to me."

"Well, it seemed to work. It got us to stop you and see if we could convince you to have a drink with us." He smiles at me invitingly.

I look over at Gardening Gal. She shrugs her shoulders.

"Let me see your foot." The man continues.

I furrow my brow, but lift my left high heeled pump slightly.

"Size 8 1/2." He says smugly.

My eyes widen in wonder, and I give him a high five.

"Actually, size 8, but close enough."

"I've never sold shoes, but I like ladies' feet. I can usually tell their sizes just by looking."

I look appraisingly at him again.

"I've got a tattoo on my chest." he continues.

"Ok, I'll bite. What sort of tattoo do you have on your chest?" I counter.

"I have two ladies feet, with a note that says 'place here'".

I sputter with laughter, but narrow my eyes and arch my eyebrows.

"Wow. Great laugh, great legs, amazing eyebrows and pretty feet. You are hot, baby. You are both hot. That's why we stopped you. Come have a drink with us."

I look at Gardening Gal again. It is almost midnight. She shrugs again.

"Sorry to disappoint, gentlemen, but I think we will be on our way. Morning comes early."

I feel their eyes on us, watching us walk away. We are parked two blocks away, and much to Gardening Gal's giggled protests, I back my car around the corner of Ninth Street, and onto Walnut, going south. I pull over into the left lane, roll down my window, and sing a "Good night, Gentlemen" out the window, as their happily surprised faces admire my Mercedes.

And life goes on. I continue to hold ERG in my heart, sending him strength as he navigates his own life's waters.

2011-11-15T11:26:00.005-05:00

Learn to Be Lonely

2011-11-14T13:40:00.003-05:00

I was alone most of the day yesterday. A Sunshine Gal texted me first thing in the morning, and then we talked on the phone, but from 9:00am to 5:00pm, the phone was silent, and I spoke to no one but the dog, the cats and myself. I listened to music, cleaned my house, played games on the computer, wrote, and....drumroll please....enjoyed being with just Betty. I was happy. By myself.

Don't think it didn't cross my mind how silent the cell phone was. At one point, I felt a longing to join Match.com just to get the jingle going again, but I didn't and I won't. The time for that will come. It isn't here yet.

First, I get the 20 pounds off. First, I get more comfortable being by myself. First, I take good solid care of Betty. She is my highest priority right now.

I have my first therapy session in six years tomorrow. I decided to use the therapist that runs my weight loss management support group. She is awesome. I've known her for four years now. She's knows the back story of my childhood, my marriage, my struggle with food, my endless searching for love, my pattern of only being able to love men who cannot love me back, my Florence Nightingale complex. I won't have to waste time going over all that crap.

I'm looking forward to my session with her. I considered going to see a male therapist this time, thinking that perhaps he could help me decipher the male mind, but my therapy goal is to figure out how to enable Betty to be happy by herself, and to break the pattern of only loving men who can't love me back. I think it's more an issue of deciphering my own mind than the minds of men.

And to that end, I'm going to go inside again. See if the little Betty's have anything to say today.

I walked down the hallways of my memories and no one raised their hand to speak. They all looked at me with their sad eyes and shook their heads. They knew what I was there looking for, and they had no answers for me. A chill went down my spine, however, when I realized the answer was staring at me right in the face. That answer to why I keep insisting on loving men who don't love me was because I never gave up on my father loving me, never believed that he didn't, couldn't love me, insisted that he loved me in his own twisted way, all the way up until I was 36 years old. He had called me after having seen me the weekend before at a family reunion, asking if maybe we could see if we could have a relationship. I told him that before I could have a relationship with him as an adult, I would need answers as to why he had made some of the decisions he had made while raising me. He said the following to me: "But Betty, all I ever did was love you."

All he ever did was love me.

He raped me.

He brutally assaulted me and my siblings.

He used every emotionally abusive trick in the book to keep our silence.

And he called that love.

He didn't love me. He would never love me. When he died, I cried, not for him, but for the little girl who would now NEVER have a daddy that loved her.

Up until that conversation, though, I had not given up hope that some day, some day, I would have a normal daddy, that could love me the way daddies are supposed to love their little girls. I hoped.

I had held onto that hope for 36 years....maybe even 47 years. Maybe, deep down, I held onto that hope until the day he died. Perhaps that is why I have such trouble letting go of lovers who don't love me back, who can't give me what they know I deserve, but keep holding onto me because I give them something they need.

I give them unconditional love and acceptance, which they crave, but they cannot give it back to me. I hold onto them hoping that someday, somehow, I will have earned the privilege of their love, just like I had to earn everything when I was a child, just like I worked so hard at earning my father's love.

A love that didn't exist.

Just like their love doesn't exist.

Did you know that if you reverse the last two letters of the word exist, you spell exits?

Is that my cue?

Here's the rub.

I believe that one of the things that makes me special, that puts me in a class above other people (yes, I said, above other people) is my ability to love people regardless of their affection for me. I believe that is a positive trait, a trait I don't want to change. I want to be able to love unconditionally.

But I also want to be in a balanced relationship.

Are the two mutually exclusive?

I give gifts without expectation. I want to love without expectation. I want to enjoy everything, expect nothing. Is my therapy goal counter to that philosophy?

I'm going to print this out and take it with me tomorrow.

Should be an interesting hour.

Thank you for listening to my ramble.

Letting Go

2011-11-13T12:01:00.004-05:00

"In the end, this is what matters most: How fully did you live, how well did you love, how deeply did you learn to let go?" Buddhist principle

"Like a leaf falling from a tree, she just let go.

There was no effort. There was no struggle. It wasn’t good and it wasn’t bad. It was what it was, and it is just that.

In the space of letting go, she let it all be." Ernest Holmes

I have trouble letting go.

I think I always have, and I'm not sure why. Today, I'm going inside, to talk with one of my little girls, the little girls I once was, the little girls that still live with me, the five year old who was slapped for thinking for herself, or the thirteen year old who was touched in ways she shouldn't have been, or the sixteen year old who had to grow up too fast and had to parent her mother after the divorce. I'm going to talk to whoever shows up and see if she has some insight. Psychic Gal encourages all of us to do this, to let the little ones inside of us talk. She assures me that they have the greatest insight into how to heal ourselves. She says they will help us learn how to let go of relationships that no longer serve us, that no longer assist us in our journey to be the greatest version of the grandest vision we've ever had of ourselves.

I want to heal. I want to be able to live well, to love fully, to learn to let go.

My address was 2400 Garfield Avenue South, Minneapolis, Minnesota and this is the apartment I've lived in my whole life. I'm three years old and I love to snuggle on my Mommy's lap, but she's gone most of the time. My sisters hold me on their laps, and I like that, too. I love my sisters. My brother is awesome although sometimes, he plays pretty rough with me. I don't like some of the boys he plays with, though. One day, they burned a few of my dolls, and it's not like I have a lot of them, just the ones we got from yard sales and the Salvation Army. They all have scraggly hair and no clothes anymore. The smell of burning plastic is awful. It makes me want to throw up. I can still smell that nasty stuff all the way down the hall way.

I still sleep in a crib and that kind of makes me mad. A crib in a closet. I can pretty much climb out of the crib by myself. If I holler, one of my sisters will come help me. I love being the center of attention. Even though I'm the youngest, I make sure that I get noticed. A man was walking by the house yesterday, and for some reason, I don't know why, he gave me a quarter. I liked the fact that he was wearing a hat. Hardly anyone around here wears a hat, mostly the men all wear blue shirts or plaid, fuzzy shirts, and blue pants, but this guy had on a tan overcoat and a hat like the men on tv wear. He was really nice. Smiled at me, didn't yell or anything. I took the quarter, but told him my Mommy said I wasn't supposed to leave the yard, although we leave the yard all the time. She didn't really say we couldn't, but something told me that I shouldn't go with that guy. He sure did smile at me alot, though. I like it when people smile at me.

I have a boyfriend. His name is Joey. He loves me and I love him. He kisses me sometimes, but sometimes, he will call my name and I'll come running up to him to hug him, and he'll hit me. Oh, I know he's just playing around, and sometimes, I'll hit him back, just playing of course, but it hurts my feelings when he acts all happy to see me and then hits me. I wonder why he does that.

Last night I heard something funny going on in my parent's bedroom. My mommy was at work, like she is most nights, and I heard my sister in the bedroom with my dad, and it sounded like he was hurting her, but he wasn't yelling like he usually is when he hurts us. Things quieted down after awhile, and I went back to sleep.

You asked me a question. I hold on to my things because I have so few of them. I hide my toys in secret places so that my brother's friends can't find them and burn them, and so that my sister won't play with them and lose them. She loses stuff alot. I wonder if you hold onto people because of the scarcity I experienced. That would make sense. There weren't very many people in your early life. Up here in Minneapolis, none of our cousins are around. Mommy and Daddy don't have many friends, really just Daddy's fishing buddies. The neighbors aren't friendly because dad gets mad all the time and thinks they are trying to cheat him. But I like people so much. I like everyone I meet, even the man in the hat who gave me a quarter. He said I was a pretty little thing. I know I'm pretty. Everyone smiles at me.

No big revelations today. I'll try again tomorrow. I'd really like to figure this thing out. Sunshine Gal was telling me that when a romance is over with her, she never gives the guy a second thought. Not me. I think about most of the men I have tried to love, some more than others, of course. I still keep in touch with most of them. Still hope for their happiness. Still feel very loving thoughts for them.

Especially my ex husband, with whom I spent most of the day yesterday. Gardening Gal and I decided to go to the UC football game after Findlay Market, and I knew Rexford was going with Kevin and Scott. We all met up for breakfast, went to the game, went out for sushi afterwards, and then back to Rexford's house for cake, although I passed on the cake. I'm trying to lose 20 pounds, you know, and after five days in a row of two hour gym dates, I'm serious about it.

The more I'm around him, the easier it is. Yesterday, he referenced private jokes from the two decades we were together. It feels surreal sometimes. I remember being married to him, remember loving him, remember when he was the center of my life, and those are happy memories. I haven't quite figured out exactly what I want from him or with him, but I'm guessing I'll figure that out one day at a time.

I went to a party Friday night with Gardening Gal, and I met the guy Social Gal is now dating. He was about 40 pounds overweight, and I didn't really look at him twice when I first met him, but as the evening wore on, he got better and better looking. The more he talked, the more handsome he became. I love when that happens.

I did notice another guy who was there. He was pretty boy handsome. Independently wealthy, as it turns out. His job was managing his investments. But...he was drunk, and the people who knew him at the party said he is often that way. The more I talked to him, the less handsome he became. Of course, he was the one who asked for my phone number, and I gave it to him before I realized how drunk he was. He called me just as I got home that evening, but I ignored it. The last thing I need is a pretty boy playboy nosing around my house.

Social Gal's date is off limits to me. But I realized something, talking to that guy. When I am ready to venture back out into the dating pool, there are interesting men out there...men who will be interested in me. Men who can engage in flirtatious banter as well as philosophical discussions. Men who realize that I am a rare and beautiful find, worthy of being let into their lives and cherished.

Yesterday, at Findlay Market, I was talking to a guy friend of mine who happened to be there and at one point, I threw my head back and laughed that wonderful Betty laugh, the deep throated, loud and lusty laugh that I haven't used in God knows how long. I smiled to myself. I can feel my joy quotient rising with each day, each day since the day I woke up and decided not to be sad anymore, to stop blaming myself that ERG can't or won't love me back. I'm working hard at letting go of responsibility for that.

I know that I can find a man to love who can love me back.

And I will.

As soon as I'm ready.

As soon as I'm ready to let go.

Inner Child

2011-11-11T09:07:00.004-05:00

I know this much to be true; peace does not come from getting what you want, it comes from centering yourself in the very moment, and finding the beauty that surrounds you. Works every time.

I sat across from Psychic Gal yesterday and we discussed the voices from our childhoods; the voices that still haunt us. I suggested to her that I did not feel haunted by negative voices, that I was not overly criticized as a child, that the voices from my childhood mostly said that I was cute and charming. She looked at me skeptically.

"Really, Betty?"

"Well, ok, there is the memory of my father grabbing me by the hair and shaking me, saying 'what's wrong with you, are you stupid?' I guess that qualifies."

"That's exactly what I'm talking about, Betty. Those voices."

"But I was not abandoned as a child. All of my abandonment came later. All of my abandonment has been romantic in nature. No one else abandoned me. My parents didn't. None of my teachers or employers did. Only men I have tried to love."

"Think again, Betty. Neglect is a sort of abandonment."

I thought for a minute. "I have been proud of myself, lately. I think I am really learning how to let go. I purposefully have not sat down with ERG to make plans to see him, deciding instead to just let life happen, to let go of the need to know what and when things happen next. Before, if I didn't have a planned date to see him next, I would think that I'd never see him again."

"That is childish thinking, Betty, and it is that kind of thinking that leads me to believe that you have more work to do. I want you to let the little girls talk again. You haven't done that for awhile. I think it's time to do it again."

And so....this weekend, I will see what happens. Kevin is with his dad. Not much else on the calendar except housework and Hospice. I look forward to chatting with the little me's again.

Trust

2011-11-10T08:48:00.005-05:00

I stood at the counter while the receptionist rummaged through a drawer to find my son's teeth whitening trays. She plopped the plastic box in front of me, and counted out four syringes of whitening gel, explaining as she worked that he was to put one drop in each tiny tooth mold every day for 14 days. I stood there half listening, arguing with myself as to whether or not I should tell her that the dentist's office had already given me my son's whitening gel when I had picked up mine two weeks prior. Today, I was here simply to pick up the molds. Professional grade whitening gel is expensive, and while my teeth were improved, they were not as white as I had hoped they'd be, and if I wanted to get them to their optimum whiteness, I would need to do a second round. How easy it would be to just keep my mouth shut and let her slip those four extra syringes into the little plastic bag so that I could have round two on the house.

"Actually, I'm here to pick up the trays. I already have the whitening gel syringes. They gave them to me when I was here last time." I smiled at the receptionist, hoping that she'd throw the syringes in anyway, to reward me for my honesty.

"Oh. Then you already know what to do. Remind him to not drink red wine, coffee, tea or any other dark beverage during the whitening process." With that, she removed the four syringes in question and handed me the bag.

I consider myself an honest person. As honest as I can be. I lie on occasion. Everyone does, even those who proclaim to be absolutely honest, and who spit epitaphs at those who get caught. I try to keep those untruths to a minimum, though, because karma can be a bitch. Mostly, I try to do no harm. I used to tell my children that every time they lied to someone, ten people would lie to them. If they wanted honesty from others, they had to give honesty.

I have learned that people lie mostly to escape losing something. They lie to save face. They lie to not disappoint. They lie to escape blame. They lie to hide their behavior. They lie because they do not trust the person with whom they are speaking with the truth.

I have learned something in the past decade of negotiating work, raising children, dating, cultivating middle aged friendships; I have learned that providing a safe place for difficult truths to be told is just as important as telling the truth. I have learned that if I want the truth from my children, I have to react to truthful words in such a way that my children know that the consequenses of truth will fit their crimes, and that my love for them will never be in question, regardless of what comes out of their mouths.

I have also learned that being lied to is not the worst offense. The worst offense is being made to feel less than because the truth wasn't told. The worst offense is the feeling that telling the truth is so overwhelmingly fearful, that the risk of lying is worth the consequense.

I learned the same thing when I got divorced, when I learned the most painful truths I've ever learned. If I was able to react with love and compassion, I got more truth. When I was able to accommodate and understand, I got fewer lies. Creating a safe space for people to be truthful is a responsibility equal to that of the person debating whether to tell the truth or to lie.

It's all about trust. Creating trust. In order for a person to be truthful, they must trust the receiver of the words. If someone lies to me, especially someone with whom I have worked to cultivate trust, I assume a portion of the responsibility for that lie, because I consider myself to have failed in creating a safe place for truth to be received.

Honesty is a two way street. Lies speak to both parties. Our society harbors such judgement and moral outrage for those caught speaking untruths, but no one talks about the barrage of abuse that befalls those who admit to wrong doing. No wonder it is so tempting to lie, to escape that abuse.

The lies that have been told to me have hurt. The pain was every bit as much internal as it was directed towards the liar, though. I wondered what I might have done to have given the liar the need to protect himself, what message I might have sent that insinuated that the truth would have been met with anything less than understanding and compassion.

Understanding and compassion are the cornerstones to trust. I seek to build all of my relationships with those building blocks.

I left the dentist's office with my bag in hand, minus the extra syringes, but with the peace of mind that the next time someone is tempted to be less than honest, perhaps the karma I created will nudge them to trust me with the truth.

Accepting Love

2011-11-09T08:26:00.000-05:00

You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go

Many of us have worked too hard to make relationships work; sometimes those relationships didn't have a chance because the other person was unavailable or refused to participate.

To compensate for the other person's unavailability, we worked too hard. We may have done all or most of the work. This may mask the situation for a while, but we usually get tired. Then, when we stop doing all the work, we notice there is no relationship, or we're so tired we don't care.

Doing all the work in a relationship is not loving, giving, or caring. It is self-defeating and relationship defeating. It creates the illusion of a relationship when in fact there may be no relationship. It enables the other person to be irresponsible for his or her share. Because that does not meet our needs, we ultimately feel victimized.

In our best relationships, we all have temporary periods where one person participates more than the other. This is normal. But as a permanent way of participating in relationships, it leaves us feeling tired, worn out, needy, and angry.'

We can learn to participate a reasonable amount, and then let the relationship find it's own life. Are we doing all the calling? Are we doing all the initiating? Are we doing all the giving? Are we the one talking about feelings and striving for intimacy?

Are we doing all the waiting, the hoping, and the work?

We can let go. If the relationship is meant to be, it will be, and it will become what it is meant to be. We do not help that process by trying to control it. We do not help the other person, the relationship, or ourselves by trying to force it or by doing all the work.

Let it be. Wait and see. Stop worrying about making it happen. See what happens and strive to understand if that is what you want.

Today, I will stop doing all the work in my relationships. I will give myself and the other person the gift of requiring both people to participate. I will accept the natural level my relationships reach when I do my share and allow the other person to choose what his or her share will be. I can trust my relationships to reach their own level. I do not have to do all the work; I need only do my share.

From The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie ©1990

Finding Joy

2011-11-07T12:26:00.005-05:00

There is an art to figuring out what one can and cannot control in the universe. An art, or a science, or a magic to the realization, and putting into effect the result of that realization. Three things have happened over the past week that have brought me closer to figuring all this out:

1) I went camping with Sunshine Gal out in the middle of no where in the hills of Kentucky. As luck would have it, while we were visiting the abandoned house of her sweetie's mother, her sweetie's cousin had a seizure and died within 500 feet of where we were, while we were roaming the creek next to his house. We were going to stop and visit him after our exploration of the old homestead, but decided to come back the next morning so that I could take pictures. Around the campfire the next morning, hearing the news, realizing all the what ifs, I discarded the idea that anything should have happened any differently than it did. The universe is unfolding as it should. I will now never meet Cousin Eddie. I brushed as close to his life as I was meant to brush. After we got the news, we stopped by his house, now padlocked. I was able to get a feel for his persona from the trappings of his place of abode, but he knew nothing of me and never would, and I would only know him in the same way that I know characters in a book...through the conjecture of my imagination. I will not gnash my teeth in regret, in shoulda's or coulda's or woulda's. How unproductive....but also, how fleeting life is, how quickly people fade from our lives.

2) Which brings me to number 2. My former business partner has taken a new partner and will change the name of the firm I founded effective January 1, 2012. I discovered this on Facebook. My ties to that segment of my life have been effectively severed, not from any sense of malice or even neglect, but simply because I am no longer a part of the activity of the firm, nor should I be. It simply is. I shed no tears over this news, simply held the information in my heart, let it course through a few times, and nodded my head in acceptance. I have faded from their lives and they have faded from mine. So be it.

3) I spent Saturday afternoon alone with my ex husband in his apartment. I was there to work, and to assist him in focusing on his work, but we talked instead. Talked and laughed and shared dating stories. We shared our desire to find a life partner and the difficulties thereof. I was struck by how similar our needs in a partner were, how we were both looking for the attributes we had found in each other all those decades ago, with one glaring exception. I was struck by how much affection I still feel for him, how much I truly wished for his happiness, almost as much as I wish for my own. I was not sad about how things had turned out. Just the opposite. Things were as they were supposed to be. We are still family and always will be, and we both fervently hope that the other will soon be able to add another to the family fold. We both seek happiness and joy for the other.

People connect in different ways. I once thought that I needed to connect and stay connected with every person with whom I had a meaningful dialogue. I no longer feel that need. I accept that I cannot control how another feels, or even if another connects to me. I'm learning how to let go of people. Graceful Gal has moved to Florida. I haven't heard from Chemistry Guy for almost a year. Fabulous Guy is 100% out of my line of sight, even disappearing from Facebook. SAHD-Guy shows up at a party now and then, and hugs me with great affection, but we are no longer on each other's frequently called list. I have a few old connections from the past that I have chosen to let go of as well, despite attempts on their part to keep a tether of connection. I'm learning how to let go, hopefully with grace and dignity.

But I'm also learning how not to let go if the timing just doesn't seem right. I also understand that the door swings both ways, and people boomerang around in one's field of vision, and that's ok, too. I choose to live without judgement as much as I can, to love with abandon regardless of the balance of affection. Some people come in and out of one's field of vision, and I will not turn them away, will not let my ego deprive me of the joy of the presence of those I love and will always love.

But...

I woke up on Saturday morning and decided that neither will I allow the lack of one's presence to deprive me of joy as well. I woke up and thought about being unhappy, but something spoke to me, inside my head. Something said, "Betty, you will NOT be sad today. You will look for beauty, you will find joy and meaning in today just as it is." And I did.

I went to Findlay Market, and I went on a date, and I cleaned my house, and I spent the afternoon laughing with my ex husband, and I sang at the top of my lungs, and I danced at the Palm Court, and I held Easy Rider Guy in my heart with peace and love and acceptance...all at the same time, or at least, all in the same day.

I am going back into therapy.

Next Tuesday.

I am also, along with 20 of my closest friends, taking the next three months to be as healthy as I possibly can be. That means going to the gym every day, limiting my alcohol and popcorn intake, eating sensibly and on a plan, and drinking lots of water. I will hopefully emerge on the other side of that three months wearing smaller clothes, feeling more confident about how I look.

Although I have to say...I feel like I'm looking good these days. Just as I am. Nonetheless, I have a goal, and I'm a determined woman.

Underneath it all, I'm determined to find, keep, hold on to joy. And share that joy however I can.

Relationships

2011-11-07T08:10:00.001-05:00

You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go

Relationships

... There is a gift for us in each relationship that comes our way.

Sometimes the gift is a behavior we're learning to acquire: detachment, self esteem, becoming confident enough to set a boundary, or owning our power in another way.

Some relationships trigger healing in us - healing from issues of the past or an issue we're facing today.

Sometimes we find ourselves learning the most important lessons from the people we least expect to help us. Relationships may teach us about loving ourselves or someone else. Or maybe we'll learn to let others love us.

Sometimes, we aren't certain what lesson we're learning, especially while we're in the midst of the process. But we can trust that the lesson and the gift are there. We don't have to control this process. We'll understand, when it's time. We can also trust that the gift is precisely what we need.

Today, I'll be grateful for all my relationships. I will open myself to the lesson and the gift from each person in my life. I will trust that I, too, am a gift in the other people's lives.

From The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie ©1990

Findlay Market

2011-11-05T10:38:00.004-04:00

A cornicopia of color and confusion, organized haphazardly, I revel in my Saturday morning indulgence of peppermint tea, strawberry waffle and beautifully ordinary people. Babies abound in their breathtaking beginnings. Elderly men gather for their weekly respite from household chores. Toddlers sing uninhibited by melody or rhythm. Old married couples hold hands in heartfelt companionship.

And then there's me, conversing with my friends, brousing brussel sprouts, broccoli and bread, soaking it all in, trying to find grace...and peace...

My Religion

2011-11-04T11:18:00.002-04:00

I believe in the goddess of the church of Betty. She is kind, compassionate, willing to let others make their own decisions, will not interfere with another's freedom. She loves the earth, grows flowers, celebrates beauty in its many and varied forms. She loves everyone and everything. She is the essense of love. She assists each of us in our continuing quest to be the grandest version of the greatest vision we've ever had of ourselves. She is energy and life. She is me, and she is you and we all are one with her.

Try this quiz:

Even if YOU don't know what faith you are, knows. Answer 20 questions about your concept of God, the afterlife, human nature, and more, and will tell you what religion (if any) you practice...or ought to consider practicing.

These are my results:

Your Top 3 Faith Match Profiles Are:
1. Unitarian Universalism (100%)
2. Neo-Pagan (94%)
3. Liberal Quakers (91%)

Caption this picture

2011-11-04T11:08:00.001-04:00

2011-11-01T10:37:00.002-04:00

I am a sentimental fool. I love to please. I enjoy creating beautiful spaces and memories. Sometimes, they come on their own, but a well planned celebration, with traces of sentiment, emotion, passion, all thought through, and a bit of spontaneity from the other participant, leads to an evening to remember.

Tonight.

To celebrate one year ago.

And the 365 days that came next.

2011-10-31T09:12:00.001-04:00

2011-10-30T20:56:00.001-04:00

Einstein(I think he considers himself a deist) says: ""I'm NOT an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist.

We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements of the books, but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God."

2011-10-30T10:19:00.003-04:00

I'm sitting here trying to compose a letter.

I still have plenty of time. Every morning for the past few weeks, I've woken up at 4:30 and sobbed into my pillow, composing the letter in my head, but now that I'm sitting here at the computer, intent on putting down words, nothing feels right, and I simply start crying again.

What to do, what to do....

Little Brown Box

2011-10-28T09:02:00.002-04:00

We all have a little brown box, on the top shelf, in the back of the closet, or hidden in a locked drawer of our desk.

We all have a little brown box in which we hide all of the nasty aspects of ourselves that we know, we know, if the people around us discovered, they would reject us outright, would cast us aside, would run screaming away in horror.

I am watching Mad Men, am up to episode 43. I have fallen madly in love with Don Draper, have cradled his head between my breasts, have smoothed back the toniced hair from his brow after every single one of his bad decisions.

I have watched his character evolve like a rapt lover, sighing over his choice of an ice maiden wife, his repeated attempts to find some kind of acceptance between the legs of countless women, his meteoric rise to power in the advertising world, his compassion, generosity, and beautiful soul revealed in countless ways. I have nodded in agreement at the many ways he counteracts his past by refusing to emulate his own parentage, by his honest and trustworthy business practices. I recoiled in horror when his trophy wife found his brown box, and reacted exactly as he feared she would.

His wife's name is Elizabeth, and she goes by Betty.

I have met Don Draper, but I'll never be like his wife.

I wonder what people around me would do if they ever found my little brown box. I have revealed so much of it here, on these ethernet pages, but there is more, more that is hidden in the far reaches of my closet, taped tightly around corrugated sheets.

We all have those boxes hidden away.

One hopes that someday, should that box be found and unwrapped, that we have chosen wisely the ones we let close. One hopes, that should the day arrive when our secrets are exposed, that they will fall into safe, soft and loving hands.

One hopes that we can find people to love us, just as we are. One hopes that we can find people who understand that little brown boxes of secrets don't change the person. They simply give us a different perspective.

2011-10-26T13:13:00.002-04:00

You were the one

You weren't.

You are lucky to have found her.

I know.

2011-10-26T09:04:00.002-04:00

I heard a quote last night from the movie our Tuesday movie group saw. "Life is chance working against destiny." It struck me.

Found on Facebook

2011-10-24T22:33:00.012-04:00

2011-10-20T16:43:00.004-04:00

Troubled days and nights. Keeping my head above water, but just barely. Life is so hard sometimes, so confusing, so conflicted. Choices flit about, forks in the road that seem to be mutually exclusive. No crystal ball, no heart, no matter.

The leaves fall outside my window, waltzing slowing in their slumber to rest in piles, waiting to be sucked to the street. The trees bare themselves, just as I do, selling their souls to the secrets of the squirrels. I want off this merry-go-round, but my obligations tether me with chains of responsibility. Who would take care of the dog?

I must do something.

I cannot continue as I am.

What to do?

2011-10-18T14:36:00.002-04:00

2011-10-12T09:25:00.002-04:00

This saucy, bawdy wench is bustin' out for Florida tomorrow! Pirate Party on Friday, Luau on Saturday, Drumming circle on Sunday...the wind, the sand, the sun, the hugs, the skinny dipping, the continuous party in the penthouse, the best friends a person could ever want.

Pride

2011-10-11T09:01:00.005-04:00

My youngest son's face glowed with pride as he stood before me and announced, "I got a job, Mom."

For the past month, every Monday, he donned a collared shirt and khaki pants and trudged one block up the hill to the LaRosa's on the corner. Each week, he'd return and tell me the manager told him to come back next week.

Until last night.

What is it about vicarious pride that feels so good?

The scale is slipping steadily downward. I have taken to admiring my naked body in the mirror every morning when I get dressed and every evening when I go to bed. I like the slide on the scale, the bones that become increasingly visible, the muscles grown taut with the two hours I spend at the gym every day, the uplifted breasts from all of the presses I do. I'm feeling good...feeling downright fine.

I like what I see in the mirror.

There is nothing vicarious about that kind of pride.

2011-10-10T08:07:00.000-04:00

Self-Disclosure

2011-10-09T10:24:00.001-04:00

You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie

Learning to gently reveal who we are is how we open ourselves up to love and intimacy in our relationships.

Many of us have hidden under a protective shell, a casing that prevents others from seeing or hurting us. We do not want to be that vulnerable. We do not want to expose our thoughts, feelings, fears, weaknesses, and sometimes our strengths, to others.

We do not want others to see who we really are.

We may be afraid they might judge us, go away, or not like us. We may be uncertain that who we are is okay or exactly how we should reveal ourselves to others.

Being vulnerable can be frightening, especially if we have lived with people who abused, mistreated, manipulated, or did not appreciate us.

Little by little, we learn to take the risk of revealing ourselves. We disclose the real person within to others. We pick safe people, and we begin to disclose bits and pieces about ourselves.

Sometimes, out of fear, we may withhold, thinking that will help the relationship or will help others like us more. That is an illusion. Withholding who we are does not help the other person, the relationship, or us. Withholding is behavior that backfires. For true intimacy and closeness to exist, for us to love ourselves and be content in a relationship, we need to disclose who we are.

That does not mean we tell all to everyone at once. That can be a self-defeating behavior too. We can learn to trust ourselves, about who to tell, when to tell, where to tell, and how much to tell.

To trust that people will love and like us if we are exactly who we are is frightening. But it is the only way we can achieve what we want in relationships. To let go of our need to control others - their opinions, their feelings about us, or the course of the relationship - is the key.

Gently, like a flower, we can learn to open up. Like a flower, we will do that when the sun shines and there is warmth.

Today, I will begin to take the risk of disclosing who I am to someone with whom I feel safe. I will let go of some of my protective devices and risk being vulnerable - even though I may have been taught differently, even though I may have taught myself differently. I will disclose who I am in a way that reflects self-responsibility, self-love, directness, and honesty. God, help me let go of my fears about disclosing who I am to people. Help me accept who I am, and help me let go of my need to be who people want me to be.

From The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie ©1990

2011-10-08T10:26:00.003-04:00

I went to a poetry reading last night. It was at a funky, new agey place in Clifton. Incense illuminated the crystals and stones for sale on wooden shelves around the shop, and the hot chocolate I purchased from the tatooed and multiply pierced twenty something hipster was the best I'd ever had, even made with skim milk.

The crowd listening to the poet was almost entirely comprised of people around my age, some coupled, some single. The notable exception was the early twenties heavy set woman with the four month old infant. His wide eyed gaze and delighted smile at everyone who offered a smile in return was infinitely entertaining, even moreso than the poet, who it turns out, was the child's grandfather. At one point, the young mother sat down and nursed him, casually slipping him from her left breast to her right breast without even a hint of embarrassment or cover up for that matter. I unabashedly watched...with envy and nostalgia. How I remember those days, although I was always the epitome of discreet with my breasts, even when nursing at home.

I'm still pretty discreet with my breasts.

But I may change my tune when it's time to skinny dip in Florida next weekend!

2011-10-07T12:48:00.002-04:00

Last night, I sat on chilly bleachers with my ex husband, watching cheerleaders and pigskin for 45 minutes, before the marching band came out and together, we kept our eyes on the tallest drummer. We conversed about the spiffy uniforms, the sequined capes tucked onto the right shoulders of each of the blue clad musicians, the troubadour hats, plumed in purple. We caught each other up on each other's lives, discussing the antics of a mutual friend.

We sat together, on bleachers, like parents who like each other.

Which we are.

Finally. After all these years. I'm so relieved.

I drove him to his downtown abode after the half time show, arriving back home to catch the last half of Grey's Anatomy.

How far I have come this past decade.

Hold My Hand

2011-10-06T07:54:00.004-04:00

I sat across the table from these two former work friends of a friend. One was about my age, blonde, slender, the other was a brunette, penciled eyebrows, about 15 years older.

"So tell me about yourselves," I smiled to both of them. "Are you single, divorced, married?"

"I'm the first two; single, divorced." said the blonde.

"I'm married." replied the brunette.

"Are you still in love?" I asked the older woman.

She looked at me in surprise, taken aback, I guess, from my blunt question. She stared at me for just a moment longer than one would expect, then she said, "Yeah. I guess we are still in love."

"How long have you been married?"

"Almost 44 years."

I leaned back in my chair and smiled wistfully. I'll never know what it feels like to say those words, of that I am pretty sure.

The brunette continued, "My husband has cancer. It started in his lungs, moved to his lymph nodes, now it's everywhere. He's 81 years old, and we've stopped all treatment. The doctors give him another year. He does ok right now, has good days and bad days. Last night, we were sleeping, or at least trying to sleep. He turns to me and asks, 'you awake?' Well, he'd been sort of tossing and turning, so I said, 'yeah, I'm awake. Are you ok?' He said, 'would you hold my hand? I'm fine, at least, I'll be fine if you would just hold my hand.' So I did, and he went right to sleep."

I have thought about that for the past 24 hours.

I want to find someone to hold my hand when I'm scared at night. I want to be there to hold the hand of someone I love, who simply needs their hand held so that they can feel safe enough to sleep.

I want that.

I am going to have that.

I need to figure out how to make that happen.

2011-10-02T09:41:00.002-04:00

So much to talk about.

Is this the place to be spilling my guts, to take the microscope inside my head and examine all the bits and pieces? Should I do that privately? Why does it feel so much more valid when I post those thoughts for the world to see? Is it not enough to just record, capture, express, solidify for me?

I don't write as creatively when I write for just myself. Because only a teensy tiny fraction of my thoughts actually end up here on the computer screen, my beautiful thoughts with elegant words speak to me all day long.

All day long.

When it comes time to put them down onto paper, only the basic, necessary, functional words find their way onto the page when I write simply for myself. It seems that only the thought of an audience gives my mind permission to paint the page with precision and color.

I wonder why that is.

Perhaps I don't feel the need to impress myself. I'm already impressed with myself just by thinking the thoughts. I mean, who shows off for themselves? When we show off, it is to impress others.

Why isn't it enough to create beauty just for me?

Are musicians happy to write songs that others never hear?

Are painters content with a masterpiece that stays hidden under a canvass?

I want to share my thoughts with the world. I want to be who I really am, and to be that person, I need to share.

But....

Who I really am is a person who inflicts no intentional pain on another. Were my words to be painful, surely I would not feel the need to express them.

Oh, the conundrum.

When my ex husband asked me to not write about him or the boys, my pen was stilled for months. Oh, I tried, I tried to write about other things, tried to replace my thoughts with photographs, tried to navigate around the barriers I felt inside my head, but it was only after meeting Fabulous Guy that I let those shrouds lift and really started writing again.

So, now that I am no longer an accountant, with all this time to tip tap here, I want to be able to write as freely as I think.

And I think I'll have another conversation on the topic, just to do no harm.

2011-09-30T08:46:00.002-04:00

Oh, the things I'd like to say here.

Amish herbalist I visited on Tuesday says I take good care of my body. I'm going to let someone else take good care it in the very near future.

I am changing the way I'm thinking about certain people in my life.

I value myself more each and every day.

I read the play I wrote in 2004 detailing the first date with my ex husband all the way through our marriage, birthing of children and businesses to our transition ceremony 19 years later. I cried. I worried, then, that I still wasn't over it, nine years after the judge pounded the gavel. Then I decided that I'm just a really good writer, and I elicited the emotions I wanted to elicit in my writing.

Tonight I will watch my youngest son march in the marching band, and I will sit next to said ex husband and be happy about it.

I have awesome friends.

I love my sons, more than anything else in this world.

Hot flashes are an interesting way for mother nature to remind one to live in the moment.

I don't need much, but I'm going to pay more attention to getting what I need.

No more muting. For anyone. Ever again.

2011-09-25T21:26:00.000-04:00

Please spay or neuter your pets! This is a tragic example of an in-bread cat!
Stolen from Facebook...

Hospice Work

2011-09-22T09:28:00.000-04:00

Her breathing stumbles. Her chest rises and falls, working hard for just a bit of air, and perhaps, she gets some, but after what seems like forever, the air passages open wide and she snores deeply in, a cacophony of sound as her body seeks to replenish its oxygen supply. She wakes up with each loud snore, seeking sleep in the moments between. When I first arrived, she cried out in pain. “I want to go home!” I held her hand, smoothed back the hair from her head, hair that was once black but now has an inch and a half of mostly gray. I whisper to her, “Go on home, Ginny. Papa’s waiting. Go home, as soon as you are ready.”

We repeat this pattern several times during the afternoon. She stops breathing. She snores. She struggles for breath and cries out. I comfort. Give permission to go.

At one point, she opened her eyes, looking deeply into mine. I smiled at her. “Hi, Ginny.”

Her face broke out into the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen. Real, unmuted joy enveloped her face.

“Merry Christmas!” she said, clearly as if a bell were ringing.

I beamed back at her.

“Oh, Ginny. It is so beautiful outside! Your daughter has such a green thumb. The dahlias are in full bloom with their last hurrah of the fall. It has been raining rather steadily for the past week and everything is as vibrantly green as in April. The oranges and reds and purples of the impatiens and the cockscomb are a wonder to behold.”

Her eyes held mine as tightly as if her arms were around them. She squeezed my hand, smiled, sighed, and went back to sleep.

When her daughter returned, she tried to give me gas money, pulled two five’s from her wallet, but I recoiled in horror. I do this work for me, for the food it provides my soul. To be compensated by anything other than the pleasure of bringing comfort feels just so incredibly wrong.

2011-09-21T08:28:00.003-04:00

It is a dark morning, for 8:32am. The sky is overcast. Rain drips from the forest primeval just outside of my family room patio door. The dandelions I tried to rip from the spaces between the patio stones are spiking up with shrieks of tenacity, daring me to attempt their deaths again. There is an almost unnatural quiet, only the drip of the rain, the tip tap of my fingers on the keyboard. Even the dryer has silenced herself for this moment. A cricket senses the disquiet and begins to sing. The cat languorously licks her fur. The dog snuffles in her sleep. Life returns to normal.

Epiphany

2011-09-20T09:16:00.000-04:00

I’m sitting in the living room of my hospice patient, listening to Adele sing Someone Like You. Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead. My patient is a 94 year old woman, a former model from the forties. Her portrait hangs to my left; a beautiful brunette in a slender green gown, high cheek bones, perfect nose and elegant neck, her hands folded gracefully on her lap. She was married for 40 years until she was widowed thirty years ago. A few years later, she remarried, but only for a couple years. It turns out her second husband was an alcoholic and had some intolerable behaviors that one simply doesn’t discover until after marriage.

Outside the window, the garden is alive with dahlias and roses, and elephant ears and hosta and a plethora of other flowering plants. Two bird feeders hang from crooked poles close to the house and the birds twitter delightedly at the bounty before them.

So much life outside this room.

I watch the birds and listen as Ginny’s apnea deepens and lengthens. My first visit was last Thursday, and as long ago as then, I was concerned that she didn’t have much time left. She has lived with her daughter for nine years now in this lovely house, surrounded by gardens, cluttered with the mish mash and knick knacks of 90 plus years of living. Everything is neat and dusted, though.

The daughter is fascinating to me. She has been divorced for thirty years and is as comfortable in her soleness as anyone I’ve come across. Her life is full and rich, she teaches part time at the local university, travels to Europe now and again, visits friends and encourages them to visit her. As we tended to her mother last Thursday, she held her mother’s head to her breast and crooned to her, smoothing back the thinning hair, kissing her mother’s forehead, and cheek, and temple…loving her with such devotion and unadulterated adoration. The next few days, weeks, months will be hard for her. Nothing prepares you for the void that comes next after someone you love leaves, regardless of the reasons why.

So, I sit here, listening to Ginny breathe, watching the flashes of gold and crimson and gray from the bird feeder, soaking in the garden scents, thinking about the epiphany I had on the elliptical yesterday.

Two weeks ago, Psychic Gal gave me a challenge. She asked me to write every day for two weeks on why I am still unattached after a decade of being single. I did a little of it, but writing these past two weeks has been sort of difficult. Don’t ask me why, just has been.

But…I’ve been pondering the question. A lot. Yesterday, on the elliptical, I was reading the last 30 pages of Anne Tyler’s Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. The matriarch dies, finally, and the father, who had abandoned the family thirty years before, shows up for the funeral. There were some harsh words between the father and the oldest son because the matriarch had been a bitter mother, with a sharp temper and a tendency to use physically and emotionally violent means to resolve her occasional conflicts. Most of the time, she was cold but civil…but on that rare occasion when she lost her temper, it was pretty awful.

Something pulled a trigger in my psyche when I read those pages. I found myself sobbing, pumping furiously, as wave after wave of realization washed over me. I realized that I mute myself when I fall in love. I mute more than just my voice, I mute my vibrant colors, the colors every one else in my world sees and admires. I realized that my love interest becomes the stand in for the role my father played. I equate, unequivocally, sex with love, just as I did with my father, and I stand ready to obey his every whim and desire. I dare not talk back or voice a concern about his treatment of me for fear that he will reject me.

As an adult, I have never dated a man who wasn’t kind to me. But every man does things that a woman doesn’t like, especially when he doesn’t love her in return.

I looked back to Str8 Man from 2003, to Magic Man from 2004, to Fabulous Guy in 2010, to Easy Rider Guy in 2011 and I see an astonishing pattern. I was vibrant, strong, funny, witty, confident and clear when they met me. That’s what attracted them to me. But as my feelings for them grew and as soon as the relationship turned physical, I began to fade…to become less Betty around them.

I realize that as a child, I had to mute myself to survive. I had to blend into the woodwork as best I could to minimize the attentions of my father, and I was taught early on to never, ever express disappointment or displeasure in anything my father chose to do. Somehow, as a man gets close to me, or rather, as I get close to him, I revert to those self defense mechanisms.

I don’t know why. They are obviously no longer applicable to my life, today.

Perhaps it is simply ingrained in my brain that this is how love works.

When I was married, I was able to express displeasure and disappointment…even anger, on very rare occasions. My ex husband was an exceptionally gentle and sensitive man, though, and I rarely had reason to be unhappy with him. The things that gave me concern mostly arose later in our marriage, once it was already doomed. I don’t know why I seem to have reverted to this old pattern of behavior in the decade after my marriage ended.

And so, Adele sings to me of love lost, and Ginny has now stopped breathing for almost 15 seconds. Her mouth gapes open and her chest rises and falls with each attempt for air, but none passes through her lungs. Then in great gulping breaths, her body remembers and pulses back, making up for lost time.

I wonder who awaits her on the other side, who will escort her to the great beyond. I assume her husband will be there, and perhaps her parents. I wonder what her husband will have to say about the second marriage.

I wonder if anything at all comes next.

I don’t know.

I don’t want to know.

One of the reasons this hospice work has such appeal to me is because it takes some of the mystery out of the dying process, makes it less fearsome, but adds such a dimension of mystery to death itself.

Will any of us really know until we experience it?

Probably not, and that’s fine with me. I like a little mystery in life, why not also in death?

Just like I like a little mystery in relationships.

Going forward, I’m not sure what to do with this epiphany of mine. Of course, it’s easy to say, “Well, Betty, just stop muting yourself. Open your mouth. Be heard.” I think there’s more to it than that. I was texting with Sunshine Gal and she asked me what I want out of a relationship. I didn’t have to think too long before I typed back, “I want desperately to have a relationship based on freedom to be who we each really are. I do not want to impede the progress of another on his journey, nor even mould it to fit mine. Nor do I want to have mine impeded or molded. I want to give and receive freedom as much as I want to give and receive love.”

But freedom is exactly what I seem to be robbing myself of in my own history of romance. Freedom to be the colorful, vibrant, mystical Betty that everyone else gets to see. Oh, sure, they see it on paper in my writing, but when they are with me, I show them mostly my sexy self. I mute the other stuff.

The men I love don’t ask it of me. I do it to myself.

Now I just have to figure out how to undo it.

Seasons

2011-09-19T10:11:00.002-04:00

It is officially fall, even if the calendar gives us a few more days of summer. The equinox approaches, the balancing of daylight and starlight. My world is about balancing right now.

I am still writing every day, but for a variety of reasons, I will not be posting as often. I see some of you stopping in for a hopeful visit several times a day and I HATE disappointing people. I'm telling you all up front. Not as much from Betty right now.

Oh, but I do have some stories to tell! What I can tell without telling too much, I will. I will post a story later today about my weekend....a very edited version. You will all have to fill in the blanks on your own.

One day, this will all be in a novel and you can download it onto your computer. Hopefully, it won't be free. Hopefully, you will pay lots of $ for the chance to devour my goodies.

But until then, thank you all for your faithful patronage. I check my stats every day, and my heart swells every time I see the repeated hits. It is what keeps me coming back to pound away here.

This past week, I've been writing draft posts with no intention of posting. It feels different when I know no one else will be looking. I get sloppy. I don't choose my words as carefully. The paint brush goes wildly outside of the lines and I give not one thought about the beauty of the thoughts or words that appear on the page. I need people to read what I write so that I create instead of just record.

For now, though, I need to keep my thoughts to myself.

I'm sure you understand.

Thanks again for being here.

Heart Strong

2011-09-15T08:19:00.005-04:00

I've been working hard at taking off this last 20 pounds, which means that I have been going to the gym every day. I had a breakfast meeting today, which precluded an early morning visit, so I am going at the end of the day. I climb on the elliptical, start reading my book, my legs pumping, my arms pushing. A little girl climbs on the elliptical next to me.

I've seen her a couple times before at the gym over the past year or so. She always climbs on the elliptical next to me and we talk. She is a little bit on the chubby side, and her mother, who is slim and muscular, insists on a 15 minute visit, but to be honest, Shamika mostly talks.

"Shamika!" I exclaim. "How's the new school year? What grade are you in now?"

"Fifth grade." She replies shyly.

"Wow! So you're in the middle school now! And you have three teachers instead of one. Who do you have?" I chatter excitedly. I'm actually really glad to see her.

"Ms. Saunders, Ms. Moriarty, and Mr. Mayer."

"My son loved Mr. Mayer! Does he still have a snake in his room?" I ask.

Her eyes widen and her mouth ohs in fear.

"Oh, I guess not." I chuckle. "He had a snake in his classroom when my son had him, but that was 11 years ago. What's your favorite subject? Besides recess, that is."

She laughs. "I like recess, but my favorite subject is math."

"That's awesome! Not many girls like math, so that will make you stand out. It's good to be different."

She looks at me questioningly and I go on.

"You know, being different now might not seem like such a good thing. During middle school and into high school, kids work so very hard to be just alike. They wear the same clothes, wear their hair the same, try to talk the same, try to be the same. But that all changes when you get to college, and out here in the real world, it is the people that choose to be different that make a difference. You just focus on being who you really are, try to temper the need to blend in."

Her mother comes up. "I'm sorry. She talks to everyone."

"Oh, don't apologise! I started it!"

"Well, 99.9% of the time, she's the one who starts it, so I was just checking to make sure she wasn't bothering you." The mother glances critically at her daughter, who is making a very half hearted attempt at moving the pedals of the elliptical.

"I was the same way when I was her age. Talked to everybody. Always had my hand in the air at school. I was the youngest of five children, and I had to get attention whereever I could find it. How many siblings does Shamika have?"

"She's the youngest of five." her mother replies, a little surprised.

"Gimme five, Shamika! Let's hear it for the youngest of five!" We slap hands across the machines.

The mom walks away and Shamika and I keep pumping our legs.

"That girl in front of us has been going fast for a long time." Shamika confides, watching the slim, older girl, pumping rapidly on the machine in front of us.

I nod my head. "Yeah, she's probably training for something. She's slender, so she can go fast, especially since it looks like she's been doing this for awhile."

"Why do people do this kind of exercise?" Shamika looks at me.

"They do it to make their hearts strong." I reply, smiling back. "You have to make your heart strong and you have to do it early in life because it has to break so many times. You keep your heart strong so that it can heal. And every time your heart breaks, and you heal, you make your heart all the stronger. Yeah, girl, that's why I come here so often. I need to keep my heart strong."

She looks at me doubtfully.

"Just to be clear, heartbreak is not always a bad thing. You learn from it. You grow from it, even when it hurts, maybe because it hurts. You learn to trust that all pain passes, eventually. You just have to wade through the river, get yourself to the other side, keep putting one foot in front of the other. That's a good lesson, not a bad one."

"My mom has had her heart broken a few times."

"Most mothers have, Shamika. It comes with the territory."

"My mom is really strong."

"Does she exercise?"

"Oh, yeah, just look at her. She's really strong."

I nod my head. "I can see that. Well, you keep coming to the gym, you'll be strong, too. Even if someone breaks your heart, you will still be strong because you've worked to keep that heart of your's strong. And, sometimes your heart breaks from the sheer joy of life. Haven't you ever seen a sunset, or looked at a flower and just felt your heart break into a million pieces because it was so indescribably beautiful?"

She nods her head. "Sorta. I sorta know what you mean. Whose mom are you again?" she asks.

"I'm Kevin's mom. And Greg and Scott's mom."

"Don't you have a daughter?"

I smile over at her. "Nope. That's why I like talking to you so much. My boys don't have a clue about what I'm talking about."

The hour approaches and the gym is closing. Shamika's mother calls to her, but she is still chatting with me. I hear her mother scold her a few minutes later.

"Now, when I tell you to come, you come! You got that, girl?"

I glance over at Shamika as I gather up my things. She stands next to her angry mother, oblivious to her distress, and smiles at me, gives me a little wave.

I wonder what I would have thought, had a grown woman spoken to me as I have spoken to her this evening. I wonder if anyone did, and I've simply forgotten.

I take off my sodden headband, pull on my t-shirt, rummage in my bag for my keys and my cell phone. There's a missed call. I tap the pull down menu to see who it was and smile.

My heart is strong. I can withstand anything. I'm ready for whatever comes next, regardless if it is heartbreak or joy.

For now, I'm going for the joy.

Day One of Homework

2011-09-14T12:53:00.005-04:00

Psychic Gal gave me some homework last Thursday. I haven't done it. I'll start now. She said that I needed to write every day for the next two weeks on why I have been unable to successfully attach romantically since my divorce.

The number one reason I've not attached is because there are lessons I need to learn before the universe will allow it to happen.

2. I have yet to meet the man worthy of me.
3. I have trouble trusting.
4. My butt is too big...I won't find a man until I lose this last 20 pounds.
5. I think too much, analyze too much, and until I can control that, I scare prospective partners away.
6. I am only attracted to alpha males, and they do not maintain their attraction to me because I don't let them pursue.
7. I am really an alpha male myself, and am only attracted to those I have to pursue, which repels them.
8. I am not meant to meet a partner until my primary parenting duties have been met.
9. I was alotted one true love in my lifetime and I've already used that one up.
10. I am an alpha female, and I want an alpha male, but am unwilling to use the alpha female wiles to manipulate him into a relationship.

At Sustaining last night, Mary asked the question "What would keep you from remaining a Sustainer?" meaning, someone who is working their plan, doing the five steps, and maintaining their weight. When the question was posed to me, the answer was obvious. I said, "If I became truly happy." When I am happy, I gain weight. Then the question was asked, "What would make me truly happy?" And again, the answer was obvious. The only thing causing me pain in my life right now is my lack of a partner. Finding my one true love would make me happy. And then the question was asked, "What is keeping you from finding your one true love?" Again, the answer was obvious; the last 20 pounds that I still have to lose. They all thought I was kidding. I was not. Inside my head, I believe that my big butt is keeping me from finding love. And as soon as I find it, I will be happy, and as soon as I'm happy, I'll get fat again.

Circular thinking.

Part of me believes that my marriage ended because I got fat after having my last two children. And maybe that is true. My ex husband said it was "not irrelevant" to his acting out on his gay desires. A part of me believes that. I was a trim 132 pounds when I got married. I ballooned up to 250 pounds in the last two years of our marriage...the two that he started exploring. I'm not sure which came first. Perhaps I gained weight because a part of me knew he was disappearing. Perhaps he started disappearing because I gained weight.

All I know is that I HAVE to lose this last 20 pounds, simply so inside my head, I won't have that excuse anymore. It will force me to look at other issues, other reasons, other avenues for change so that my situation can improve. If I lose the 20pounds and I still am unable to find and keep a love interest, then at least I'll know I can eliminate that aspect of the equation. At least I'll know that I need to look at another variable for the answer.

And that is soooo fucking scary. If it's not the weight, then it has to be me. It is so much easier to not look too closely at me, to not face facts about myself. My ex husband and my children and my friends tell me it's not me, it's that I simply choose the wrong men...but that in and of itself reflects back on something about myself that needs to change.

There is no doubt that I tend to deeply love men who don't love me, and run away from men who do. And there's a chance that that will never change.

Epiphany on the elliptical. I don't let love interests see me, I let them only see the muted shades of me that I showed to my father. I muted myself so that he wouldn't notice me. When I first meet a man, they see the vibrant me, and they fall like so many bowling pins. But once I decide I like them, I turn off the color and turn on the sex. The two go together. It's what I had to do to survive as a child.

They don't get to see the vibrant shades my friends see.

2011-09-14T12:26:00.004-04:00

Breakfast with ERG this morning. Relationship talk. We move forward. I am choosing to trust his intentions, trust what he says. I'm choosing to trust that this is the path I'm meant to travel because to not take this risk just feels wrong.

The goal is to see whether or not we can grow the friendship side of our relationship in order to balance with the sexual component and to give us both the freedom to actually trust one another not to abandon.

Here is the deal:

ERG and I will spend a weekend away together sometime this fall.

ERG and I will spend more time together doing things as friends, without the sexual component. I have asked for Friday or Saturday of the weekends he is in Cincinnati.

ERG and I will talk on the phone at least once a day, build the friendship component.

He will be honest and forthright with me and will not lie to me if he has plans with other women.

I will communicate my feelings and concerns with him directly instead of blogging them.

We both have the right to date other people, but I am choosing not to exercise that right for now, except when I'm in Florida for the Str8s gathering.

We will abstain from a sexual relationship.

I will commit to this for six weeks. On November 1, our one year anniversary, we will have another relationship talk to determine our progress and our next step.

Breakfast with ERG

2011-09-13T19:06:00.006-04:00

I am not a person who complains, but today I might complain. Can you handle my complaining?

I am not a person who asks for things, perhaps even demands them, but today, I have some requests.

I'm not sure how this works. I'm not sure what we have to build on. I honestly don't understand why you want to continue with me. Why not have a clean break and just be on our way? Exactly what is there between the two of us to preserve?

I am cut to the core that you consider our relationship only physcial, that you don't know me. How is that possible? Why did that happen?

I firmly believe that each person in my life has the undeniable responsibility to discover and be who they really are. I delight in the role in assisting those I love to discover truths about themselves and to capitalize on those truths so that they can become the person they really are. I believe, to the depths of my soul, that my role in a romantic relationship is to help my beloved to "create an opportunity, not an obligation--an opportunity for growth, for full Self expression, for lifting your lives to their highest potential, for healing every false thought or small idea you ever had about you" (Conversations with God, Book 2).

I have read every book I can get my hands on on the subject of the male/female relationship dance. All the books talk about letting the man be the pursuer, and I tried my level best to let you do that in the beginning of the relationship, and you did! You said all the right things at the right times, you changed your facebook status, you called and asked me out without me having to fuss much at all about what your intentions towards me were. That's why I called you Easy Rider Guy. You didn't make me wonder.

All that changed at some point in the early spring. You got very sad and I morphed into Florence Nightingale. I gave you space because I thought you needed it. I kept my disappointments to myself, tried my best to be the best partner I thought I could be. I asked for as little as I possibly could.

You pulled me close and then you pushed me away. Again and again and again. If I asked for anything at all from you, invited you somewhere, suggested an outing, voiced any concern about the lack of time we were spending together, you told me I reminded you of your adoptive mother. I backed off.

One time, I invited you to the bar after work and you came. One time. All three of the other dates we had that did not involve a lunchroom or the bedroom, and in ten months, there were ONLY THREE were at your invite. Our first date to see John Mellencamp, the Wine Pairings, and the Sausage Fest. You invited out two other times, but then YOU cancelled. Goetta Fest and Findlay Market.

It is just patently obvious to me that you have no real interest in me outside of my prowess in the bedroom. It shames me to admit that. Men are capable of fucking with no heart and it seems obvious now that you have been fucking me the entire time we've known each other. For me, it has always been making love with you.

Please explain to me what you want from me. Obviously, you still want sex with no strings attached. You want a friend with benefits or maybe you just want the benefits without the friend because that is what you have had for the past ten months. How is it that you think you can get to know me, and for god's sake, why do you now think you want to when you have make no attempt to do so in the past ten months? What's in this for me, ERG, except an extended period of more heartache?

Convince me. Because I'm ready to walk.

2011-09-13T10:25:00.001-04:00

Oh, this confusion. I go to sleep, seeking guidance, and I wake up more confused than ever. It is soooo tempting to just walk away. It would be so much easier. I've already processed such a big chunk of grief, and it's not like I haven't been through this before. I know the drill.

Honestly, I don't think ERG is the one, but he has a point in that I don't really know him. I don't know him. He doesn't know me. He has so much more insight into me than I have into him because he reads the blog and I am as honest as I possibly can be on the blog. I am honest. As much as I can be.

He says he wants to take the time now to get to know me. But I don't understand why he has waited so long to come to the conclusion that he wants to. What does he think he's going to see now that he hasn't already seen? I would welcome the opportunity to know him better, provided that we move in the same direction. If knowing him better moves me closer to him, and knowing me better moves him farther away, then that would suck. But, would be revealing. Would put us on the path we are meant to go.

To not risk the next six weeks on a path of exploration into who the two of us really are is something I would probably regret, and I like to live without regret. There is no missed opportunity for me in investing the next six weeks.

So I guess that's the decision. I give it a try. See if it's too painful. See if I like the man he lets me see. See if he likes the woman I show him, or he chooses to see.

Life is so funny. So full of risk and reward. So scary when you don't know what you are getting into. I may have to change his moniker. This is certainly no longer an easy ride.

My Way

2011-09-12T14:30:00.003-04:00

I do things my way. I always have. I share, I ask advice, but when it comes right down to it, I do things the way I think they should be done. I don't rely on societal convention, I don't depend on my friends for answers, I don't let others make my decisions for me. I do things my way.

I was home with my brother discussing relationships, noting that he married someone completely different from me, his sidekick growing up. He laughed and then got a serious look on his face. "You're wrong, Betty. I did marry someone like you. Maybe she wasn't just like you, but one of the things that appealed to me about her was that she spoke her mind, she stood up for herself, just like you."

I thought about that.

There once was a time when I could say he was right, but I've mellowed so much over the past decade, I'm not certain that is still true. Oh, sure, I stand up for myself where my children are concerned, where my friends, my family, my co-workers, my clients are concerned, but it has become increasingly difficult for me to stand up for myself in romantic relationships.

Perhaps I just need a break.

Perhaps I need to find my inner bitch, and remember who the most important person in my life is. It is not ERG. It is not the guy who comes next. The most important person in my life, is me. It always has been.

ERG needs to date other people. Not sleep with them. Date them. So he says. But he wants to date me, too. And sleep with me. He says there is an imbalance between what we know of each other between the sheets and what we know of each other in real life. He says he can't commit to someone he knows as little about as me.

I was flabbergasted to learn this.

I intuit so much about him, and he reads my blog. How can he not know me?

Of course, what appears here is carefully crafted for my target audience. You don't see the times I scream at my oldest son, or play solitaire because I can't motivate myself to work. You don't see the tenderness with which I attend to my cats or my lackadaisical attitude towards housekeeping. You see what I want you to see, and that is never a true picture.

Of anybody.

I've never seen him angry. We've never been angry at each other. Our interactions have been limited primarily to the lunchroom and the bedroom. He says he wants to venture out of those two domains, to see if we can cultivate the other side of our relationship.

I'm not a jealous person, but I fear being stupid.

I'm not sure what I will do, but I can tell you this much: while the opinions of my friends are important to me, and heaven knows, I seek their solace as much as their advice, I am going to approach this much like I do everything else in life.

In my own way.

Just because he says he wants it this way doesn't mean I can do it.

Just because my friends say they wouldn't stand for it, doesn't mean I won't.

In the end, after careful analysis, I'm going to do what's right for Betty...today.

Tomorrow, I'll decide what's good for Betty tomorrow. It may well be something different.

Balance

2011-09-09T10:53:00.001-04:00

I missed my weight management support group meeting yesterday. My youngest son is taking driver's ed, and my duties as chauffeur precluded my attendance. I went early, did my accountability check in and weighed myself (I lost 3 pounds, yeah!), but left before the meeting started. This morning, in his daily email, one of the members commented that he missed my smile and balance.

I like the idea that I bring balance into other people's lives. I like the idea that in times of trouble and turbulence, I can be a calming influence. I feel loved by so many people, know that my talents are recognized and appreciated. I have been sailing in a sea of insecurity the past couple of days. It is comforting to know that my investments in other people pay off when I need a bit of support myself.

I have been contemplating the way I love over the past two days. The way I love seems to be scary for some, but try as I might, I can't bring myself to wish that I loved differently. I love with clarity and endurance. My feelings are clearly communicated, are not shrouded in a mantle of manipulation. People know where they stand with me. When I choose to love someone, I don't change my mind. I love unconditionally, regardless of what they feel for me.

I like that about myself.

I don't want to change it.

Stopping Our Pain

2011-09-08T10:17:00.001-04:00

You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go

Some of my feelings have been stored so long they have freezer burn.
—Beyond Codependency

There are many sources of pain in our life. Those of us recovering from adult children and codependency issues frequently have a cesspool of unresolved pain from the past. We have feelings, sometimes from early childhood to the present, that either hurt too much to feel or that we had no support and permission to deal with.

There are other inevitable sources of pain in our life too. There is the sadness and grief that comes when we experience change, even good change, as we let go of one part of our life, and begin our journey into the new.

There is pain in recovery, as we begin allowing ourselves to feel while dropping our protective shield of denial.

There is the pain that leads and guides us into better choices for our future.

We have many choices about how to stop this pain. We may have experimented with different options. Compulsive and addictive behaviors stop pain - temporarily. We may have used alcohol, other drugs, relationships, or sex to stop our pain.

We may talk compulsively or compulsively focus on other people and their needs as a way to avoid or stop our pain.

We may use religion to avoid our feelings.

We may resort to denial of how we are feeling to stop our pain.

We may stay so busy that we don't have time to feel. We may use money, exercise, or food to stop our pain.

We have many choices. To survive, we may have used some of these options, only to find that these were Band Aids - temporary pain relievers that did not solve the problem. They did not really stop our pain; they postponed it.

In recovery, there is a better choice about how we may stop pain. We can face it and feel it. When we are ready, with our Higher Power's help, we can summon the courage to feel the pain, let it go, and let the pain move forward - into a new decision, a better life.

We can stop the behaviors we are doing that cause pain, if that's appropriate. We can make a decision to remove ourselves from situations that cause repeated, similar pain. We can learn the lesson our pain is trying to teach us.

If we are being pelted by pain, there is a lesson. Trust that idea. Something is being worked out in us. The answer will not come from addictive or other compulsive behaviors; we will receive the answer when we feel our feelings.

It takes courage to be willing to stand still and feel what we must feel. Sometimes, we have what seems like endless layers of pain inside us. Pain hurts. Grief hurts. Sadness hurts. It does not feel good. But neither does denying what is already there; neither does living a lifetime with old and new pockets of pain packed, stored, and stacked within.

It will only hurt for a while, no longer than necessary, to heal us. We can trust that if we must feel pain, it is part of healing, and it is good. We can become willing to surrender to and accept the inevitable painful feelings that are a good part of recovery.

Go with the flow, even when the flow takes us through uncomfortable feelings. Release, freedom, healing, and good feelings are on the other side.

Today, I am open and willing to feel what I need to feel. I am willing to stop my compulsive behaviors. I am willing to let go of my denial. I am willing to feel what I need to feel to be healed, healthy, and whole.

From The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie ©1990