One of the hardest things to do — especially for those of us who’ve carried a lot of pain for a lot of years — is simply to sit with it. Sometimes that pain shows up as body memories, sometimes as emotions or old stories that seem to rise up out of nowhere.
They can get into our heads, start pulling the levers, and before we know it, we can start acting out into the world in ways that might not be too nice.
And then comes the aftermath…
Today’s a day for knocking out a couple of writing projects. Tomorrow and the day after, we’re looking at windchills of way below zero. That’s far too cold to be out in the shop, when all that stands between me and Siberia is a kerosene heater and drafty old garage door.
So, it looks like a few days of laying low and tending to indoor stuff.
Lately, I’ve really been leaning into letting my life do its thing. I was joking, just the other day, that being retired is actually my job. And after these last few years, I think I finally might be getting the hang of it.
When I was in the 9-5, I really liked having an agenda. It was good to know the what’s and when’s, so I could schedule things accordingly. Now the work is typically catch-as-catch-can.
I won’t lie; it took me a while to acclimate to the shift. Not that my last position was the busiest job in the world. I was a trainer, so there was a lot of hurry up and wait. But I travelled some of the most congested roads in the Metro Philly area, so my days often ended up being pretty long. And I ate up a lot of tires and brakes on that gig.
Now my commute is two small flights of stairs, and the only thing I need to replace is my worn-out bedroom slippers. To be fair, though, I’ve probably gone through 5 or 6 pairs since it all started…
When’s the last time you actually created something – just thrown yourself headfirst into the process of simple, radical creativity?
There are a lot of videos out there lately, and a lot of people talking about how necessary it is to make things right now—especially at a time when there’s so much turmoil, and so many people who seem to be bent on destroying things.
The act of creation is a balance to that…
I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately and talking a lot with others about the idea of being of service. Specifically, how do we assist those who come to us looking for advice or help of some kind, especially within the context of their own emotional recovery or spiritual healing? Where do we draw the line on our own involvement? When does “help” turn into “enabling”? When does our desire to assist turn into our own need to fix, save, or rescue the person that’s come to us?
If you’d like to see more, please check out my podcast, “Putting it on the wind,” on YouTube:
When I get frustrated and the exhaustion sets in, my skin tends to get a little thin…and it did this morning. I’ve learned that when things get like this, it’s usually a sign that I’m pushing too hard. And so, I need to just take some time and rest.
And that’s the thing: rest is also a big part of this recovery process. Learning to sit. Learning to love ourselves enough to take care of ourselves and to just be…to just chill out, breathe, relax when we need to.
To feel these things; not to numb them out, not to stuff them down.
Because running away from our feelings – stuffing them down, hiding from them, not showing them in public – is a lot of the reason that we carry these wounds in the first place…
If you’d like to see more, please check out my podcast, “Putting it on the wind,” on YouTube:
Codependency, counter-dependency, and the inability to receive…
It’s been said that you can’t pour from an empty cup. It’s also been said that you can’t receive in a cup that’s filled. For a cup to be of true value, to be truly serviceable, it doesn’t remain full or empty; it transitions between those states as necessary:
I’m thirsty, so I fill a cup. I drink from it. The cup empties.
My friend is thirsty, so I fill a cup. I give it to my friend. They drink from it. The cup empties.
When we’re healthy, we learn to become both the full and empty cup as required. In the sickness of codependency and counter-dependency, however, the truth of the matter is that cup is never empty. It’s always filled with one thing: my own need for safety, for love…
If you’d like to see more, please check out the latest episode of my podcast, “Putting it on the wind,” on YouTube.
As a kid, you walk into a room and you feel anger there…well, you feel angry, so you must be angry. You feel sad, so you must be sad. We learn to internalize those things, to take them on, and to come at the world from the perspective of those things that we’re feeling – believing that they’re our own.
As we get older and lean a little heavier into our work, hopefully, we begin to sort some of that stuff out. We begin to learn what’s ours and what’s not; what we can let go of – what we can hang onto.
And this can be incredibly difficult when we see people we really love going through a tough time. One trap in particular that it’s easy to fall into as someone who’s empathic, is the fix, save, and rescue trap. We see someone suffering, and we want to fix the situation. We want to save them from it; to rescue them from their peril.
Sometimes our motivations aren’t as unselfish as they seem, whether we’re aware of that or not. Part and parcel of growing up in a house full of emotional instability is often the dance of codependence: “I love you because of how you make me feel.”
In the presence of suffering, especially when it’s the suffering of those we care for, we don’t like the way we feel when we see them suffer, and so we want to rescue them; to stop their pain in order to stop our own.
If you’d like to hear more, please check out the latest episode of my podcast, “Putting it on the wind,” on YouTube…
I roughed out a piece of Box Elder this morning. It was the first time I ever worked with it, and the blank was a little bit dry and unforgiving. It was a struggle at first, but somewhere in the middle of things, we reached an agreement.
My brother and I have a saying that we use every now and then: “Christmas in December.” It’s shorthand between us for “business as usual,” or “same shit different day.” He said that in a text he sent me today, which is what got me thinking about it.
Sometimes, you get the idea that things are going to pretty much run to form – that the work you’ve done time and time again will end up being “Christmas in December.” But then, it decides to throw you a curve ball, and best laid plans can quickly turn into a generous portion of “what the hell am I going to do now?”
When this happens, it can either end in failure, or it can give you some insight which you couldn’t have gotten any other way.
Such was the case this morning, when I cut too deeply into the blank, rode the grain, and because it was dry, ended up taking a chunk out of the bowl. I spat out a couple of appropriate Germanic expletives, stared at it for a minute or two, and then I stopped, and let the spoon tell me what to do.
Sure enough, it had a few ideas.
The blank was still pretty thick, so I took my carving hatchet to the end of it, repaired the bowl, now a bit shorter and shallower than I initially intended, and went back to work roughing out the spoon.
It’s drying in the wood chips as I write this. In a few more days, I should be able to fish it out and finish everything up. I’ll approach it a bit more carefully when I do.
And I’ll also be sure to hang on to the lesson…
When you’re a kid, you’re pretty much at the mercy of the environment you grow up in – and the people who inhabit that environment. You can’t pack your fucking bags and move to Podunk when you’re three, that’s just the way it goes.
And so, we learn to adjust.
We learn to eat the food that we’re given. And sometimes, that food comes in the form of some pretty negative beliefs – pretty negative realities. We get told that we’re an idiot. We get yelled at. Maybe we get beaten. Maybe we get emotionally abused, or even worse. We come to find out, sometimes, that the love that we really want is highly conditional and based upon how well we fall in line, or dance to someone else’s music.
As we get older though, we sometimes continue on with those beliefs. We can hear those stories again and again in our heads. And though the voices might sound like the people who said those things – it might even be their words – sometimes, those people have been out of our lives for years or even decades. Maybe they’re even dead.
So, the question is, “Whose voice is it, really…?”
Bonja the Bodger 