Saturday, June 30, 2012

Why blog?

I guess reasons for blogging are many. I think a lot ... it has its gifts and yet it has its draw backs. I have been told journaling helps with all the chatter in one's brain. I have no adult in my house with me - it's just me and the kids. So, I get lonely for connection. Something I ponder is will I find connection about something mutually interesting, not just about my kids, what is important to the other person. All the married years were about him, his family, my house. My house and my pets were all that were mine. I enjoyed being with the pets and I enjoyed the house as a canvas for creativity. I created around raising the kids once I had them. When the family was not angry or hurt with anyone and not keeping silent and ostracizing in the anger and hurt because talking it out just was not done, I spent a lot of my time doing small things for the others .... visiting and digging in the garden with someone - his/her garden, framing a picture and wrapping it with a few sprigs of fresh flowers and throughly enjoying delivering it and seeing joy given. I wonder what I will fill my time with when my children are on their own.

Straw Hat

I am going to a town community event sporting a straw hat. I feel weird, shy and childishly happy about the hat. When I was a little girl each Easter brought a dress, Easter hat, little purse and gloves. I have long admired hats. Kate Middleton I am not nor do I live a life anywhere similar to her life. Maybe hats do fit somewhere in my life. Today is the first investigation :)

Friday, June 29, 2012

Self Differentiation

Self differentiation is a concept I am becoming more deeply acquainted with and I have to say it is not "a comfortable getting to know you", at least not yet. Something I have learned to be true: when I am learning, experiencing, a learning not just in my head, but learning within my being, a new concept, it pops up frequently. Sometimes I do not even see it at each time, yet I see it later and think, "Sigh, there it was again...". I seemingly volunteer for this personal growth, but it does not mean it is easy or comfortable for me.

A short time back, it was brought to my attention I was not yet self differentiated from my ex. Self differentiating from him in the practical ways felt unkind. I saw its wisdom and that it was not unkind, but it felt unkind. It feels less unkind now that I have been doing it a bit. I was also told due to not being self differentiated from him I had no real room for a new love relationship. That one I understood less and suspect the lessons and understanding are still coming.

I tend to be an open person, I believe I am genuine. I do not know how to fake being something. Yes, I do "fake it until I make" it is regards to aspirations I hold for myself when I make movement toward them, but I am so scared and feeling out of my league, I am not pretending. I am being as strong as I can, I am being determined and hopeful and I am knowing from many teachings that I am worthy while also not feeling fully worthy all the way to my marrow. So, I am not one to pretend I am someone I am not. Actually, when I feel that around me, it makes me want to scream and run far away from it. I do not want to be inside it or around it and struggle to be myself and work toward my aspirations in the midst of that. Often, that is the case, though. Is it supposed to be that way? Does it make the worthiness go deeper to my marrow? Does time come I get to also gently have the worthiness go deep into my marrow? I would love some gentility today.

There is another self differentiating that has begun. One for which I did not volunteer, one I have been stubbornly clinging to it working out and being my way. I do not agree with his way, but he is an adult on his own journey with his own lessons. All I can do is feel the pain, feel the peace when it comes, understand myself, know the other concept, "my needs being met" is valid and important even though it is foreign and it will come.

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Tried to figure out what the baby steps are to do today. Anxiety about what appears to be a large size of something to be done, multipled by having more than one thing to do (have more than one child I am raising) combined with the ignorance that is not bad, just is, because we all do not know everything about everything. We learn about what comes into our lives, what is added to our lives, what we seek and bring into our lives.

Baby step: visit the community college financial aid office. Yes, this college option for a year or two is way cheaper than the other options, yet it is money I do not have and I want to know yesterday how this will be paid for. No answers other than get the letters sent to them I sent to the out-of-state colleges that are no longer in the running. Also, child did sign a form that allows them to talk to me without her when I reference I have that consent.

Looking for lost item step: something I need for another child, have no clue where it is, thought I left it at work and if it was, someone put it aside. I went there, no one was there, but I could tell people are in and out. What I was looking for was not to be found.

Baby step: I need to get the letter finished I want to send along with a parent referral for private cognitive testing for another child to really know if she has a disability, what it is, make it that she would get services even out of our affluent town if we move or find out maybe she is average and it is the curriculum here.

Baby step: made the call to the bank lady that would help me get pre-approved for a mortgage, what size mortgage, if I qualify. This is a step in the exploration

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Loving is risk. It is the hardest, most vulnerable risk. Didn't I think I knew that already? I thought so and right now, in the freshness of this new painful awareness, I am not clear on what I thought I knew.
I longed to be loved by my father a certain way, a way he was not able to love me. I suspect it is the way a father can love a daughter, if he is able, that supports the daughter to soar because she knows she is special, smart, lovely, beautiful, strong and capable and worthwhile. As I grew into adulthood I began to feel even more distant from my father. I think he became less comfortable in knowing how to love me in his actions once I hit a certain point in adolescence. That was a pulling away on his part of what was the established norm. Maybe it was going away to college and seeing more of the world that showed me more of what I longed for from him and could not get. I look back and remember times of visiting home as a married woman and leaving with my husband, turning to the window on my side of the car, letting my tears fall silently down my cheeks. Subconsciously I must have sensed then I married a man similar to my father. Men can be incongruent and love their wives differently than they love their mothers and/or daughters. Maybe the neglect is just as harmful as the harsh treatment. I know as an adult I bought a book for my father as a gift. It was a journal. It had questions and spaces to lead him in topics to journal to me. He asked if I thought he was going to use it. Sign #1 there. Yet, I hoped and I spoke that hope out loud to him in response to his question. I told him I hoped he would and that I would have the opportunity to get to know him, truly know him, after his death. When my father did pass away from the cancer and I made the many hours long drive home to view him one of the urgent things I did at the house was to search everywhere for that book. I did not find it. I asked my mother and my brother about it. Neither knew anything about it. THAT spoke to me. And, yet, I still have lessons to learn about the men I love, what they cannot give to me and the hope I continue to hold. How terrified will I be when a man comes into my life and wants to stay in my life that can love me like that and its being different is scary and threatening? How patient will he be?

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

New Blog

I am beginning a new blog. A blog in which I may write and which others can read, if any choose to do so, and I can remain identified so I can write more deeply about what it will be I reflect upon and think as a result of what I see, the people with whom I interact, the things to which I attend to in my life. In sharing all these things I will alter names so as to keep it all identified, but the content will be what it is.