Fibro Flared Again

I am aching all over the place.

My body is a barometer for indicating things that are going on in my life that need addressing and modification by me. To ignore this is to accept far more and deeper physical pain--let alone spiritual and emotional pain.

My father has been in the hospital for most of the entire summer--since the beginning of June 2011. It has been a very stressful time dealing with all of this. In addition, all things related to the care of my father have been challenging over the last seven years of his illness and decline. There are times of less stress than others. But over all, this has not been the least bit easy.

I have been in the front line of fire about all of it, all along. I put myself there. It has been my role all of my life. I am a "first born." I never even considered not being in the front line about my dad. I never wanted it any other way. But over time, I am having to reconsider, readjust, realign myself, as this journey expands and morphs into things I never saw coming, that I never expected in my wildest imaginations.

I don't believe in any accidents. I believe that I chose to be where I am, in the family that I am in, with all the dynamics and drama that exists just as it is. I feel my soul planned on having grand opportunities for growth in many directions--all having deeper compassion and greater loving for myself and for others at the center of the journey.

But sometimes I just want to bitch-slap folks, instead!

Having owned this, and worked with myself from a place of self-compassion about this realization, I then tried to address my concerns and troubles with all of these people, one-by-one.

I sometimes feel that I cannot make myself heard or understood. I try over and over from one angle and direction to another, each time, attempting to make myself more clear. I am doing the best that I know how to do to convey my feelings and insights about what I would like to see shift in order for me to be in a more comfortable place about this difficult situation with Dad and with them.

I can see that they love me dearly. I can see that they each are just another poor schmuck trying to make his way through all this drama and chaos of being a human on this planet, too--just like me. I can see that they have made adjustments and that they are trying along the way.

I often feel like I can't find my way through eruptions--at least in the beginning of addressing them. I find eruptions in my family often take a long time in culminating. We sometimes think we have cleared the path, only to have the stuff sneakily go underground to erupt unexpectedly another day, with greater fury and force!

Sometimes this feels overwhelming and very much like we have made no headway at all. This is often just a fear and a knee-jerk reaction, rather than truly a reality--if I can remind myself of this in the throes of the explosion(s).

I try to make adjustments. I try to cooperate. I highly value cooperation! But I cannot make all the concessions. I cannot make all the adjustments. I can only be willing and do some of these things.

And I have and I am.

I am at a place where something has got to give. It MUST change. Or I will have to make it change. I can no longer continue being caught in this vortex of pain, in the cross-fire of others all struggling with their own feelings about dealing with the loss of our dad and the pain of witnessing his withering away into dust. I have my own pain about all of this, too. The pain has to lessen for me. And this has to happen NOW. I so hope and pray that my brothers will find a way to do the same for themselves, as well.

I will meet with my brothers today. Hopefully we will be able to shift what is happening in our interactions with each other to a healthier, more compassionate and loving way for each one of us. I hope and pray this is so. It must shift for me. I hope they will be able to understand this and know that I love them too, no matter what. But I can no longer trap myself in this chaos and dissension. It is hurting my body and my spirit so very much!

I feel hopeful for me. I feel hopeful for my brothers. I know I am doing the things that I most need to do for me. I only have control over me and I am empowered about me. Sometimes people make choices over which we cannot align ourselves. It does not mean that we have to end relationships--not always, anyway. But it often does mean that we must change these relationships for ourselves. And that usually involves boundary drawing.

The term Boundary Drawing is a nasty little term in my family. My family recoils and often feels very irked when I use it. They simply hate it when I draw boundaries and especially if I use the term for this around them.

But Boundary Drawing is my primary life lesson. It is what I am here to learn and perfect. My life beat me senseless, (I allowed myself to be beaten senseless) over my inabilities in the past to draw healthy boundaries with others.

I have made great headway in this area. But it has not been easy. It has, however, been so very worth it to me. It has opened the space for so much love and compassion and I am very grateful for it all.

I have had to do a great deal of boundary drawing over the years. I have had difficulties in relationships come up repeatedly in my life and I deliberately began a conscious journey to grow more spiritually because of this. It has been a hard journey and yet, a journey filled with awesome realizations and great feelings of spiritual achievement. It has been a good journey, even in the difficulties and pain. And I know that this bump in the road is just another one over which I will gain much self-knowledge and many opportunities for healing of myself and assistance in the healing of those I so dearly love--even if I do feel like bitch-slapping them from time to time!

I am grateful for this journey, even with all the warts and scrapes and bruises. I am grateful for the vastly greater amount of love that I experience in my life--especially with my family and all others where I am connected. I am grateful for the ever-growing Light.

I can feel the pain in my body lessening, just having written this today and setting up the opportunity with my brothers to work through this!

Thank you, Universe, for the learning grounds, for the lessons and the awesome opportunities for growth and expansion. I am so very blessed!

Barbara

Copyright 2011. Transformation of a Mystic. Barbara F. Manning

Out Of The Past

At 6:30 AM I received a phone message from a friend that someone that used to be very near and dear to me is having Thyroid Cancer surgery today and that she has been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s. I had a raft of feelings about all of this, including many tears!

I had many difficulties with this person, but always loved her and valued her very much. Even so, I eventually had to draw a very hard boundary and end the relationship with her about 15 months ago, because she kept getting more and more impossible to deal with. I see now, that it is likely that this dementia is at least part, though probably not all, of the culprit for her abusive and unkind behavior with me.

It was so very hard to part ways with her. But I just could not…I just would not allow her abuse any longer.

How does one process something like this, when someone’s behavior may not be totally under their control? Where do I draw the line? Is there a line I should draw?

Abuse is still abuse. And I just cannot put myself in that space!

I watched 11 years worth of intermittent abusiveness that this person dished out to others along the way. So this is a pattern for her—long before Alzheimer’s.

My heart goes out to her and I want to forgive her and come rushing back into the relationship. My head says, “Are you nuts, Barbara? Do you remember how awful it was, being stuck in that misery and not knowing how to get out of it? Do you remember how painful it was to end the relationship and get out of it?”
 

Do I send her a card and send her my best wishes for her recovery from cancer and offer my support?

Do I send her a card and leave it at that???

Do I stand back and do nothing?

Nothing feels like the right thing to do right now!

All I could do was post a request on Facebook that Healing Energy and Prayers be sent her way, and I sent these things to her myself, as well.

That raft of feelings from this morning is still clear and present in me 15 hours later!! For now, I am just in the feelings and will have to let them be and do nothing more about them but feel them.
 

Wow, there’s a pattern going on for me lately. It is all about my feelings—recognizing them and allowing them and doing nothing more about them than exactly these things.

I feel selfish and self-centered and very much like a fish out of water. But it also feels very right for me to do it this way, too.

Barbara

Copyright 2011. Transformation of a Mystic. Barbara F. Manning

Butterfly Kisses!

Yesterday I promised Archangel Michael that I would spend some time blogging more regularly. So here I am. I know that I am supposed to be blogging. And I received incredible validation about this yesterday and then again this morning from my friend, Stephanie Graham, about this.

Nothing happens by accident. And all is in Divine Time.

I got up and walked Desert Trackers with my grandchildren and daughter-in-law this morning. We do this regularly. It is a damp and crisp morning. My body needed the walking very much. And it feels physically better after having done this.

On the way back home, a song came on the radio that I very much adore. It is "Butterfly Kisses" by Bob Carlisle--a song about a father and daughter and the evolution of their relationship. Immediately, out of nowhere that I had conscious access to, I began crying. At that moment, I missed my Dad so very much. He is lost in dementia and advancing age and my heart is breaking over what is happening to him as he ages. But this song reminded me of all the good times, the loving times, the very close relationship that we have always had. I've been so very blessed to have this is my life. It has not always been a perfect relationship. But it has been very dear to me. He is very dear to me.

I am still crying. I have not found the bottom of these tears. Allowing the tears feels healing and clearing. I have not really allowed myself to feel much about the loss of him. It is not like he has died. But it certainly feels exactly like this.

Everything is always in evolution, constantly changing. It is important not to get stuck in the past, but it is also important to feel the feelings we truly are feeling--rather than stuffing them below the surface so that they only come gushing out when "Butterfly Kisses" plays on the radio.

And so, I am allowing in this moment, all my feelings about how things are with my dear father.

I love you Dad! And I miss you very much. And I will do my best to transition through the evolution of our relationship as time marches on. Thanks for everything, even the lessons about loving and letting go and allowing...allowing all of it. And especially Dad, thanks for all the Butterfly Kisses!

Barbara

Copyright 2011. Transformation of a Mystic. Barbara F. Manning

Lost In Retirement

I think I have been running for years, but especially since I retired on February 11, 2011. Today I am fully aware of feeling an underlying grief, a lost space. I don’t know what to do about it, except to allow myself to feel it. I am aware that I have been avoiding feeling it for a long while.
     

Food is totally out of control—especially sugar. I keep finding myself munching every time I turn around, trying to pack down my feelings to more manageable states. I am not satisfied and happy. I am tired and growing more tired each day. All seems illogical to me, considering that I very much want to be retired!

I have good days and great days, and days of seeking much numbness. I feel like a robot, going through my day—not even knowing how to navigate through my day. I feel like I am in a foreign land, and I do not know the ropes.
 

I do not know how to live my life as a retired person. I’ve been so very busy for so very many years! I’ve always kept my schedule booked to the gills. I have a schedule that is booked to the gills even this very moment. But I feel like the wind has been let out of my storm, my lungs, my sails, out of my life. I don’t know how to move forward through this space.

I want to rest. I am afraid to rest. I want to stop. I am afraid to stop. I want to feel. I am afraid to feel.
 

I am falling through every day, tripping and floundering through the things on my schedule, not really enjoying any of those things and not really being invested in any of them, either—even things that usually matter to me very much! I am just, plain, not feeling much right now…except feeling very tired. It is like I am watching my life from outside of me, not sure at all what to make of any of it.

How can this all be when I wanted so much to be retired and free???

I guess I don’t know anything about living in freedom and being free!!

What if there is no life left?

Of course there is life left!

What if all that I had on my plate keeping me busy for all these years is/was just an illusion—a way of keeping me out of contact with my real feelings all along?

What are my real feelings at this very moment?

Scared

Depressed

Tired

Overwhelmed

Expectations

Freedom

Compulsion to keep busy

Compulsion to stop everything and hole-up in my bedroom

Anger

Fear

Frustration

Shame

Grief

Loss

Hope

Anxiety

Trust

Being able to retire has been such a gift. But right at this moment, I am not feeling gratitude about this!

I am feeling a lot of crappy things right now and a few good things, too! I don’t like irrational and illogical stuff! And these moments right now are all about irrational and illogical! Probably all of these strange feelings are about being a human being, living in a body on the planet—something that I think I have tried to spiritualize myself out having to feel for a very long time!

There are trapped tears in my heart, in my throat and in my eyes right this minute. What are the tears about?

There is the loss of (the illusion of) safety and comfortableness, of familiarity. There is fear about the bottom falling out of my life and my maybe not being able to manage it…or stay above water, as I have now created it.

These are silly fears…but I am feeling these things. And five minutes from now these feelings will go away and I won’t have awareness about what I was feeling about any of this! And in another few minutes, these feelings will be back with a vengeance—refusing to be quelled for long.

I am feeling hopeful and somewhat hopeless. I am a paradox of so many feelings right now! I am silly!! I am a walking display of duality, incarnate!

I can’t get done the things that I need to get done. I feel like I am in quicksand. I don’t know where my time is going. I have lots of time! But the days seem to fly by and I do not get done the things I need to get done. I do not know how to make myself more productive for the projects that I need to accomplish. I want to complete them. And I don’t care about them, too! How silly!

There is no need to accomplish anything at any given moment right now. But I have always been outcome oriented—maybe “driven” is more like the real word.

I seem to be suffering an energy vapor lock. I feel lazy, lacking in direction and fighting inertia. But I have been busy nearly every waking moment for the last two weeks! Where is my time going? It is falling off the face of the earth right before my eyes, and I can’t catch it. I don’t know where it is going! I only know that I am busy non-stop all day long every, single day, and STILL, I do not accomplish what really needs to get done! How can this be???

This feels very bizarre, experiencing these strange feelings about all of these things!

I am sure all of these feelings are perfectly normal to be feeling after spending more than 40 years of my life with my nose to somebody else’s grindstone. I don’t know how to live my life with only me as the one directing me for me!

It’s a whole new world for me. And I am feeling like a fish out of water! But I am hopeful that I will learn how to swim!

I am feeling lost and I am looking for my way. I know it is here somewhere. And I know that I will find it, too. But I will have to be patient as the feelings all reveal themselves to me—as I am willing to allow them to come forth without trying to not feel them!

There is some excitement, down under the energy vapor lock—fueled by the knowledge that some new awareness, some pieces I have never had access to before, are germinating and working their way from my center for me to experience in this world. 

I am feeling very vulnerable and very unknowledgeable, very out of my comfort zone. And yet, I am still trusting that something wonderful will come, if I am willing to sit in the vulnerability and allow it to be alright, just as it is.
 

I have been allowing it all to be—sandwiched in between feeling stark, raving terror about the adjustment reaction that I am growing more aware of brewing grandly in my life. Without real conscious awareness, I have been trying to push it down, not feel it, run from it…and I see that and know that now.
 

I want to openly embrace what I’ve been working so hard to not feel!
 

OK, Spirit! I surrender! I ask for assistance! Please show me—with as much compassion as possible, what I have been blocking. I am willing and I accept and allow it—all of it! Please help me find my way through it all to my highest good!

Thank you!

Barbara

Copyright 2011. Transformation of a Mystic. Barbara F. Manning