Not what I had planned

I had many posts I was planning on writing for this blog – none were this.

My father died out of the blue, of something like a heart attack, watching the Republican presidential debates at home with my Mom, three weeks ago. 

At 77, he was still active and mentally engaged. He’d picked up a virus traveling to visit us for Christmas, but he’d caught and kicked those plenty of times before. He’d even golfed twice in the three days before he died, and had crowed to my mom about how well his second 18-hole round had gone.

Needless to say, it was a stunning, horrifying shock. My mom, my sister, and I (and all his friends and other family) are starting the long work of coming to terms to this new, post-Dad reality.

The idea of listening for joy in the midst of such a deep loss at first seemed not just impossible but almost sacrilegious. I know, though, that I need to pursue what makes me happy more now than I ever did before.

I am working out how I want to inhabit my new role as a card-carrying member of the sandwich generation, a person now caring for a parent long-distance and children still in the house.

My kin-keeping duties have suddenly intensified, and old ways of being -- of over-committing to others, of trying to fix situations and people, of worrying about things completely out of my control -- have risen up. Each time I start down an old path, though, a symptom flares, anxiety rises, and I know to stop and examine what I am thinking, what I am telling myself that I or others should do.

As physically and emotionally painful as this time in my life is, I am growing, learning more about myself and my conditioning, and understanding how to be a better person -- better to myself and others.

I find it hard to think clearly in these early days of grieving, so I’m not sure how much I’ll be writing in the near term.

But I will be reminding myself to do things that make me happy every day, to find the balance between caring for others and myself, and to refuse to entertain the thoughts that constantly seek to intensify my grief – the what-ifs, the never-agains, the too-soons.

I am finding there is a sweetness to remembering how someone was, if I can simply stay with the memory of a hug, a story or an adventure shared. It’s only when the nastier voices of "never again” chime in that the grief becomes unbearable.

I’m not letting those thoughts eat from my plate anymore – they’re not a part of true grieving, they’re an attempt by ego to inflate its own story with drama.

I am fascinated by how this grieving process is unfolding outside of my conscious control, and am finding much comfort in furthering my explorations of non-duality, but that is a subject quite difficult to write about in the best of times, and definitely outside my capacity to express clearly at this point.

For now, I am relying on my deeper mind to make me uncomfortable when I am slipping into old habit patterns, and to help me work out new ways of being in this unfamiliar territory I now inhabit.

I woke this morning with one of the insights that often visit me as I surface to consciousness, a message from deep mind -- that I needed to make a conscious choice about how much I am willing and happy to do in support of my mom, and then to know that that is enough, and I can be off-duty and not worry about her outside of that commitment.

I will call her morning and evening to check in with her, and I will come to visit when she asks me to, and that is enough. Any other thought about my mom that is in any way tinged with worry or guilt is not welcome and will be shown the door before it can even finish.

Similarly, I am stopping the stories of “too soon” and “never again” before they get their foot in the door. Stories of a full and well-lived life and a quick, painless death, of frailty outfoxed, are much kinder, less painful, and just as true.

Listening for joy in the process of grieving right now seems to be about listening to how the thoughts make me feel, and choosing to entertain only the sweetest ones.

I miss you Dad, but you know that already. I love you, and you know that too.

Real Inner Voices Eat Quiche

I was shopping in Costco the week before Christmas when I walked past a refrigerator case that announced a sale on a giant box of mini-quiches. I stopped for a moment, because a thought arose that it might be nice to have that on hand for the three holiday potlucks we'd been invited to.

Another thought, a louder one, immediately answered, “nah, too expensive.” So I walked on. And found myself continuing to quietly think about the box of quiches. When I finished with my shopping, I went back to the cooler and stared at them some more.

“Those would be great to take to the parties.” “But they're expensive. And you don't really like quiches all that much.” “But they're on sale, and what else would I bring to those parties and how long would it take to make it?” “But they're store-bought! What will people think of you?!” And so on.

It took me far too long to realize that one of these voices was my deeper self recognizing a way to make the holiday season easier on myself and one of them was headmind, my super ego, the rule-bound worrier and judger.

This is where I am at – somewhere along the way I lost touch with what I wanted, what would make me happy, and fell into the thrall of vague rules that had encrusted my thinking like barnacles on a shipwreck, to the point that I was constantly making my life harder for myself, refusing to take “short cuts,” and putting off what I wanted for some unspecified future time when I'd have more money or time or energy, creating a life full of obligations and empty of joy.

I bought the box of quiches. And I took some of them to each of the parties I'd been invited to. By the third party, I finally realized what I had done for myself by buying them and what I had been doing to myself for years by refusing to listen to that quiet voice that says, "I'd like that."

It was such a relief to not have to dig through the freezer, to search up recipes and to make something from scratch from what we had on hand. Hours and hours of time freed up, but more importantly, the breathtaking lightness of saying screw you to rules I wasn't fully aware of burdening myself with -- having to be thrifty, to not waste, to cook everything from scratch, a good potluck guest always puts thought and energy into her contribution. Such a relief to say the hell with it, a calorie is a calorie, money comes in and money goes out, and mini-quiches are quite good enough, thank you!

Of course there's nothing wrong with being thrifty, cooking from scratch and being thoughtful, but when it becomes an imperative, when you force yourself to do it even when you don't want to, you mute that inner voice a bit, and if you do it often enough, you can turn it so far down you can't hear it anymore. What you want is a mystery, what will make you happy, a complete blank.

I have spent the last 10 months listening for the tiniest stirrings of excitement, interest or pleasure as I ask myself what I want, over and over again, reconnecting with that inner voice that says what makes me happy and what brings me joy. That voice, which I once thought of as rather self-indulgent, turns out to be vitally important to my health and well-being.

A realization like this was important to me for my particular recovery from chronic fatigue, but I think it's important in a larger sense as well. That quiet voice, our deeper self, that is what almost everyone loses touch with as they grow up from toddler to adult with all the attendant roles and rules of being a good child, good student, good employee, desirable partner, loving spouse, responsible parent, valued community member. (Or believing without a doubt that you are a bad child, a bad student, a rebel, a crappy person, a loner, a loser. Different set of behavior rules, same stuckness.)

Those louder voices, the ones that tell you how to behave, how to fit in, how to look good, to maximize your chances of approval and love, they are all conditioning, all an attempt by one part of your mind to protect you, to keep you from experiencing rejection, hurt or loss.

I made a conscious decision years ago to stop taking actions out of fear, to stop making choices based on what I was afraid could happen. I could see clearly how that was boxing me into a smaller and smaller life, as my headmind seemed to have an inexhaustable supply of things to worry about, ways to imagine something going wrong. I had fed it a diet of dramatic, traumatic stories from the “real world” during my decade as a journalist, then with various fictional worlds and my own inner musings, which over time had devolved into worst-case-scenario leaps of imagination about whatever might be happening, more often than not.

I got that I shouldn't take action based on these worries, which wanted to keep me in such a tiny, narrow, self-protective prison. But I didn't realize how much the roles I was inhabiting were based on fear as well -- fear of rejection, fear of making a mistake, fear of losing someone's love, or esteem. So I am making a resolution to notice when I reject my inner voice and why, to see the rule or the role I am choosing over my own happiness.

I don't think the quiet inner voice gets any louder. I think we might be able to get better at noticing its feeling tone, how it feels differs from super ego, headmind, rule-bound thinking. How it is calmer and somehow more certain. How what it says makes our hearts flutter with a little thrill of happiness.

I do think we need to learn how to turn down the volume on the other voices – the rules, the roles, the worries --through meditation or certain types of journaling, perhaps, by bringing a greater self-awareness to our thinking.

I think the voice that says, “oh, I love that!” or “I want that,” is not self-indulgence. It's happiness speaking. And I am fairly certain it is the same voice that speaks to us as creative muse, sense of humor, and insights large and small.

I am determined to continue excavating, making space for this voice to arise and be heard, this year. I have a few different tools I am using which support this process quite well, and I plan to write more about them.

Reverse Therapy I have covered in my chronic fatigue recovery story. My experience with Marie Kondo's “The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up” has been a delightful exploration of home life and possessions that truly has been life changing. And I am excited to continue my explorations into Intuitive Eating, after years of food deprivation and trying various extreme diets in a futile attempt to deal with chronic fatigue symptoms.

I know there are other aspects of my life where I have shut down my inner voice (creativity and sexuality spring to mind), so there are definitely plenty of avenues to pursue in this new year, but all of them seem to revolve about this same theme of understanding how I have disconnected from my inner voice and plugging it back in.