Tag: pain

The Position to Help

Our middle son is finishing up his last year of medical school. Anyone in medical school has to go through rotations of all of the different specialties in medicine. So even if you know for sure, that you want to become a country family doctor or a psychiatrist, you still have to go through surgical rotations and emergency room rotations and rotations in the Intensive Care Unit and in Burn Units. My son’s medical school is part of a hospital system in a major city in the United States. The things that he has witnessed in just a few short years, are overwhelming to just hear about them. (I could never be in the medical fields. I don’t have the temperament for it, but I am so utterly grateful for, and respectful of those of you who do. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.) As a mother, I am constantly taking my son’s “temperature” to ensure myself that he isn’t traumatized and distressed, by all that he has seen and experienced. One time my son said something to me, really profound and comforting. He said, “Mom, if I had been a helpless witness to the accident or to the situation that brought the patient to us, that would be far more traumatizing. It is a great feeling to be in the position to help.”

That is what I mean by my tagline. If we can alchemize our pains into healing for ourselves and for others, the pain doesn’t remain in its most dire, useless, self-perpetuating state. It is a great feeling to be in the position to help. Our pain gets to a higher level of healing and empowerment, when we use it to help others instead of using it to hurt others, to bring them down to the level of pain which we are feeling. (Unfortunately, misery loves company.) We get empowered over our pain when we use it as a catalyst to change what created our pain in the first place. Look at all of the people who have turned their own pain for good: civil rights leaders, women’s rights leaders, gay rights leaders, AA sponsors, diet/fitness gurus who were once overweight and unhealthy and now help others to get healthy, gun control advocates who have lost loved ones to violence, research advocates for a myriad of diseases who have lost loved ones to suffering, therapists and grief counselors who have healed their own mental health issues and want to help others to do the same, people who grew up poor and now create opportunities in the impoverished communities that they grew up in, spiritual leaders who once lost all hope, and then found inspiration and faith, and bring that inspiration to others, etc. etc.

We all have pain. Own your pain. Don’t deny it. Don’t let it eat you up inside and destroy you. Don’t remain unaware and project your pain onto someone else. Don’t compare your pain to others’ pain. This is your pain. Allow yourself to feel it. Be angry at who/what caused or contributed to your suffering. Be sad. Be compassionate. Make yourself seek help if you need help to process your pain. When you allow others to help you, you are giving them the great, empowered feeling of being in the position to help, and to continue to alchemize their own pain into uplifting good. When you accept help for your pain, you are letting your helper see that their own pain suffered wasn’t entirely in vain. And then, when you are feeling healed enough to start helping, do it. Do it. It is a great feeling to be in the position to help.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

2712. What phrase or quote best describes you?

Soul Sunday

credit: @AmadorBatten, Twitter

I thought that the above “card” was better than a poem today. Certain holidays that bring up so much joy, also can bring up an intense amount of pain. Remember, no matter what, today is just a day. And there is no one true definition of love. . . LOVE IS.

And to my children: being your mother is undoubtedly the greatest experience of my life. I love you all, intensely, gently, yet ferociously, forever and ever and ever.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Soul Sunday

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Good morning. Welcome to Poetry Day on the blog. Last night was excruciating for me. I woke up with a ferocious toothache that was insistent that I stay awake and miserable for the entirety of the night. The toothache made it perfectly clear that it had no plans to allow me to get any real sleep. I’ve been ignoring the flashing, yellow caution light that’s been quietly, yet pointedly announcing itself, all this week, on the left hand side of my mouth, with my pie-in-the-sky hopes that maybe it would “just go away.” Ha! The chicken has come home to roost, and she is one mad hen.

When you are experiencing a lot of pain, you try to look for the bright sides, such as the fact that at least Advil and Orajel exist. You think back to what it would have looked like to have had one of these horrific toothaches in the middle ages. You remind yourself about just how much worse it could be, even as the dull, yet sharp ache bangs and bangs and bangs, making the entire side of your face feel like its getting heartily beaten up, by a determined amateur boxer, in the inside of your mouth.

I think that this poet describes a toothache perfectly. Who knew that you could turn a toothache into poetry? It goes to show, everything can be poetry.

Tent Pole

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Sometimes people ask me how I hold it all together. I’ve watched and witnessed other strong mothers, and I’ve often thought the same thing about them. Facts are, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I fall apart. Sometimes I cry until I think that my eyes will fall out, and sometimes I scream so loud that it hurts my chest. Sometimes I act so crazily sad and angry all at once, that I am a witness of my own craziness, in the bewildered eyes of my own family. And it scares me.

My husband made the dire mistake of saying that I wasn’t being “helpful” in a family conversation which we were having at dinner last night. For a woman, hanging on by a thread, and who has devoted her entire life to her family, that was not good wording to use at that moment (even if it was the truth). After the aftermath of the scourge of my outrage, I am sure that he wished that he could have eaten those words the minute they carelessly fell out of his mouth. Have I mentioned that I am a fire sign (through and through)?

This morning, I read a tweet today by the Wise Connector. He put this out to his followers:

What do you tell yourself when you’re having a bad day? This could be helpful to someone today.

I looked at the hundreds of vast responses. A lot of them answered that they tell themselves that “things could be worse.” Of course, things could be worse. Death is the worst case scenario, and if we are still here to complain about our bad days, than things could be worse. We could be dead. Sometimes I, too, make myself feel better with the “things could be worse” thought, but sometimes that thought just pisses me off. It sets me right off. “Things could be worse” discounts my hurt and my anger and my frustration and my fears. It makes me feel bad for feeling bad.

One person answered the tweet with, “Still I Rise” and I liked that. I envision myself rising mightily from the ashes of my anger and pain. Anger is not necessarily a bad emotion. It has a lot of energy to it. My dogs and I got an extremely brisk walk out of my rage, yesterday evening. It was a “heart healthy” walk. That walk was a good outcome of my anger. Screaming at my family was not a good outcome of my angry feelings. Anger can often be a hard guy to manage.

I vented to some friends last night on our text chat. Only other mothers can truly validate moments like these. My one friend said that she realizes that she is the family’s “tent pole”, always holding everything up, for everyone else. I got the reminders, from my friends, to take care of myself, and to do things for myself. My one friend loves to kayak. My other friend raises beautiful butterflies. The truth is, I like to write. I can’t tell you how cathartic it is for me, to be writing this blog post right now. My cousin read my blog yesterday, and she told me that she couldn’t believe that I could have that kind of clarity while I am hurting like this. I told her that writing is my therapy. Writing is my clarity. Writing is what I do for me. If it resonates with others, then that is a blessing. But writing is what I do for me.

These are the answers to the “bad day” tweet, that resonated the most with me today:

“You’re doing your best. And that is enough. And remember, your ‘best’ will look different every day” – Brianna

“Today I’m not okay, but that’s okay bc I know I’ll be okay.” – Jojo

“If you’re going through hell, keep going” – Winston Churchill

“It’s life, chances are tomorrow will be better. Keep moving forward.” – Linzee In Heels

And this was my all time favorite:

“I want to see what happens if I never give up.” – SweMikeMedia

Monday Fun-Day

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Image

I hope that my husband doesn’t take this post personally. My poor husband threw his back out on Friday, and he was understandably quite cranky throughout the weekend. He’s typically a very busy, energetic person. His weekends usually contain a lot of yard work, pool cleaning, long biking excursions, fishing, boating, gym workouts, grilling etc. My husband is a “do-er” personality. Sadly, this weekend, his back muscles put all of that on hold, and he was not a happy camper. Luckily, my husband seems to getting a little bit better each day. Isn’t that the way with every trauma? Every day you just get a little teeny, tiny bit better. It certainly is a lesson in patience, though.

“Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.” – Helen Keller

“One of the most healing things you can do is recognize where in your life you are your own poison.” – Steve Maraboli  

“Love one another and help others to rise to the higher levels, simply by pouring out love. Love is infectious and the greatest healing energy.” – Sai Baba 

Soul Sunday

Good morning, soul mates. I hope that today finds you feeling centered and whole. I have been enjoying all sorts of fun experiences, with my entire family this weekend. Nothing makes me feel more centered than being with my family. Sundays, as my regular readers know, are devoted to poetry here at Adulting – Second Half. Why do so many people groan when someone utters the word “poetry”? I think that is an interesting thing to ponder. There is no other form of writing that is more personal, more emotional, nor more poignant than poetry. And yet so many people turn away from it, under the guise of calling it “boring”. Is that really the case? Or is the “dissing” of poetry more of an overall avoidance of facing, and then really feeling, our deepest, most soulful feelings?

For most of this year I have used this tagline on my blog: Are passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain, and pass on love. How do you heal your pain? You face it. You acknowledge it. You let yourself feel it. Your pain will dissipate. Your pain just wants to be acknowledged. Your pain just wants to be understood and to be explored and most importantly, to be felt, so that it can be healed. Again, once pain is faced with compassion and empathy, once pain is physically and emotionally felt, it is spent. Once it is felt, your pain will dissipate. Your pain has just been serving as a dark cloud, over the light of your beautiful, light-filled core of love. Your pain has just served as clouds over the sunshine of your timeless soul. Shine the light on your pain. Ironically, we tend to hold on to our pain, by ignoring it, and by trying to pretend that it isn’t there. And that exhausting act of avoidance just makes our pain grow, like a dark, fierce, quickly growing storm cloud, in a desperate plea to be seen, and to be felt. Pain that is ignored and pain that is unacknowledged, cannot be healed, and cannot be released. Love is greater than pain. Love is. Love your pain away. Clear the clouds.

This is my poem for the day:

My Children In the Other Room

I revel in the sound of your voices,

All together humming, occasionally interrupted by laughter,

A calming cadence of familiar tones.

I don’t listen for the words,

I listen to the harmony of your hearts,

As you share casual conversation.

There is no sound that is more beautiful to me,

Than the blending of your voices,

Sounding the tones of our common love.

Together, your voices, sing the rhythm of my heart.

The Magic Wand Lesson

As the final part of his undergraduate study, before he starts medical school in the fall, my son is shadowing a doctor this semester. The doctor he is working for is a physiatrist. A physiatrist is a medical doctor who works on reducing a patient’s pain, and then moving the patient towards full rehabilitation, of total health and function, after a major injury or illness. A physiatrist uses all sources of tools in the medical arsenal such as medications, physical therapy and other healing modalities. My son has been learning so much from this wonderful man, and we look forward to my son’s interesting stories from his internship, every single week.

On an aside, my family loves to laugh. We crack a lot of jokes. My eldest son is very animated, expressive and self-deprecating. His imitations are hilarious. My youngest son is a natural clown and comedian. He has expressed the desire to give stand-up a go, more than once in his life. My daughter’s friends always tell her how much they love how funny she is, as anecdotes on her birthday cards and such. My middle son (the one working with the physiatrist) has a very dry sense of humor. He is more often the instigator, the one to get the more rowdy others around him going, and then sitting back, and enjoying the mayhem. So, one of my favorite things in life, is watching my middle son tell a story, without even realizing that the way he is telling the story is quite amusing, and then, everybody getting a big laugh out of the story. This roar of laughter and amusement always seems to take my middle son by surprise, realizing that his story is so enjoyable, and he gets this cute, little boy, slightly embarrassed grin on him. His big, brown eyes sparkle, and it is like seeing a glimpse of my adorable, mischievous, little three-year-old baby boy again. Our children don’t realize how many versions of them that we hold and that we safekeep in our minds, and in our hearts. They have only known us as adults, but we get to experience their blossoming and progression, from the very start.

Getting back on track to my story (please forgive my sentimental rambling): This week’s lesson from my middle son’s work with the physiatrist was “the magic wand” lesson. The patient who needed “the magic wand”, had come to the physiatrist for help. This patient was a tad “scattered.” He had many, many stories of many, many horrific accidents and harrowing incidents, from throughout his whole life. His companion was his elderly mother, who sat patiently, nodding her head beside her son, only occasionally adding, “Yep, that’s true. Umm-hmm,” to each of his accountings of all of the unimaginable incidents and ordeals in his life that had lead up to his debilitating physical pain, which seemed to be in every part of his body. In short, he was an interesting, but longwinded character, who was emanating pain, all over and needed some relief. My middle son says that the physiatrist says that these are the types of patients who you must help to focus. With these patients you must ask the question, “If I had a magic wand and could fix just one element of your pain, what would I fix?” My son said that the patient looked instantly relieved and relaxed, and pointed to one spot on his lower back.

After hearing the “magic wand” lesson, I thought to myself how helpful that question can be for any of us, at any time, and it doesn’t have to be related to physical pain. What about those days in life when you feel like you have 800 things going on at once and you don’t even know where to start? If I had a magic wand, and I could have just one of these tasks completed, which task would it be? This magic wand question/trick immediately helps you to calm your mind, and to focus in on your highest priorities and values. What about times in your life where you feel you could use some self-improvement, with healthier habits, in order to lose weight or to have more energy? A lot of times we get so overwhelmed with everything that we think that we have to do, and change, and improve in our lives, that we tend to get frustrated, and then, we end up giving up on all of it. If I had a magic wand and I could just change just one element of my daily habits, what would that be? This question really helps to hone in on what is really the most pressing and urgent, out of all our concerns. And once we have mastered and healed the particular area of our life, and of our health, and of our daily chores and routines, that the magic wand has helped point us to, we can use the trick again, to point us towards our next priority. Perhaps, magic wands are not pretend after all. Perhaps, magic wands are really quite magical, indeed.

Thomas J. Leonard | Dream quotes, The witches of oz, Magic wand

Are you passing on love, or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Late Night

I did something last night which I haven’t done in a long, long time. I stayed up late into the wee, wee hours of the night reading a work of fiction, from its very beginning, to its last beautiful page. I loved the book. It resonated deeply with me. This book is worth my exhaustion this morning. I am not going to tell you the title of the book. It feels too personal. It feels too revealing to just put it out there, to people who I don’t know very well. To tell you about a book that struck me this personally, would be like cruelly and neglectfully, putting my own very, sometimes fragile heart out on to the internet, to be shredded casually by the sharks that swim around us, sometimes.

My beloved and deeply appreciated readers, I tell you a lot about me, and everything that I share with you is true, but I don’t share everything. I’m not sure that I ever will. I did share some quotes from the book that I read last night, with my husband, and with my anam cara (Gaelic for soul friends). They get it. They get me. Treasure those people in your lives who really “get you”, all of you, and love you, and accept you, and understand you, and “see” you, and only want your happiness, for you. These people are incredible gifts. They are those “believing mirrors”, like Julia Cameron writes about. Your anam cara are the safes, and the strongboxes for your heart, and for your whole being. When you cultivate your anam cara in your life, never let them go. Love them deeply. And most importantly, make sure that you are one of them. Be a soul friend for your anam cara, and also be a soul friend, for yourself.

I believe that the mark of an excellent book is one that makes you feel like it has pages written about your own life, as viewed from the inside of your own head, and from the inside of your own heart wells. It feels intensely personal and echoing and vulnerable, to read a book whose words you feel deeply, and whose words keep reverberating in your mind, long after you are done reading. Treasure those kinds of books. They are rare. Like your anam cara, these books are incredible gifts in your life, too.

“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.” – E.L. Doctorow

My friend shared a parable yesterday, about a little boy who broke one of those Dollar Store glow sticks, in order for the light of it, to comfort his upset little sister. The moral of the story was that the glow sticks only glow brightly, when they are broken. Don’t be afraid of your broken parts, friends. As we all know, it is often the broken parts of us and of others, that glow the brightest and the truest and the clearest. Our broken parts often become like the glow of the lighthouses, which act as beacons to save others from crashing into the jagged rocks and drowning. And helping to save others, helps us to save ourselves, too. That’s how Love works. Love turns our pain, back into Love, which helps each other to survive, and to thrive, and to walk this path together peacefully.

Are you passing on love, or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Heal.

I have no words that haven’t already been expressed about yesterday’s horrible display at the Capitol building. I am deeply saddened, disgusted, pained, mortified, flattened, outraged, etc. by the actual events, by how the events were handled, and what this display really shows about the state of our country. This is not the United States of America I was raised to love and to cherish and to respect and to revere. This is not the United States of America that so many of my dear family members were willing to wager their lives on, by serving in our military. We must find a way back to our United selves. It has become imperative.

How do we do this? We heal ourselves. Yesterday, Congress did a good job of rising to the occasion. Can you imagine how utterly terrifying their experience of being bombarded on, by an angry mob had to be? To have to cower, and to wear gas masks and to remain in a locked down room for hours? Yet, our senators and our congressmen and congresswomen, rose above their fears and they did the right thing, together, for the unified vision of our democracy. Republicans, Democrats, Independents from every unique state of our nation, overcame their trauma, to do the right thing for our country. They became united because their trauma woke them into the pure reality of how fragile our precious, hard won, democracy really is, in the face of it all.

A couple of blogs ago, I wrote about a question that I am planning on focusing on, in my own life, this year. Am I passing on love, or am I passing on pain? There is a lot of searing pain in this country. And a lot of this pain is justified. The pain comes from every sector, every race, every community, every generation, every family. It is our job to heal our own pain, so that the pain of our country, this deeply wounded chasm, starts to heal, on a macro-level. We must help each other to heal, by passing on love. We each can only heal ourselves. And each of us knows best how to do our own peaceful healing, with the help of our own sacred higher power. We must support each other in our healing, versus fueling the fires of hatred, which only keeps the disease of division, alive in this co-creation of our ever-evolving country.

Other countries may mock us. They may be scolding us and secretly, relishing in our current upheaval. But deep down, they are trembling in pain and in fear. They are as mortified as we are, about the state of our division. The United States is a beacon of hope, all over the world. No one can deny this. No one can afford to lose hope. It is our job to heal ourselves, so that hope can remain, for us, and for everyone around this globe.

My solemn prayer is that our lawmakers, our business heads, our political leaders, our religious guides, our major media stations, only have one major purpose in mind, in going about their duties, going into this new year and beyond. That purpose is to make all actions, and all decisions, and all priorities, about healing us back into a united state. In the meantime, the rest of us have the job to heal our own minds and our own bodies and our own spirits, by acknowledging our own pains, our own angers, our own grievances, and finding healthy, serene ways to heal these pains that lie within ourselves. There is nothing stronger, and more radiant than a group of healed and healthy people, united in the vision that our forefathers so carefully laid out for this country.

Remember, you must heal yourself. Don’t be so arrogant that you think there are no areas in yourself, that don’t need some cleaning up. We all have these areas, and it is an inside job to recognize these wounded places in ourselves, and to bring them into the light. Then, as we uncover some pain, we can ask others for guidance and help, and we can be there for each other, to help to heal each other, instead of just acting out our pain, in unconscious, reckless desperation. No human leader is going to heal you. You don’t need someone outside of yourself to heal you. You don’t need conditions outside of yourself, in order to be healed. People think if a certain person is in office, or if a certain agenda is being carried out, then they will be healed and happy. On a personal level, people think that if they have a certain level of money, or a certain relationship, then they will be happy. It doesn’t work that way. Happiness is an inside job. Those of us who believe in God, believe that God helps us with our healing, but there are no conditions outside of ourselves, that are required for God to help us. We don’t have to be a certain religion, or be at a certain level of “good” for God to help us. That is what is meant by God’s grace. God never leaves us. It is my belief that God is inside each and every one of us, deeply imbedded in our souls, quietly, calmly, peacefully sitting in the deepest seats of our hearts. Let’s find that part of our hearts, and ask to be guided to healing. It is our sacred duty to ourselves, to our families and to our nation, to heal.

Healed individuals lead to healed nations. Our nation needs to heal. Let us each do our own part. Let’s keep the highest vision of this United States, alive and well, by each of us doing our own part, in our own lives. It is simple: Pass on love to others, and pass on love to yourself. Heal your pain, and pass on love. Pass on love.

Eye Opening

Sometimes things happens suddenly that cause everything to turn on its side and all expectations go out the window. Yesterday was one of those days. Instead of touring a cool city with some of my best friends, I ended up with a very painful corneal abrasion and my tours became to various local ERs and pharmacies. I have worn contact lenses since I was in the third grade, and yet this is the first time I ever managed to tear up by eye like it was being sandblasted. I’m okay. It sucked, but I am feeling a great deal better today than yesterday. And the experience reiterated how good and caring my friends are in my life. The experience reiterated how important it is not to take your health for granted and to feel compassion for those who are suffering. So much of life’s experiences are limited when your physical being is limited.

When you resist whatever bad is happening, like the pain that I was feeling, you feel tense, panicky, angry and raw. When you get to a level of acceptance, you feel calm, protected and able to be cared for and to rest.

“The things you take for granted, someone else is praying for.” – IAMFEARLESS.SOUL.COM