Balancing Act

What does it mean to be "well balanced"? All I can say is that it seems to be what we all are striving for in our hectic day to day lives. We try to make everyone happy, make sure the bills are paid, the house is cleaned and maintained, the pets are groomed, the vehicle is running as it should, and on and on the list can go. But why? For what purpose does all of this happen? The ultimate reason. We all want a well balanced life where things go as they should and we can go to sleep with peace in our minds and hearts.

Often, or so it seems in my life and the lives of countless others that I know, we forget to make sure to take the time to care for ourselves as we care for others. A good friend of mine asked me once "Who takes care of the care-taker?" That question got me to think about why I was so burned out, so no one was getting the best I could give them. I had a "light bulb" moment. You know...one of those moments when it just all makes sense.

Imagine, if you will, that you are on a ship in the ocean. Off in the distance you can see that there is land. There is your destination. There is a storm coming in behind you and you have just noticed that you have a hole in the transom of your ship where it has rusted through. The hole is just below the surface of the water and you quickly realize the added weight of your cargo is what is keeping the hole in the water. You also realize that if you do not do something, and fast, neither you, nor your cargo will make it to port and will be lost in the storm that is coming on fast. What would you do?

I imagined myself in exactly that situation. Then I saw myself throwing those boxes of cargo over-board with the realization the waves will carry them to shore soon enough. With every box I unloaded, the rear of my ship raised just a bit more. Soon, with only my necessities aboard, the hole was raised above water and my destination was within reach, and I had the knowledge my safety was attained by letting go of the things I was so sure I had to carry.

Each of those boxes I had to throw over-board were heavy-laden with worries and sorrow, other people's problems, and some were boxes that I didn't even know I was carrying until I moved the first ones. They all would take their own path in the waters of life to reach their destination. I would be ashore waiting to receive each box, one at a time, as they came in, and strong enough to handle each one with care and respect.

First and foremost your personal peace and happiness is a must because if you cannot be at peace and feel your best, how can you possibly give your best to those you love and care for? Taking time and care for you is not selfish. It is wise, and the very best thing you can do for those you care for. As you care for and nurture yourself, you are cultivating the same kindness in those around you.

Very soon it becomes apparent that your life has become balanced, and you are not responsible for everyone's happiness. They are responsible for their own just as you are responsible for yours. You are not making them a better person, stronger or happier by carrying their sorrows and worries along with your own. You can help carry the load, but you must also pay attention to you and know when to set the extra load down.

For me, I had to know when to say when and when to take time for myself to remember the things that bring me joy. Those are the things that keep me well- balanced. Taking time to remember the things which bring me joy and then, and this is most important, sharing that joy with others.

So, I encourge you to remember your joy. Remember to take time for yourself and rest, create something, go for a walk in the park and listen to the birds sing. Do something you've always wanted to do, but have never made the time for. I promise you will see a remarkable difference in your life if you just take time for yourself first. Not only will you become more balanced and focused, those you interact with and care for the most will become more well-balanced as well.

Growing Pains

I feel as if I have been gone away on some distant planet. Obviously that is not possible, but I cannot get past the feeling that I have been away from "my life." I have been here all along. I have gone through the motions. I have smiled, sometimes. Mostly I have cried in the past year. I am still asking myself "What the hell happened?"

When Life has a growth spurt for you, it does not spare the plethora of lessons in store for you. Believe me, I know, and yet it will be something I will probably forget again because I knew it once upon a time but then I got too comfortable in my daily Life and did forget it.

I have trekked into the furthest recesses of my mind. Places I wish to never see again, and wounds I know I am stronger for having healed. I feel like an alien now though. Like I do not see the world the same as I once did. Is that a bad thing? I think not. My heart aches for my fellow man even more so now and my drive to help not only humans but animals, because they do not have a voice, is ten-fold.

The oddity of it all is that I feel so incompatible in my current life now, but I have never felt so singular in Spirit with all that surrounds me. I used to have to go to the wildlife refuge to find peace and stillness within myself and now I find it even in the midst of chaos it seems. I have worked hard on those things which bound me to my past because I refused to carry them one step further. I refused to carry those scars any longer.

As the people around me have lovingly come to me recently and expressed their concern about my "not being the same," it has brought my attention and focus back to the Now. In a sense, I guess I have been gone. I was traveling to the past traumas and coping with them and reordering them in my adult, healthy mind. All but the physical part of my body was time traveling, I suppose, and sometimes, even my body had a physical reaction to the deeply buried memories. I indeed am not the same.

I also suppose unless you have been a victim of severe trauma and have worked through it, my ramblings will not make sense to you one bit. Even the best of the professionals, and I do know some, cannot know what it is like completely unless they have fought on this battle ground. Yet that is why, I remind myself, that is why Psychology is my major and why I have a drive to succeed: I know what it is like.

I rather like the new me a little more. I seem to have more compassion, less temper. There is nothing wrong with an experience that teaches one to be humble and to lift others up. By understanding myself, I understand my world just a little more, or at least my perception of it.

I may feel contrary now, but I am certain that my Life is going exactly as it is supposed to be going. In that much, I have Faith, and all the rest...well it will work itself out.

One Year Today

Today it has been a year exactly since my father was cremated and set free from his body and his life. I really did not think I would have an issue with today since I embraced what was happening last year. I was in a sweat lodge at this very moment a year ago, praying for his soul. Praying that he will never have to live another miserable life like the one he lived this time.
But tonight, right now I find myself in tears. I am grieving. I mean really grieving. My family thinks I am insane for being able to forgive the man that did such horrible things to us, but I cannot NOT forgive. That is not who I am. If I held on to the hurt and pain and anger, I would allow him to control me, even from his grave.
All I know is that I miss my daddy...the daddy I wish I would have had. The dream that maybe someday he would apoligize for the things he had done to us and the things he failed to do. My heart feels like it is breaking in two, over a man who tried to break me in a million pieces, and I do not understand why.
If someone has the answers, I sure wish you would tell me so I can understand what is happening.

Hidden but Seen

Hidden but Seen

Do not judge me because I am not you.
Do not judge me because you cannot see
the battle I fight.

Do not judge me because you think
my emotions are erratic.
Do not judge me because you cannot feel
compassion in your own heart.

Do not judge me because I am not successful in what you consider important.
Do not judge me
because I cannot "get over it."

Do not judge me as insignificant
because I do not fit into your proper and polite world.

Do not judge me because
I break out in cold sweats in middle of a conversation.

Do not judge me because I cannot hide my emotions.

Do not judge me because you are not me.

Do not judge me because I remember.

That Time of Year

PTSD is indiscriminate.

We cannot hide, and we cannot run.
What do we do?
We fight.
We fight it with every ounce of strength that we can muster.
We fight until we cannot fight a moment longer and fall into the oblivion of our own hell.

Every year, the end of September brings something extra for me.
Every year, the day after Christmas, I begin to feel relief.Every year, I think next year will be better, easier.
Every year, I forget what October will be like.Every year, I remember.

Every year, it gets harder.
Every year, I wake to a new level of torture.
Every year, I am reminded I am incompatible with the rest of my world.
Every year, new memories rock the foundation of my soul.
Every year, I cry out in agony, reliving every moment.
Every year, he comes into my room.
Every year, he touches me.Every year, I seek the meaning.
Every year, meaning does not reveal itself.
Every year, I loose my passion for living.Every year, I face the nightmares and cold sweats.Every year, I cannot be alone because I have to be babysat.Every year, I lose friends because they cannot understand my war.
Every year, I fail to make new friends because I cannot control my emotions.Every year, I remember.Every year, I fight.
Every year, I adjust to the new memories.
Every year, I breathe a sigh of relief when December has passed by.
Every year, I believe it will be better next year.Every year, I believe I have accomplished a victory because I am alive.
Every year, I am all too aware that people do not accept me for who I am. Every year, I think "if only I could make them see without judging me."Every year, I remember.Every year, people tell me "Get over it."
Every year, I feel like a burden to my family.
Every year, I become someone who I am not.
Every year, I lose stretches of time.
Every year, I get lost in the flash-backs.
Every year, my mind betrays me. Every year, I remember.Every year, Hope hides in the recesses of my mind.
Every year, I am plunged into the darkness of hell.
Every year, I have to crawl my way out.
Every year, I chip away at the muck and mire he left me covered in.Every year, I feel numb.
Every year, my body remembers even if my mind does not.Every year, I remember.Every year, I am suffocated again by his stench and musty smell.
Every year, I am a child locked away in her closet.Every year, I am the teenager pinned down with the knife to her throat.
Every year, I am the girl in the dumpster searching for food to eat.
Every year, I am the child sent to school without food.
Every year, I am the sister shivering on the steps with her siblings, praying we are not next.
Every year, I am the neighbor girl every one talks about, feels sorry for, but does nothing to help.
Every year, I remember.

Does Anybody Hear Her?




  Every year, I remember.

Plato Knew...

"Only the dead have seen the end of war."


Recently, I heard the news that a very dear friend of mine had committed suicide. In shock and disbelief, I scoured the Internet to find the news in our local paper or a clip from the news. Nothing. Nothing was found to be found here in the local media. I finally found his death notice in his hometown paper.

Why?
Because my friend was a soldier. A medic for the US Army. The officials apparently thought it best not to let the information leak that a soldier had taken his life.
Why?
Scared that maybe some of the other killing machines they have created will get the same idea and off themselves and THAT would make the United States of America look bad? Our leaders make me sick.
The soldiers are sent off to war, sometimes several times in a row. For instance, my ex-husband. He has recently started his 4th tour in Iraq. We have three children together and after the first time he deployed, he came back a changed man. Even if the soldiers are "lucky" to make it home, they are not alive anymore. They are just waiting for death to come for them, and in the mean time drink their fears away, shoot them up in the fluffy clouds with drugs, or drag their families into their personal hell with them.

My ex-husband is a good man who is the perfect soldier. To show distress from war exposure is a weakness and will be punished immediately by their superiors. He knows that. So does every other soldier in the United States military, no matter what they may be spoon-fed by the politically correct silver tongued leaders who preach about getting help for the epidemic of depression over taking our soldiers. How ironic that our leaders send our fellow citizens off to a war for oily money, for pride, for "justice," yet when the good and faithful servant shows sign of weakness, they are dispensed of as if they did not sacrifice all that was important to them to serve our government, and have something relative to the black plague.

I am not anti-soldier.
I am anti-senseless-war.
I am anti-senseless-loss.
I am anti-abusing-our-defenders.
I am anti-killing-our-soldiers-in-silent-prisons.

I have lost more than one special person to the desert sand-filled winds they breathe in.
I lost my family because my ex's soul was left on the side of the road in Iraq where he watched his comrades being blown up, with him not able to do a damn thing.
I lost faith in my government's ability to guide and protect us, and it's men that protect us all.
I lost my right to privacy in suspicion of terrorism because of the Patriot Act.
I lost another friend to the horrendous nightmares and bloody reality he lives inside of every day.
I lost my friend, SPC Christopher Akin, to suicide because he could not fight any longer.

So much "I" in this. Think of the "I" as "we"...and think about the people you know personally who war has touched and torn apart. "I" represent the collective "we" who are suffering along with our soldiers. We are a scarred Nation, with no Faith, no Love, and no Compassion left for mankind.

I've heard a lot of people say all sorts of things to justify why "we" have had to have this war, and though the official-ness of it is ended, it will never end for those of us who have come in contact with it, either directly or indirectly.

The debt amounted can never be paid. The innocence robbed can never be regained. The fatherless, and motherless children of the consequences of war will never forget the government that was designed to protect them, helped destroy them. The families that have been torn apart, because the men we entrusted to the government, were returned to us hollow and angry shells of the men who left us.

My friend, Chris, was 23. He was one of the greatest and smartest people I knew, even if he was antagonistic and semi-annoying (like a little brother) at times. That was his brilliance. He wanted to act like a heartless fool, but while you were busy being distracted by the things he threw at you to think about, he sized you up. He was a worthy opponent in debate and yet, one of the most gentle people that has ever graced the face of this earth. I do not know what could have happened to make Chris give up his love for living, for giving, for knowledge, but I do know he deserved better then what he got in return for his service to the government.

Our soldiers are men. They are not machines. No matter what they are made to believe, they have a soul, and their minds will only withstand so many assaults on human decency. No one should experience what the soldiers have that I have talked about.

They are all locked within a prison from which they cannot get out. Chris found his key, but the door spilled out into oblivion.

"Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule." Friedrich Nietzsche

Here's to "Fuckin Chris"-- I hope your journey is more peaceful now and that The Flying Spaghetti Monster has wrapped you in His very best ravioli He can make...I love you and will miss you until I see you again, my friend.

Peace. Now. Please.

What Was She Thinking?

Last week I told my daughter to keep her schedule clear for today. I was so excited and looked forward to today with anticipation. Why? I'm getting to that, so hang on.

First I'd like to say that I have not always been interested in my community, my city, my state. I was not born in Oklahoma and for 9 of the almost 11 years I have lived here, I had been in denial. I became an Oklahomian the moment I stepped of the airplane in the middle of the night in Lawton's Airport. The almost 100 degree heat at midnight greeted me with the greediness of a thirsty child, pulling at me, claiming my heart for Oklahoma.

My daughter was 5 then. She started her school career in Germany, where my ex-husband was stationed at the time. From first grade, until present, she has attended Lawton Public Schools, has excelled musically and academically, and loves this community just as much as I do.

So! It was exciting for not only myself, but my daughter as well, when I told her we were going to go to to my university to listen to a panel of accomplished women talk about women's suffrage and honor its 90th anniversary, and since I knew some of the panel members, I knew I could expect an empowering hour or two.

I have worked fervently within the last years to not only improve my home and family, but also my community by starting and running The Compass Watchers, a Neighborhood Watch Program. As my daughter has been an inspiration for me to consistly improve in health (never mind the almost dying thing), attitude, and in Life, I often try to think of ways I can also inspire her. Sharing an event like this was going to be super cool! Or so I had hoped...

We arrived just before the event was scheduled to start. As we rode to the second floor on the elevator, I noticed Representative Ann Coody and introduced myself to her. She was so gracious and my first impression was that she was a pretty cordial person for being a State Legislator. That opinion stood for about a total of thirty minutes, and those were the thirty minutes leading up to her speech.

Please understand that I am not the kind of person who speaks rudely to people or about people, and that is not my intention now, even after the fiber of who I am has been horrified with the astounding verbiage I subjucted myself to this afternoon. I really do try to remember that we all are just doing the best that we can, and I know better than anyone that I have much to learn about the political world, but I know when I hear the truth spoken.

During her speech, Rep. Coody hit what I will call her soap box a few times but never managed to stand upright on it. She literally read women's names off of a list, telling what their titles are. Which is wonderful, I guess. YAY for the woman in leadership...She talked incessantly about her 39 years as an educator, and threw in a few moral boosting comments for the military families. Besides boring, I really cannot recall much more than that about the time she was standing up there talking. Well, that and making it sound as if it is a very hard job to do, and you damn well better want to fork over some cash if you plan to win an election. Hmm. Note to Self: Money = Power = Political Election Won. End Note.

Here's where the snowball starts.

There was to be a short Q & A after the representative was finished speaking. When she basically said, and believe me, I will be listening to this recording I have again, but when she made it clear her opinion was that women were to stay at home and raise their families when they are younger, and after they get older, THEN they can think about running for office. Yes, life experience will help you in the position, but looky here--my daughter and several younger women were in that forum today. I felt as if this woman sitting before us was no woman at all, but a man in fancy clothes and make-up, and from 1927. I have not met a woman in years that would be so shamefully assumptive in the midst of anyone, let alone such strong young women with amazing potential to change the world.

On down the hill it goes....getting pretty big and fast now...

A question was asked of Representative Coody. It was about a controversial law passed requiring women to have an ultrasound before they can have an abortion. I will spare you all the drawn out details and sum the representative's answer up quickly. Remind you -- i am just paraphrasing, but it is NOT out of context-- "Because I am a Christian," she said, "I listen to what my God tells me to do and not the constituants want."

Um
Um
Um
OUCH
that snowball hurt like hell!

Did I unknowingly walk into one of my worst nightmares?
Since when is THAT supposed to happen?

The simple answer is this: IT IS NOT SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN!

With Representatives like Ann Coody in office "fighting" the way for all women to have equal pay, rights, and equality in general, we are taking steps backward in the progress countless of other women sacrificed so much for.

I am disillusioned with politics tonight. The myth that women are unequal keeps popping it's ugly little head up again and again and sometimes it is wearing the mask of someone you had expected to be an ally.

Seperation of Church and State. It's there in the Constitution...she should not be making laws based upon a Christian foundation, and especially if it is against what the voters want.

All in all, I left what was supposed to be an informative and empowering session with women of like minds, angry, and righteously so.

You took an oath Representative Coody. You took an oath to represent your constituants. You are supposed to be their voice up there in the Capital you worked so hard to get to. Now do your job and leave your own personal doctrine out of it. If you cannot fulfill your promise to the people, than the time has come for you to step down and give one of us people with less life experience a chance to help undo what you and others like you have done.