On Grief, Metamorphosis, and Self-Excavation

What with my own personal grief; seeing friends in pain with various losses and grief of their own; feeling like things in the world are getting worse rather than better; not to mention the whole snow/winter/cold yuckiness that is January in Michigan, I am overwhelmed with sadness and despair.  I am done.  Empty.  Spent.  Broken.  I have nothing left.  It's not that I don't care.  Rather, I care so much that I have no energy left to care at all.  I am tired of being a responsible adult.  I want permission to be weak, but then rage against any perceived weakness as a failure of the strength label I pridefully own.  I want to run away for a while.  Explore the world.  Excavate me.  But I can't.  Not yet, anyway.  I have made too many commitments.  Obligations.  Maybe later.

I am tired of worrying all the time.  Tired of being afraid.  What is this weird new bump on my finger?  Is my extra weight killing me?  Are Mira's pressures getting worse?  Am I a failure for having a messy home?  Have I failed my family?  My spouse?  My children?  Do I worry too much?  Is it depression, or grief, or both, or neither?  All this worry sucks was what little energy I manage to acquire.  Ain't nobody got time for this.  Where is my joy?  What happened to the woman who could do anything she set her mind to?  Who achieved so much educationally, professionally, personally?  I miss her.  I need more smiles.  More hugs.  More laughter.  More beauty.  More stillness.  More free time.

As an introvert, I need time away.  But I am already so isolated; so alone.  Being out in busy places with people I don't know just makes it worse.  I need one-on-one time in quiet, familiar places with just a few people who can help fill my energetic bucket.  Who won't judge me.  Who don't care how I look.  Who don't have a vision of me that will shatter if I name my truth.  Who can take me away for a while.  Who can bring me back to to myself.

I need help.  I don't know what kind.  I just know I don't want to hurt.  I don't want to cry when I see babies.  I don't want to envy someone else's life.  I don't want to be alone.  I don't want to feel overwhelmed.  I don't want to feel different, or unworthy.  I want to feel connected.  Loved.  Valued.  Valuable.  Worth the space I take up.  But not because other people tell me so--that can be taken away.  No.  I want to know it to be true, deep in my bones.  Know it with every breath.  Feel it.  Remember it.  I want to be so caught up in the joy and love of my life that I am not threatened by what others have; what I don't have.  I want what I am and what I already have to be enough.

How do I get there?  What must I do?  Excavate me?  By making time?  By making me a priority?  By making me an obligation?  Oh.  I guess that makes sense.  How can I feel worthy and valuable if I refuse to value myself enough to make time for what I need?

This is where I am going.  Do you want to come with me?  It's okay if you don't.  I just can't stay stuck in this hole anymore, trying to find happiness in food, stuff, and other people's validation.  I can't stay the same, even though I don't know what I will be when I come out the other side.  Change is scary and difficult.  It hurts.  But, quite honestly, it hurts to stay where I am, too.

I can't promise that you'll still like me.  In fact, ultimately, that's up to you.  I can promise that I intend to like myself--to enjoy my own company--and that I will work to embody kindness, joy, patience, acceptance, strength, and love.  I have no idea where I'll end up, but I will share my journey with you.  You can find me here.

#Truth2015

Picking My Battles

Making new habits is simple.  Simple because you only have to do something for 14 days until it becomes a habit.  Unfortunately, making new habits is not easy; if it were easy, we would all eat healthy food, exercise, and have tidy homes.  I have been making great strides in the exercising more area.  I have also been doing a better job of self-care (daily showers!), getting more work done, only letting laundry go two weeks before getting done, doing at least one load of dishes a week, and keeping up with bills.  Given that I am forever fighting the urge to want to do anything besides hang out under the covers all day, I think I've been VERY productive.

I admit that there is a LOT more that needs to be done, and many more areas for improvement.  However, there's only so much energy to go around, and fighting myself all day every day uses most of that up.  The result is that some things have to slide.  My main area of failure--healthy eating.  It's never been much of a priority for me to begin with and--let's face it--I'm still grieving and food is one of my main comforts.  Moreover, having added exercise to the mix, my bad eating will not be *as* problematic, and it sure as heck beats out-of-control-spending.  So, I'm not working on the food stuff.  Not yet, anyway.  Instead, I'm picking my battles.  I know me.  If I try to take on too many things at once, they will all fail.  Each one will receive less of my attention than it needs to be successful, and I will quit them all.  I have chosen to focus my energy on self-care, exercise, and work.  These three things are my top priorities.  Once I have managed to get these things to the point that they are automatic, I will attempt adjustments in my other bad habits.  It's not ideal, but I would rather succeed at adding exercise than fail at changing both food and exercise.

And, at least on the exercise front, I am proud to say that I am making progress.  I have completed seven workouts since the first of the year; my scale told me I am 9 pounds closer to my goal weight; and I am able to exercise for longer before feeling tired (although the whole back pain thing has been putting a cramp in my efforts).  It's not a perfect plan, but I am not perfect--in fact, I'm actually working on remembering that perfection is unattainable.

This is my truth.  Your mileage may vary.

Eating My Way Fat

I am fat.  This is pretty obvious, but it's still hard for me to admit.  I wear my weight *very* well and know how to dress it to hide it.  I'm not saying I don't look overweight; I do.  I just don't look as heavy as I am.  Even my docs say I don't look that big.  But this year is about truth.  The truth is, I take lots of pictures and find the ones that I think make me look smaller.  I know I've always done that to some extent--picking pictures that make me feel pretty, or at least prettier--but one of the things about finding my truth is peeling back the layers, removing the veneer, and exposing myself.  I need to look at things in the hard light of day.  So, here it is.  

I weigh 265 pounds.  My BMI is 38.  I was startled to discover that I am only a few pounds away from a classification of "clinically severe obesity".  I am already at an increased risk of diabetes, not just from my weight, but having had gestational diabetes--twice.  I am also a comfort eater.  I eat to make myself feel better.  I eat to reward myself for a job well-done.  I eat when I'm bored.  I love sugar and fat.  There are times I can eat just a little of something "bad," but more often than not, I cannot control myself.  I have come to understand the struggle of addiction.  I *know* I shouldn't eat something.  I *know* I will hate myself after I eat it.  I *know* I will feel miserable when I weigh myself.  I *know* it's bad for my health.  None of that stops me from shoveling it into my mouth anyway.  The more difficult thing about food addiction is that there is no going "cold-turkey."  No complete abstinence.  You can't rid your house, or your life, of all food.  You also can't just stop going places where it's available.  Food, particularly junk food, is ever present.  You *have* to find a way to moderate yourself.  This is, and has always been, my biggest struggle.  

In the past, the solution for me has not been to stop eating the junk entirely.  Rather, I would exercise to compensate.  It's not a perfect solution, but it's better than my current combination of eating crap and *not* exercising.  So, I'm going to make time for exercise.  I have chosen to motivate myself by signing up for a mini-marathon in May.  That's 13.1 miles.  I have done 3 half-marathons before, so I know I am capable of doing it.  It's just a question of getting my body back in a condition to get it done.  And, to keep myself moving forward, I am already verbally committed to do another one next January.  My plan will be to complete at least two half-marathons each year to keep myself in better health.

In the process, I expect I will release some weight (I call it releasing instead of losing because I usually end up looking for things I've lost).  According to the BMI calculators, I should weigh no more than 173.  That's 92 pounds from where I am, and a weight I haven't seen since I got married.  Since little goals are easier to achieve, I have set myself the following benchmarks:  240, 220, 200, 180.  At each benchmark, I get to reward myself, but not with food, or a day off of exercise.  I haven't figured out what my reward will be yet, but I have some time to figure it out--about 25 pounds worth of time.

Here's the thing.  I want you to hold me accountable.  To those of you who are friends on Facebook, I will be posting my workouts using Map My Run.  If you think I have started slacking, feel free to call me on it.  I will post a starting picture and then at least a monthly picture.  I will also post updates here.  Since my word this year is truth, my plan is to post the good and the bad.  I want to be honest about my struggle and how I'm trying to make myself better.  So, that's part of my plan for this year.  Stripping away fat; stripping away layers of camouflage; and finding the true me hiding underneath.  I hope you'll join and support me.

Me at 265:

Goodbye Joy, Hello Truth

It's New Year's Eve, and I could not be more ready for this year to end.  To be honest, I feel like I have been dealing with ever bigger struggles since we first started having trouble conceiving in 2008 and I am terrified about the year ahead.  Meds and surgeries in 2009; IVF and rough pregnancy in 2010; CHD diagnosis, hospitalizations, heart caths, and open-heart surgery in 2011; miscarriage and failed IVF in 2012; IVF, rough pregnancy, CHD, rough delivery, surgeries, deaths, and hospitalizations in 2013; surgeries, hospitalizations, depression, and Patrick's death in 2014.  Six years of increasingly difficult experiences.  I am tapped out.  I don't know if I can handle any more.  I know that I said that last year, and that this year was much worse and I'm still standing.  It has become obvious that each time I have said enough, the universe has tested me and pushed me and showed me that, in fact, it could give me more and I would survive.  I'm also well aware that there are many worse things that could be sent my way.  I don't want them.  I am trying desperately not to challenge the universe.  I don't want to know how strong I can be.

At the same time, I don't want to focus on the negatives.  I want to focus on something positive, under the theory that we manifest those things on which we focus our energy.  As 2015 has approached, I began the task of figuring out my word for the year.  Let me back up--in my family, instead of make New Year's resolutions, we pick a word or attribute that we want to focus on, work on, or manifest in the year ahead.  I have previously picked words like discernment and abundance.  One year, I picked patience, before I knew better.  Last year, having had such a crummy 2013, I picked joy.  I wanted to manifest joy in my life.  Hahahahaha!  What I got was lots of opportunities to find joy in the rough and tumble world of hospitals and death.  As a result of the experiences this year, I've been (I think reasonably) scared of picking my word for 2015.  I felt like it needed to be "perfect"; that, somehow, if I could just pick the right word, I will have an easier year in 2015.

I thought I had finally managed to narrow it to three:  miracles, release, and connection.  Then, this afternoon, I read an article by someone else who was picking a word for next year.  The article included a list of questions to ask in formulating said word.  In asking myself those questions, I came up with a few other thoughts, including success, family, truth, comfort, and insight.  As I tried to decide which of these words would be the best one to select, it occurred to me that I was picking my word out of fear.  Fear that it would be hard.  Fear that it would bring more struggles and grief.  I was, once again, trying to outsmart God--as though that were actually possible.  So, I tried my best to get my head out of it.  I wrote the words on paper, folded them, put them in a hat, and picked one.  The result was unexpected.  Of all the ones I thought might come up, this wasn't it.  Maybe that's why it came up.  Who knows.  For good or ill, my word for 2015 is:

Truth

And as I thought about the word, I was reminded of a line of a covenant from a church I attended in my youth:  to seek the truth in love.  So, I wrote my own covenant for the year, to help keep me on track with my word:

Love is the spirit of my life,

And truth shall be its law.

I will seek the truth in love.

I will speak my truth with love.

And I will help others find their truth.

This is my covenant.

So, goodbye #Joy2014 and hello #Truth2015.  See you next year.