2014

“To be fully alive, fully awake, and fully human… One must continually be thrown out of the nest” -Pema Chodron

 

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2014,

I’m getting ready to say goodbye to you. I’ve been thinking for a few days about what to say, how to say it.

My first thoughts are that you were so damned difficult.   You broke my heart, messed up my mojo, and turned my life upside down.

Second thought: YOU….did none of that.

It was me that did it to myself.  On my own accord,  I left my job of 14 years.  I left my safe, familiar, secure, and predictable life as a nurse in the Emergency Department in a Level 1 Trauma Center.

I loved working in Emergency Medicine with all my heart.  I love being the calm in the storm.  I loved being steady in chaos. I loved helping humans in crises. I loved the variety.  I loved the challenge. I loved the teamwork, I loved the camaraderie.  I had found my niche, and my personal ‘style’.   My intuitive knowing was strong.  I was a fierce patient advocate with a strong voice.    In many ways, I felt I was an expert in my field.

I had seen burn out happen to many of my peers throughout my years. Confidently, I had always sworn that I would leave “immediately” when it began to happen to me.  Ah, it was so, so easy to sit on one side of the fence and prophesize.

The beginning of The End for me began the night I was at work and one of my friends-who-are-family, presented to ‘my’ trauma room with aortic dissection.. He was gone when he arrived.  I’ve witnessed this hundreds of times in my career…it’s different when  you love the patient and that individual is an integral part of your day to day life.    My worlds collided that night; the implications of that loss carry-on into today.

Stress evolved into Compromise creating Resentment which morphed into Ego and birthed Antagonism.  A lot of  abstract words that describe my descent precisely.

All of it turned me into somebody that I totally did not love or respect.  Imagine thinking, feeling, believing in oneself, and one day, realizing a big chunk of what you thought about yourself…wasn’t true?

It took me a couple of years to even recognize that I was officially in the Burn Out Corral.  Two years.  In that time, my confusion, my distress and my struggle was inherently spewed onto my colleagues.   I’d like to think ‘not continuously’…but I think it’s safest to assume it so.

2014, you taught me Humility.

I was hurt and deeply surprised at those that, turned out, really didn’t like me very much.    I love them, they didn’t love me.

Most of those individuals, were victims of the whirling dervish that was my descent into burn out.  My confusion and pain had spewed onto them.  I have had the pleasure of being associated with brilliance throughout my life and these folks weren’t gonna keep their hand on a burning arrow.  No Way.   That is precisely what I had become and I must be fully accountable.  I love many people that do not reciprocate that Love.   Hate is a very heavy weight, I pray their hearts can soften as Hate has a subtle way of eating an individual alive

2014, you brought me Courage.

It took me a few months to fully realize that I had actually left the ER.   This was followed by a few more months of a deep, deep, loss of identity.   Ladies and Gentlemen, may I introduce: My Ego

Yes,  I loved being a Savior. There it is.  My Ego Loves Being A Savior.  I loved introducing myself as “An Emergency Room Nurse”, and just letting that hang in the air…Boom.  That made me Important, it garnered me Affection, Friendship, Camaraderie and Love.   Writing these words nauseates me.

2014, you taught me a little more about Love.

You revealed to me the people who truly DO care about me – those that would love me if I worked at McDonald’s.   I continue to be humbled by their ever lasting, non-judgmental Love. When I focus on my blessings, these individuals are at the top, the middle and the end of my list.  They are those that I think of daily with deep gratitude for having the fortitude and courage to accept me as less than perfect.   Further, you’ve brought to me new, fresh faces full of Love – I can see them clearly.

2014, you taught me Compassion for myself.

This has been the hardest and I will need more help with this in years to come.  However, I fully realize that if I can not be compassionate with my Self first and foremost…..any “compassion” I hand out to others…..is really just that Savior Ego Candy Crap that’s designed to make you love me…..Crack.  Emotional Crack.   I want to ditch that schtick….so, Self Compassion it is.   Warning:  It’s a really tough trick to master…but, I’m catching glimpses of it.

2014, you gave me Yoga, Spirit and Meditation.

No words.  Only Gratitude and Devotion.

2014, you gave me the opportunity to Wake Up to My Self.

All  methods of self-medicating  have miraculously left my physical temple.    Habits of clean eating and exercise prevail.  The respect for my body exceeds anything I’ve ever been able to achieve before.

2014, you have been filled with personal suffering.

There has been a great and soulful Destruction  There is a subsequent tender and loving Reconstruction.   Yes, there has been deep Loss with a subtle, but profound Gain.

2014,

With all my heart and soul,

I Thank you.

Love and The Cardinal

Love and The Cardinal.

Love and The Cardinal

Once upon My Youthful Time, I claimed the Cardinal as “MY Favorite Bird.” When I say ‘Mine’, there was Ownership involved.

I was of legal age and ego-centric.  I did not accept that entire states claimed the bird.  I didn’t acknowledge that sports teams on every level claimed the bird.  However, I was in my twenties and knew everything and would have told you other entities used the  WORD Cardinal.  But, the Cardinal Himself…..well, he was Mine.

Blessed, I was.  Mystical, even, whenever that flash of red caught my eye.  “Love is on its way” was the sing-songy stanza that accompanied a Cardinal sighting.  I had a whole series of rituals in my budding girlhood years: Not stepping on cracks, throwing salt,  twisting apple stems, and tying daisy chains.  All in the name of my truest love.

Indeed, Love came and my beloved cardinal sprung hope eternal. Then Love – well, he Left.   Still the Cardinal came -“oh, he’s still thinking of me”.   Hopelessly romantic (read: insecure), I ignored the fact  that Love was sleeping with another girl.

Death came into my Life.   My Cardinal became a talisman for the departed.  Such broad shoulders for a bird.  A bit wiser now, I realized that I was unaware if birds actually HAD shoulders.   No matter, the cardinal carried Love.

Love came again…and again and again.  My beloved Cardinal always flashing hope, joy, and love.  Love left just as often as it came.  One day,  that Love..REALLY arrived.   Never before had I spent so much time being courted, adored, cherished….every day, that Cardinal came.  I knew it was my final dance with Love. He confessed the Cardinal to be HIS bird. I was willing to share.  It had taken decades of faith, and trust, but Love finally came.

Time passed, babies came, and Love was abundant.

Unrelentingly, wearing many different masks, Death descended upon my life.   Reeling and resilient, that Cardinal, he still showed up.   Older now, I saw the difference between male and female cardinals.  I began to nurture a love for the female cardinal.  Less vibrant in color, her song is more lively.  During a road trip to North Carolina, I gazed at my cardinal on every passing license plate.  I began to have a long talk with myself.  That Rouge Renegade.  Well,  maybe he’s not mine.  Ownership is Fickle, and Futile.

A beautiful November morning was breaking.   I stood at my sink waiting for the kettle to whistle while doing dishes.  I looked out the window to my back yard feeling so full of Love.  My house was warm, my daughter was home, fast asleep. My son was safe.  All was well with family and friends.  I have a wee mirror placed near my sink per Feng Shui orders.   I noticed my aging face and smiled at the old woman who looked back at me.

The sun rose,and highlighted the blazing reds, and yellows of a bittersweet vine in my back yard.  I thought : “Look at how beautiful your Life is”.

I noticed a slight movement in the branches.  I stopped all movement.  There, to the top of the vine, sat the fattest, reddest, most brilliant, Cardinal I had ever seen – Ever.   I stood in absolute awe.  No Fantasy, no attachment – simple Awe.  Robust and Bright, he stayed for a long time.  Taking a calculated risk, I quickly ran for my camera.

I tip-toed out of my kitchen, onto the porch and peeked out the window.  He was still there. I carefully opened the door and stepped outside. Gone.  Elusively Gone.   I took a bracingly deep breath of  morning air, and went  back inside.

I ran my hands under the warm water amazed at the beauty around me.  I looked up; he was back!  I admonished myself for trying to capture something that couldn’t be captured, and still, out the door I went.   Silly Woman, sneaking up on Love.

I stepped outside and looked toward the bittersweet.  Not surprisingly,  the scarlet man had flown.  This time,  I sat down in the brisk morning air feeling tremendously grateful.  I am single AND my life has been filled with SO much love.  Indeed, through death or departure, love had left.  Yet, It always, always, always  had come back.  I sat on that deck, my decrepit, falling down deck, feeling like the richest woman alive.

After awhile,  my eyes landed on a tree at the farthest corner of my yard.  Coming into my focus, perched on a lone, naked branch, it’s brilliant face to the sun, crimsom burning it’s way into my heart….was my Cardinal.

Ever Present.

All the time, Ever Present.

Simply a matter of sitting… and seeing.

Love.

Chocolate Pudding

I laid in bed listening to the giggles and excited chatter outside my window.

It’s the first day of elementary school here in Suburbia.

I felt awash with memories – grief and sadness.    Like so many in my position, I asked myself  ‘where  HAD the time had gone’.    How did it happen that THIS would be the last year, I’d have a child in the public school system.   For nearly 20 years, this day was an Event in our family.

As a mom with young children, I started a tradition of making homemade chocolate pudding the night before the first day of school.    Bedtime was always a challenge.   In an effort to infuse structure, we typically had spent the previous week  trying to “establish a routine” of a regular, earlier bedtimes.  (Note to new parents:   it doesn’t work.)   They could never seem to settle down.     The excitement rivaled that of Christmas during those Elementary school years.

Oh, I know, great organic ones, that serving up a warm bowl of chocolate sugary goodness might have added to the bedtime challenge.   Yet,  in weighing the checks and balances,  that bowl was Comfort…it was memories…it said “I love you”, I delight in you.   “Have a bowl of pudding, puddin‘”  was my traditional serving line.  Their laughter at my dorkiness, meant more to me, than being the sugar-police as I so often was.

Middle school arrived with it’s own complexities.  Parental presence became slightly diminished. The school supply list became more detailed and necessary.    Excitement was still there, with  a shade of nervousness swirling about.    The new outfits  that had been researched for weeks prior,  were now being worn, in an effort to flex the first signs of ‘cool’.    I still made pudding, noticing that I  had to interrupt their TV watching, Nintendo playing or techno-surfin’  to get them to sit down and enjoy it together..

High School, and our presence was indeed….tolerated, barely.   Certainly NOT in the school yard, “Gawwwd Mooom”.       They acquiesced to picture taking, but we were given 5 minutes, at the most.   The kids went off to school in packs – like wildebeests.   Soon,  they began driving themselves to school.    One of my children stopped taking home lunch to school, preferring the over processed school ‘lunchable’.  Now, THAT was a treat for my guy.      Compromising all personal ethos,  one year, I bought Swiss Miss  pudding in non-recycled plastic containers.

Oh, so MANY times during their school years, I dragged my sorry, tired butt out of bed.  I secretly, and maybe not so secretly,  looked forward to  3-4 hours of alone time – time to get my chores done, time to have coffee with a friend….Time!      I fantasized about ‘going back to bed”, and did just that – maybe once or twice.   I envied my co-workers who did not have children and were able to arrive at work on time.

My daughter begins her Senior Year of high school tomorrow morning.   She did her own “school” shopping, picking out her own outfits.   She has long ago determined her own bedtime.   She drives herself to work, and to school.   An excellent student, the only excitement she has today is that this will be her last year.     My son is a freshman in college and today was his first day.    I texted him my love.

and tonight……tonight,  for my heart and for my soul…..

I made chocolate pudding.