"I am not what just happened to me there, but I might be what I do next." Glennon Doyle Melton

I began this blog in 2010 from a few seeds. The first being a friend's suggestion that I write a blog, "What would I write about?" I replied.

Soon after I was cross-country skiing, feeling ungrateful and fed up with my ungratefulness. I remembered Oprah or someone mentioning a gratitude practice and I came home and looked it up. "Ok, this is going to be my experiment."

I am reminded of this now because as I grew into this practice I started occasionally wondering what it would look like when life got hard, when I had something really painful to face. However, now that I think about it, that is where this practice began. At that point things weren't hard in a specific way, more a general way, nothing particularly wrong, nothing particularly right.

Now the pain is specific and particular. I certainly don't always feel grateful, but that is not the point. I didn't begin this because I felt grateful in my life. I began it because I knew the gratitude was there, I just wasn't seeing it.

As I quoted Cheryl Strayed's mother in my last post, “There’s a sunrise and sunset every day and you can choose to be there for it, you can put yourself in the way of beauty.”

I began journaling long before I began this gratitude practice, 20 years ago. I go through at least two journals a year and I've noticed they naturally start and end at synchronistic moments. My current journal began in October when I started reading Glennon Doyle Melton's Love Warrior.

It's interesting the seeds that are hidden in the soil. For example, I had a few panic attacks this summer/fall. It wasn't the first time in my life, but the previous few had been rare, brief and isolated incidents that I was happy to forget. The one I had in August was different. It didn't last a matter of minutes, it lasted hours. I can no longer say if that is the worst experience of my life, but if not, it's at a tie. Anyway, because of that I sought out a counselor in network with my insurance for myself this fall. So it's because of that horrible experience that I had the gift of sitting in that counselor's office yesterday. Panic is no longer my primary concern, but the resource was there and ready for me when I needed it.

I read the counselor an excerpt from a letter I'd just received from a friend of mine, "...When I am sad and scared and lonely, I think about you to give me strength..." The counselor said I'm always caring for everybody else, and asked what gives me strength. I said, "Eckhart Tolle, the Dalai Lama, trees.." I didn't think of Glennon, but I turned to her today and now I fully understand why she is the beginning of this journal. She is what I need now.

I listened to an interview with her today -

"I don't know if this will be a redemption story for my marriage, but this is sure as hell going to be a redemption story for me...I'm going to use this crap. Because pain, I mean we don't do well with pain, right? Like we think pain is something to be fixed or to be numbed and the second we feel pain we think we did something wrong, right? Like we think like it's a mistake. Get over it, get rid of it, numb it, like give it to somebody else. We say hot potato, every time someone is unkind to you, it's just because they didn't know how to be still with their pain. Right? So they just passed it on to you real quick."

Then she said, "I am not what just happened to me there, but I might be what I do next."

Wow. Yes.

I might be what I do next.

Yesterday that was going to a laughter yoga class. Laughing was the last thing I felt like doing and I almost didn't go, but the timing and location worked out to be too convenient to ignore. I didn't want to fake it so one of the first things I said was, "Laughter is about the last thing I feel like doing now, which is why I'm here."

"This is going to be a good class," the instructor responded.

And it was, when we got to the meditation and the teacher went through our body parts he included, "broken heart" because I'd suggested the "broken heart" laugh earlier in class. That is when the tears arrived, the tears I hadn't been able to feel for the previous 24 hours. After class I went straight to the nearest library to do my counselor's assignment. Since I'd told her that trees give me strength and that I tell poems to trees she said, "Write what the trees would say to you."

So I found a chair off by itself and the tears came and the words as well.

What Would the Trees Say to Me?

Oh sweet one. Oh sweet sweet Tammy.

Gentle-hearted Tammy

Kind kind Tammy

Tammy who stops to bid us respect and thanks

Tammy who gives us hugs and kisses and poems

Oh Tammy who takes in our beauty

Oh sweet sweet Tammy

Gentle heart, gentle heart, gentle one

Who feels so deeply, who feels so much

Dear one we are holding you

Can you feel that you are being held?

We know how you long to be held

to be embraced

to be seen

You have made great strides towards healing

great strides towards wholeness

Allow what remains broken to be

be with the brokenness

you are grieving

the love that you felt

the love that you had

grief runs deep into the earth

nourishment awaits in the roots

He can't give you any more love

he gave you all that he can

he gave you all that he has

his needs are not yours to fill

he stopped seeing you sometimes

like when you tried to protect us

the trees

you didn't even know

you didn't even know

You felt so much love

so much contentment

so much joy

that is yours

that was yours

you can have it again

you do have it still

I know you are scared

We know you think this was too precious

to be replicated

We know you feel lost

unanchored

without a plan

You had a vision

for once

lacking these many years

that vision is not for him

to carry

You have a ring on your finger

of us 

interwoven trees

interwoven spirits

interwoven hearts

unweave

untangle

unmask

the web

You don't know it

but we know you shine

we've seen you

a brilliant spark

a dazzling emerald

afraid you are to move too fast

afraid you are to move too slow

afraid you are to move

so stand still

like us, and reach down

you are good with directions

your small, simple and seemingly insignificant life

is enough

each tree does its part

you love us all

you love us all

you love

Glennon says, "If you are going to get the gifts of rock bottom you have to, like, dive the hell into it. You have to go straight towards whatever pain you would prefer to run away from."

And sometimes you need to hear the same statement a few dozen times, from a few dozen perspectives, for it to sink in.

Glennon again, "But I think progress through something like this, something traumatic, is more, it's not linear, it's not like we go from like unhealthy to healthy or failure to success. I think it is all circular, you just come back around to the same pain, the same loneliness, but each time you come around you are stronger from the climb, I can feel it."

I get that.

She also said, "I ruined my family for 20 years because, that's suffering, because I chose not to feel my own pain, because it doesn't just disappear, it goes somewhere. So if I don't deal with my own pain then it goes on to my family."

And we carry that pain with us for generations.  This is clear to me.  

For example, my grandparents on my mother's side.  My grandfather's father died when he was a young child.  My grandmother's mother died when she was a young child.  So two people growing up with the same primary wound are attracted to each other, in part, because they carry this wound together.  They either do the work of healing that pain together, or pass that pain on to the next generation.

I remember how cut off my grandmother was emotionally (she lived longer than my grandfather so I have a better sense of her).  My mother still grew up abandoned (emotionally instead of physically), and that too was passed on to me.  However, my mother also made steps towards healing.  She hit her bottom and eventually she turned for help.  "But I think life gets too heavy and too hard because it is supposed to.  Right?  Because when it gets too heavy that's when we have to call for a sister to the left and we have to call for a sister to the right and that's the best part of life.  It's not getting through it so perfectly..it's needing people and being needed." Glennon Doyle Melton

I've felt super grateful for my friendships recently.  From comments like

"I am sorry for the loss you're experiencing right now but so excited for the opening that has clearly occurred for you which allowed you to even find yourself in this place.  I can hardly wait to see the good that will come from it..."

I read that statement both skeptically and gratefully.

Another friend sent me a podcast that introduced me to the term, "Gaslighting."  The concept has kind of short circuited my brain.  I am just beginning to process it.  The term is based off a movie, which showcases an extreme example that I imagine few people would relate to, however further investigation helped me to discover that -

"Gaslighting does not require deliberate plotting. Gaslighting only requires a belief that it is acceptable to overwrite another person’s reality.

The rest just happens organically when a person who holds that belief feels threatened. We learn how to control and manipulate each other very naturally."

http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/08/things-wish-known-gaslighting/

So along with the codependence thing, this is another term I need to examine and face.   I suppose the two go together.

"It's like every time we get those scary demons out from the dark of inside of ourselves, we get them out into the light, and they're just like these little...  You're like, 'oh my God I spent my whole life terrified of that thing I've gotten out and', it's like the second they get out into the light and people start saying, 'Me too,' you're like, 'oh, dumb @ss thing, controlled me for so long and it was just like a little gremlin.'"  Glennon Doyle Melton

So yes there are demons here, or gremlins, or things that like to hide in the dark and haunt us, but as Lewis Howes said in the interview I listened to with Glennon.  He can now talk about his biggest demon like he's talking about the dinner he ate last night.  Because he brought it out into the light, it no longer haunts him or controls him.

Writing is how I process things, bringing them out into the light.  

"There is always two choices in front of you and they are always love and fear.  ALWAYS!  We can choose fear as much as we want, and I do all the time, but we know that it won't get us anywhere.  We know that the love choice is usually the hard choice, you know, and it's the one that always pays off."  Glennon Doyle Melton

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Quotes from Glennon were from these two interviews on youtube.  I especially recommend the second.

Glennon Doyle Melton &;; Marie Forleo on Being A Love Warrior

Glennon Doyle Melton on Becoming a Love Warrior with Lewis Howes