living a small, slow life in a small, slow town and loving every minute of it...please join my journal about aging, overcoming c-PTSD, living with chronic illness, and being creative in spite of it all.
when I’m dancing…I am free. I want Bill Nighy as my anxiety. But not really. I want free. Anxiety and pain have gotten the better of me this week. The lab tests came back, still and again, positive for Lyme. I’m not able to do much. Back on meds…ugh. These two remind me that art is the only way out of this mess – mine or yours, physical or emotional. And art is whatever you decide it is; whatever empties you.
I have to remind myself not to let fear take away my peace. This short film was made to help support the artists of Ukraine. Don’t we all feel helpless in the face of the world’s oppressors? And aren’t they oppressing to the best of their ability? My body can’t seem to fight off the bacteria from a minuscule insect, let alone war.
I think I broke a couple of toes last night, tripping out of bed. And I just started laughing (through the tears!) Oh my, how I take life all too seriously. Dear spirit will do whatever is necessary to get my attention. I will put on some music today and dance around if it kills me…and empty out my body and my mind of the debilitating anxiety. Get present. Get here now.
So what can we do in the face of oppression, of illness, of anxiety and worry? How do we switch off the solution driven thought machine and act creatively? Be our souls? We empty, we get outdoors, we go back to the old drawing board, we allow ourselves to be just a teensy bit more generous than feels comfortable right now…we expand.
We B R E A T H E….ahhhhhh. ‘Cause, don’t you wanna call it off?
Heart pounding anxiety woke me up at 3 a.m; which is not unusual anymore. I managed to talk myself off that ledge in about a minute. I’m getting better at it. My goal was freedom. The goal is always going to be freedom. Because I feel like my dream world, my rest, was hijacked. It’s mine. I want it back.
My friends and I are all worried about our adult children. They are struggling to find their footing in a culture that is undermining them every step of the way. And we are not sure how to help, or if we can. Mind you, they were raised as we were, in decent middle class families. We were well educated, but our current incomes are not cutting it. We don’t have the financial security we thought we were building all our work life. Our children left school in debt with no guarantee of a job, let alone a living wage. I read a news article last week that shocked me to my core: recent studies have shown that at least fifty percent of the baby boomers in the U.S. are financially supporting adult children. In many cases it’s the adult child and their family. They came home to get their feet back on the ground – in one case cited, 13 years ago.
Children or not, everyone I know is struggling. We are all trying to figure this out as we go along. We have no role models. We’re outliving our parents, and we are in entirely uncharted territory. We are the first generation that is openly talking about the abuse our parents and grandparents kept secret. No one was consciously dealing with narcissistic abuse 20 years ago. Or 10. No one recognized that past generations were being groomed for sexual abuse. The culture tolerated it, they tolerated verbal abuse, even laughed about it. They tolerated bad behavior, made excuses for it. Hell, we’ve voted it into the White House. Taking accountability for your behavior was optional. Do you wonder we have an epidemic of dementia?! (Help me forget!) Addiction? Of narcissism? Of sex trafficking? Of all manner of spiritual bankruptcy? Can no one connect the dots here?! That pandemic was no accident – it was a physical manifestation of a spiritual problem. It’s time to pull our heads out of the sand.
Meanwhile, I’m struggling with my health. Last week I called for a doctor appointment and was reminded that I have to be interrogated by a nurse over the phone to determine whether or not I am sick enough to qualify for a precious appointment. I have to beg just to be seen. Then before I can be given the necessary antibiotic I have to endure a week’s worth of tests. Meanwhile, I was prescribed a temporary superficial treatment. Medicare doesn’t cover that prescription, so I didn’t fill it. I can’t do that and buy groceries. And I’m angry about that.
Now, lest you think me ungrateful, or just a whiner, I am aware of opportunity hiding here in plain sight. When worry and anxiety seem to steal my peace I know my training is not yet complete. And I’m not havoc-ing it anymore (see blog post of March 15th.) Intellectually I know that the way out of angst is gratitude. But my intellect is not easily coerced. I can’t expect to start pontificating about big, general platitudes and get myself free. Those old affirmations aren’t working anymore; this feels like spiritual warfare.
But. I can start small…go back to basics. I’m sure glad I bought an orange desk chair instead of black. Orange is the happiest color. Wow, I love my bed. I love my wide Frodo feet. I walk to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and I say “Thank You” to everything I pass (yes, out loud) – the floor, the countertop, the cat, the doorway, the moon outside. Try it. There are big things I am grateful for, too – like my son having survived cancer. He is struggling through his self-proclaimed “mid-life crisis”…but he’s here for it. Not all of his friends have made it past 40.
I can re-member myself whole. I have resources in my spiritual tool box: friends, some of my family, a loving therapist, tarot cards! At 3 a.m. with a racing heart I call in invisible help: “Christ Jesus, Archangel Michael, Ancestors! Any and all available light workers.” That’s step one. I am NOT TO BE TOILED WITH here. Neither are you – know that. God didn’t make a mistake. You were not a cosmic afterthought. You do not need to “find your purpose”…you ARE your purpose. Live like you belong here. There are no qualifications you haven’t fulfilled. You have exactly the same right to be here as 8,019,876,189 other people. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Since that has been established, I can be the narcissist’s worse nightmare. My home, my mind, and my body – my sanctuary – is a no tolerance zone. No talking down to anyone. I carry an expectation that you will be on your very best behavior around me and show up as present as possible. Don’t ever settle for anything less from anyone. Not your teacher, not your boss, not your doctor, and certainly not your family. I can laugh at myself with the best of them – when I’m silly or wrong. But don’t make fun of me at my expense. Don’t ridicule me. I’m a fucking spiritual Jedi, and I’ve trained my boundaries to be stronger than my empathy. Everybody sing along now…
You will see the name of this blog change soon, to A Painterly Life. Let’s face it, it isn’t a blog about home so much as about life. And the content will broaden. We will venture out to explore the beautiful nature I am grateful to live in and near. We will continue to explore lifestyle, particularly through the lens of an aging woman…a creative woman who has survived incest, near-death experiences, growing up in an extremely dysfunctional family in the wild sixties, profound loss, decades of narcissistic abuse, and who is surviving chronic illness. But mostly, a woman who wants to live as open-heartedly as possible moving forward. Moving life forward will be the theme here.
Like most of us, from all walks of life, we are figuring it out as we go along. Our culture is changing fast – as it must. It’s archaic in so many ways. Those of us who long to see a new far more sustainable world for future generations must make serious and often difficult changes – and quickly – to keep our lives moving forward. To feel relative. We must learn to live as a verb rather than a noun.
“I want to learn to live my life as a liquid.” – Cody, Dinner At the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler
These days my body and my psyche require an unreasonable amount of rest. I do resist, albeit futilely. I have so much to do. I find myself wondering how anyone works and does everything else, but in truth, we don’t. I didn’t. I ignored more than was healthy to ignore. I lived in a constant state of overwhelm. I suffered in silence, but I also caused an unnecessary amount of suffering in my bull-in-a-china-shop charge through life. But I survived. I’m a survivor.
So are you. And I maintain a foundational premise I have adamantly defended since adolescence – that creativity is the only way through this chaos. Art, to be specific. And art is not a thing, it is a process, a way of life.
And so I aver: ULTIMATELY, IT WILL BE THE ARTISTS WHO SAVE US. You’re not an artist, you say? I beg to differ. Do you problem solve? Art. Cook? Art. Sing when alone in the car, maybe even off-key? Art. Notice the lichen on the fallen log? Artist! Love crisp, clean sheets? Know when something just feels “off”? Have a favorite color? Savor coffee with dessert? I can go on, oh, and I will…stick with me.
Let’s talk about this plaque of deep fatigue, physically and psychologically. Perhaps more so psychically. Don’t think you’re psychic? Well, I will prove that you are that, too. And it is required of us now to acknowledge and develop this atrophied gift. It is part of living artistically. It is part of living.
We are human. We are alive. We are artists. We are now.
The past week has been a bit challenging. I haven’t felt well for a couple of weeks, but the fatigue finally took me down. I called the doctor. I’m still waiting on lab results, but I likely have an infection, perhaps a flare-up of Lyme, something chronically auto-immune. It’s my life now. That said, I’m grateful that my illness is invisible and manageable. I’m learning to live with it. I need far more sleep than most people, and I’m learning to allow for that.
The biggest factor in maintaining my mental health is being creative, and that can be evasive when I am tired. You see, I lose my curiosity and become lethargic…or I become lethargic and I lose my curiosity. I’m easily confused. I am less able to still mind and body and less likely to be internally moved; I seek a meaningful distraction.
I have always read voraciously. There is never enough to read that I find compelling. Love memoir, murder mystery, biography, tarot mythology, interior design and more. Since feeling punky the past couple of weeks I have been laying around reading. I’ve read Designing Rooms with Joie De Vivre by Amanda Reynal. I’ve read How To Be Old by Lyn Slater, A Walk Through the Forest of Souls by Rachel Pollack, and It’s Not You by Ramani Durvasula, PhD. All in hard cover, old school. I would recommend each of them. I’m obsessed with the weight and smell and sound of a book. I’ll buy used whenever possible. I dog ear corners, mark pages with handmade and improvised book marks and if I intend to keep the tome and read it again or use it as reference, I scribble thoughts in the margins. I really use my books. I’ve got a Kindle device and the app on my phone, linked to more than one library membership. That just sucks the joy out of reading for me.
But I have not felt creative at all. Friends have tried to call me out, to get me to “do something, Susan, even if it’s wrong,” I hear my Mother say in my head. I ignore their promptings. It has taken an “accidental” discovery of some new idea, and suddenly I am fascinated with soft fascination. Did you know about this? Have you been holding out on me?! Let me introduce you to this lovely artist, Jane Lindsey. She’s my inspiration this week. She will explain soft fascination, and we will all be better off for having met her.
“Unused creativity is not benign. It doesn’t just disappear. It lives within us until it is expressed, neglected to death, or suffocated by resentment and fear. Unexpressed creativity starts to kill us from inside.” – Brene’ Brown
“Your great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone. As if life were a progressive and cunning crime with no witness to the tiny hidden transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny the intimacy of your surroundings.”
Because I am inexplicably blessed with remarkable women as friends, I have been engaged in an ongoing conversation about what it means to live alone and to be isolated. Is isolation a healthy choice? There are many of us who have chosen to live alone in recent years, despite being women of advancing age. It certainly doesn’t look wise. But what if compromising our mental and emotional health in order to remain attached isn’t a viable option any longer?
In recent years I have seen friendships fall away simply because we were at different stages in life. Some friends have become caretakers for grandchildren, and don’t seem to have time for me. I have gone no contact with several friends as my boundaries have become healthier and I was less available for their demands. Beloved family members have died, or slipped into the oblivion of dementia. As I watched alcoholism destroy the minds and bodies of those closest to me, I’ve become less tolerant of addiction. I can’t stand to be around people who are drinking. They think they are entertaining and fun; they aren’t. They are defensively unconscious. My compassion for them has increased; I still love them. But I don’t want to be around them.
And then coming to terms with narcissistic abuse takes it’s toll on everyone. It deals a particularly cruel penance, a psychic solitary confinement. Much like alcoholism, and often combined with it, it extends it’s creeping tentacles into our psyche and rips apart our very lives. Here’s my analogy: You went to sleep in your cuddliest pajamas and you woke standing naked in a distant field, the tornado having just dropped you there. Nothing is recognizable. Dramatic? If you know, you know.
Chosen isolation is transformative. When embraced it is healing. Solitude is a welcome adjustment, health chosen over dis-ease, dysfunction. There is psychological room to breathe, and growth can finally take place. You gain some essential perspective…and then you begin to see the workings of life in the cult of fear. The man behind the curtain is no wizard.
It seems to me that once you can tentatively poke your toe out of survival mode and assess, there is much accountability to face. If you can get beyond your defenses and self loathing, you win. I confess that I used to scoff at people who said that joy can be experienced equal to the grief you have known. Psychobabble alert. But as spring is beginning to emerge here in the cold north (and it is still mighty cold), I am noticing…I am noticing a remarkable expansion. I am feeling less isolated and more connected, even – or maybe especially, to an invisible mystery. It’s enticing me toward something unknown. This is not the end of my story.
Perhaps there are different kinds of isolation, or different levels. Perhaps some isolation is healthy and some is unhealthy; maybe it’s a stage, a transition..maybe…just maybe everything is waiting for you.
“Some bridges are beautiful when they burn. There’s a calmness that takes over when you can’t go back. When you’ve changed. When you’ve decided. When you’ve left behind a version of you that is no longer you. The end of everything is the start of anything.” – zach pogrob
Well. I’m struggling this week as I think about aging, and women who have inspired me as I become an elder…and I’m compelled to think about my Mom. I’m older now than she was when she died. There is nowhere to look but inward. She has been gone 21 years this week, and I still miss her every day. When I think of writing about her, I don’t know where to start. I could write an epic tome, volumes…17,898 chapters – one for every day we lived at the same time, most of those days in close contact. She was my best best friend.
Doris was a little spit of a woman, barely a hundred pounds, a sparkling fairy with red hair and green eyes and freckles. She looked fragile, but she was a force to be reckoned with. She did not have an easy life, but she was never daunted by challenges. She took everything in stride and pushed into possibility and unwavering hope, always. She was a tireless champion for her five children. And then for her grandchildren, of which my son had the great privilege to be first born. She was obsessed with him. I suspect he came just in time to renew her future imaginings. My son was about five when he said, “I love Nana, she spoils me rotten.” Indeed.
As a young adult I looked to begin a tradition with Mom, to find something we could do together, just the two of us. I started to buy us concert tickets, some to my favorite musicians, and some to hers. I would choose an outdoor venue in the middle of summer and pack us a picnic so we could sit in the parking lot afterwards and talk while we waited for the traffic to clear. I got to have her all to myself. I endured country for her, and Neil Diamond. I drew the line at Willie and implored my sister to take her in my place. I was such a snot (glad I outgrew that…)
One summer I was excited to get us great tickets to see k.d. lang. It would cause quite a rift with my two sisters. They forbid her go. It seems we were not allowed to support artists who were gay. She decided to defy them and go anyway. I reassured my sisters there was no need to worry, that we weren’t going to “sleep with her – we’re only going to listen to her sing.” Oh what I would give for one more day…
Yesterday I drew the Emperor as the tarot card of the day. Specifically, I drew from the Emily Dickinson Tarot. The deck depicts the major arcana as insects, derived from her work as a botanist. The Walking Stick is our Emperor here. Always looking to take action as acknowledgement of the card, I went for a walk. And I asked the Emperor to talk to me, to show me something useful. What popped into my mind surprised me, as intuition often will. I imagined a movie character as The Emperor – Grace, from the movie Hope Gap. How on earth could Grace embody the Emperor? Grace is a hot mess.
Grace is faced with her marriage ending. But they didn’t grow apart after 29 years; he suddenly left for another woman. Not only is she facing her older years alone, but utterly rejected. Perhaps for the first time in her life, Grace is faced with herself. She becomes inconsolable, and intolerable. We’re not quite sure if she and her family will survive this.
This story is a memoir. It was written and directed by William Nicholson, and is the story of his parents divorce and the way it changed a family. The way each of them were transformed. The lives that came out differently than expected. And here is where the Emperor shows up.
The Emperor embodies all four kings of the minor arcana. He is the intellect king of swords, arrogant and haughty and absolutely devoted to the truth. Ultimately he is your best soldier once he matures to realize he isn’t always the smartest person in the room. He is the king of wands, intuitive and compassionate and fair – above all else, fair. In his younger self we saw his impulsive nature and his one-sided idealism get in his way, but he sees his place in history. The king of cups has learned to love the hard way. It isn’t what he thought it meant. It requires dedication and loving action even when he doesn’t feel it, even when anger seems to consume him. And the king of pentacles has learned to manage energy, because without his health he has no throne, no say. And without his wits about him his fortunes will be squandered, and he will be rendered powerless that way as well. He intends to stay in power and to use it effectively. They have all learned to stand their ground, to govern judiciously. And they have learned what power is for.
Grace is shaken to her core, and she must find a way to survive and flourish. And live her life, her way. In her transformation we are all healed. So, yeah, I can see Grace as an emperor. But as it happens, the emperor wasn’t finished with me yet…
The Emperor is my son’s archetype. My son is the most important person in my life. When he was going through cancer treatment in his early twenties I remember something funny he said one day. He said “I know I’m going to be alright no matter what happens, but what are we going to do about getting you some help?” That’s the emperor. These days I am watching him mid-life, struggling to re-invent himself, floundering. He would make the very best dad, but he is not likely to have children of his own. That is not the path of the emperor. They walk alone, the shamans, the way showers. And I need to let him go. I need to alchemize my own life and let him learn to survive and flourish. I need to be Grace. Embrace your own internal Emperor today and be compassionate with yourself. The world is waiting for you.
The Crappy Childhood Fairy, aka Anna Runkle, is another of my heroes. It’s no understatement that she changed my life when I first came across her several years ago. A decade ago I would have called my angst “social anxiety,” which brings me to a shocking discovery: our unhealed trauma evolves with us. Our symptoms adjust, our language updates, the common therapeutic terms change, we find new ways to define ourselves. It is easy to convince ourselves that we have healed our anxiety and are better able to participate with life, to be present.
Self-awareness is always a good thing. But here’s the rub: subsequently as we become increasingly committed to our healing we become acutely aware of how we mask our defenses. It’s a double-edged sword. Self-awareness has no real value without self-development. That’s a tricky word, development, and an even trickier achievement. It sounds a lot like maturing, and growing up is hard to do.
In the past I’ve lamented those “spiritual” friends who “are so heavenly minded they are no earthly good,” from fundamentalist Christians to devout Buddhists to professional tarot counselors. I’m not so impressed with your beliefs if your behavior is needy (myself included in all said here.) Spare me the buzz language of the divine. I really don’t care how many crystals you have, how many self-improvement books you’ve read, how often you attend church, or how diligently you meditate or practice your chosen rituals – are you living creatively? Are your relationships more healthy than codependent? Are your boundaries conditional depending on your mood? Can you justify your poor behavior with need? Asking for a friend…
About a decade ago after my marriage ended, my father died, and I became estranged from my siblings, I found myself orphaned at the age of 60. “When you dig down deep you lose good sleep, and it makes you heavy company…” writes Joni. Yep. Some people cut me out of their lives and over the course of the past decade I have gone no contact with several people myself. I still think of going no contact with people when they are petitioning for my attention. What is their agenda, anyway? I’m less and less inclined to help them discover it.
I seem to need an unreasonable expanse of quiet time and open space. My nerves are shot. For awhile I used this as an excuse for being distant with people, saying and believing that my anxiety would heal, that I would overcome it. It is not to be overcome; that is not how healing works. It turns out I must grieve for as long as it takes, healing or not, anxious or not. So here we are.
It was September 27, 1974. Two years out of high school my friend Melinda and I were looking to get together. So we tried to buy tickets to see Joan Baez at Crisler Arena in Ann Arbor. The concert was sold out. We decided to drive into Ann Arbor that night anyway, to see if anyone might be selling a couple of tickets outside. We went into a favorite little vegetarian restaurant on Liberty to grab a bite to eat before we headed over to the theater. While waiting for our food they sat Joan Baez at the table next to us. We briefly smiled and said, “we are hoping to get in to the theater tonight to see you, but if not, best of luck.”
She had us meet someone at the back door and lead us through, where we sat on the edge of the stage as her guests. She has some wisdom to share here, and reminds us that we don’t have to solve all the world’s problems. We can breathe instead.
Here’s the thing about growing older: you contain all of the ages you have been inside of you. The funny Pinterest meme says, “I don’t know how to act my age. I’ve never been this age before.”
I’m struggling to make a YouTube video. I guess I will have to stop watching them. I listen to people talk about almost anything and it all sounds like balderdash to me. They’re just talking shit. I’m 70 and I’m still trying to figure out how to be…I’m still asking myself, “what do I want to be when I grow up?” I’m still becoming.
Let’s face it, we are the first generation that have inspiring models of old age. Our parents didn’t. I have more physical limitations than I had until recently, but I’m happier. I have more peace. I have less fear. For better or worse I’ve lost my inhibitions about what anyone thinks of me. Like Lyn Slater, I’m still future oriented. I’m still infinitely curious about this adventure we are on here…curiouser and curiouser.
A Painterly Home 