Author: MaggyMac

First published at 6 years old (The Daily Gleaner, Fredericton, NB, Canada). Have written something every single day of my life, if only a To-Do list. Bearing down on writing THAT book for me and myself alone. If it resonates, reaches, inspires, disgusts, bores, or otherwise affects external readers, I have achieved all I wished to achieve on this planet.

Blinders Off

Stock taking begins.

I am not the great writer I hoped, and secretly believed, that I am.

It turns out that years of personal upheaval, creative subterfuge, dismissal and avoidance did take their toll.

I had plenty of “deep thoughts” about a lot of things to share when I was young. The childish arrogance is sweet, but laughable. But it came to a point I didn’t dare express them anyway.

I didn’t have the tools or necessary distance to start dissecting and unpacking the multi and various lapses of my childhood until I was well into adulthood.

I think a great writer – and I’m thinking of the great novelists here – can invite and bring you into their world. Any world they devise. Seemingly effortlessly. You are led around by the author as a steady companion might be.

They tell you their stories which tells you something about who they are. You overhear something from one particular conversation that stays with you. You meet people. And people got stories.

When I think of the great protagonists in novels I’ve enjoyed, I liked that the author helped me get to know their character’s character. Warts and all. Right off the bat.

There is something particularly compelling about a character being vulnerable that can advance a story dramatically.

The 24/7 superhero character can become an uninteresting drag. So even the best of them usually have some trauma or tragedy that has shaped their path and who they are.

For a time, I entertained the delusional notion that I might present myself to the world as that broken but not beaten female superhero. The one who could help others make sense out of an unstable and abusive childhood. I would show them how they could do it.

I can be downright amusing. I have carried this conceit of my writing prowess for years to offset the real life gravity that pulled my biggest desires and goals wildly off course. There was always going to be a “some day.” Until one day, there isn’t.

I am going to work on acceptance of my own limitations and the inevitable deflation of ego that propelled this little adventure over the past year. I do dearly wish that the place of peace and healthy self-confidence I have now, I would have had when I needed them most.

But I read few stories that read that way or actually go that way. Challenge and growth seem to be the mandatory edicts laid down for human beings in order to move forward in life.

Will a book suddenly come rushing out of me one day with all the words and stories I have been holding back for decades? I’m doubtful. Over thirty years, I’ve actively pursued therapy to talk out my issues and by writing endless journals to explore every aspect and screwup of my life. To date.

The same urgency is no longer there. Words padded and protected me most when I needed them to. They have been my tools, my playmates, my confidantes, and my critics for as long as I can remember.

Maybe one day I’ll get honest enough to throw off my tidy 3 minute writing restriction (a broadcasting hangover). Or shuck the internalized discipline of a professional writing career and tell you unedited what I really think and feel. But I actually do that already. But there’s always more.

Like how much I have come to resent my dead mother and her chronic overwhelm. How sorry and sad I feel for our fractured and flailing family. How much rage I carry over the “preventable tragedies” I watched unfold around me. And within my own life.

So that’s where I am at for now. I had no intention when I started out to monetize this blog. Still don’t. I could try some of the WordPress “marketing” tricks to reach a wider audience. In truth, I don’t know how many of you found me in the first place. Tags, maybe?

At the moment I am treading water. I’m trying to decide whether to swim out to deeper waters in the hope of finding a luxurious desert island to hang out on. Or whether I will be heading dutifully – and sensibly – back to shore.

Guess we’ll see.

Two. Weeks. Today.

March 13, 2024. The one year anniversary of starting this daily blog is just ahead. This is blog post Number 355.

Today I believe this is what I am going to do the day after I celebrate that anniversary.

I am going to take a rest and not post anything for a while. At the minute, I have no idea how long “awhile” might be.

I follow other bloggers who post only occasionally. No set schedule. Just when they feel like it or have something they really want to say. I enjoy reading what they write when their blog posts pop up in my email.

Maybe I will be doing my faithful readers a favor. “Not her again!” someone might have been saying every day for the past 350 days. But I know some of you faithfully read what I’ve written because you’ve showed me.

Sometimes you are even kind enough to say something about what I’ve written and leave a comment. I must be a great diplomat. So far, I have attracted no haters. As far as I know, my views have been personal and even enough not to start any divisive or hostile threads.

I am not thrilled with where the world is at this time in history. Humans are unfailingly odd. I grew up in the backwash of the Second World War. Peace, harmony and cooperation were overriding social goals.

That generation knew how badly everything could go wrong if evil prevailed. They had a keen sense of what needed to be done to maintain peace. As human beings generally, we are good at enduring, whether we want to or not.

We seem to have lost that shared understanding of fragile peace. It has been traded for a slavish devotion to materialism and tribalism.

Cheap and easy ways to seek satisfaction abound and ways to buy our way into a sense of belonging. “I’m a Gucci girl!” As if that means anything in the grand scheme of things.

Men and women spend an inordinate amount of time on their external appearance while letting their internal life wither and shrink away. It is as if the way to stay relevant these days is to don the persona of a perpetual adolescent.

A fantastical place where pain doesn’t exist (unless it is in the aid of “beauty”). Where money and resources are in unlimited supply. Where no-one’s needs or feelings matter but your own, because, dammit, I am a Queen.

We can’t blame people. That’s the sales pitch. It is very attractive and looks easy. You can’t be surprised that people buy into it. Until, of course, they don’t.

That happens when reality trumps fantasy and pain becomes very real. And then, the pain when you turn inwards to seek relief and comfort, there is nothing inside you to support and guide you.

Seems the very definition of dystopian to me.

So we’ll see what is ahead. I have learned what works and doesn’t work for me. I have learned that growth is possible at any age if the spirit is willing. I have learned that the world is nuts, was nuts and likely always will be nuts. I just don’t have to engage.

I headed into this exercise with one resonant message. I write for me. If it resonates for you, that’s a bonus. Maybe we could have a discussion about those points of resonance one day. Maybe we could even become friends or colleagues.

I have a better handle today on who I am and what I believe than I did around this time last year. That’s made this writing exercise worthwhile.

A famous maxim on the sign at the Oracle of Delphi says: “Know thyself.” The principal meaning of the phrase in its original application was “know your limits” – either in the sense of knowing the extent of one’s abilities, knowing one’s place in the social scale, or knowing oneself to be mortal.

In the 4th century BC, however, the maxim was drastically re-interpreted by Plato, who understood it to mean, broadly speaking, “know your soul.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_thyself

I’d be happy to share a cup of tea with you and swap some of our soul secrets any time. Just say the word.

About That Book I’m Writing

[If I published this post before, it is high time to post it again. I have two weeks from today until I reach the one year anniversary of publishing a daily blog post. I needed to remind myself why i started.]

I was born in the Fifties to a professional business family in a small East Coast Canadian town. I have been trying to sort out the logic behind my arrival and existence on this planet ever since.

If you want to know the narrative arc of my memoir, it is that. Making sense of where I came from and to what end.

I experienced zero to minimal stability in my childhood. There were pluses, of course, but also abuses and dereliction of parental duty – by times insignificant and at others, life-altering. Okay, I’ll say it: life threatening.

My mother fervently hoped that the pluses she tried to inject into our young lives would outweigh the abuses. She later managed the pain of our fragmented backstory by adroitly deflecting criticism and accountability by acting as if no abuses had happened.

And if abuses did happen to me as a child, she asserted, it was not her fault. I had somehow brought them upon myself. I was an aberration and accident of birth maybe. It takes a particular parental personality to react in that way upon hearing about bad things that happened on their watch.

As a “teenanger,” I was full of rage at my mother for her attempt to abandon us with a serious suicide attempt. (I note the typo in teenanger, but I’ll leave it as it fits.) I was also furious with her for what I truly believed then were unjust grievances she had against my Dad. I was fully onside with his point of view.

As a young teen, he used to bend my ear by the hour with detailed evidence of how horrid and evil my mother was. I once screamed at Mom that she was deliberately blocking Dad’s path to happiness.

You see, she put up roadblocks in his affair with a local floozy by refusing to sign divorce papers. The floozy was determined to not only bed him but wed him.

Apparently, she had made a couple of failed attempts with other lawyers in town. No doubt she thought the third time was a charm, but that didn’t work out for her either. So sad.

Much later it occurred to me that it probably wasn’t appropriate that my father shared my mother’s psychiatric diagnosis with 12-year-old me. I remember him handing me a single sheet of paper with a brief paragraph summing up my mother’s deficiencies.

What I remember from that shrink’s written summary is that “the patient” did not seem “to be able to clearly distinguish between right and wrong.” 

Mom’s suicide attempt when I was 11 years old rent the family neatly in half. Me and Dad were on one side of the divide. My two younger sisters and Mom were on the other.

It should be no surprise that our sense of “family” today (both parents are deceased) is shaky to non-existent. My mother and I never fully healed the rift between us until she died.

We were restrained and civil to each other in public. In private, we were two lions circling and sizing each other up for the next attack.

I eventually learned there wasn’t anything all that special about our family or our circumstances in my childhood. We were certainly not as “special” and “gifted” as my mother wanted us to believe.

Our way of life was different from my peers, for certain, and vaguely bohemian to be kind. Code for chaotic. Mom reveled in her outrageousness and little social rebellions in our tiny little town. She actively curried our sense of being intellectuals and adventurers.

I often reflect on how similar but different my story is to many of my contemporaries.

Dad may have been screwing around but so were many others. “Boys will be boys, after all!” Mom got through her days by consuming a cornucopia of pills chased down with a generous helping of vodka.

But that wasn’t unusual. Lots of ladies from the Fifties sought emotional deliverance from “Mother’s little helpers.”

We were all raised in a society awash in the post-coital ecstasy of the post-war Fifties having climaxed by summarily screwing Hitler and his evil Nazis.

Thank God we were able to. The world deserved to celebrate that victory. But as often happens at unchecked adolescent celebrations, the world went rather to hell with it all. The Sixties fixed that.

So off I sail into my daily writing labors today on yet another unknown adventure. Destination set but how exactly to get there is uncertain. The goal is the eventual delivery of a manuscript that is worthy of becoming a printed book. I’m primed for adventure, stormy seas, and lots of hard work and soul searching. That’s essentially been my life.

As former US President Franklin D. Roosevelt put it: “A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.” I believe I am more than qualified for my mariner’s ticket.

I truly believe I can master the roughest of seas these days. I have proven it.

Reading Right

I didn’t write this piece on reading. But I could have.

Why do I read?

I just can’t help myself.

I read to learn and to grow, to laugh

and to be motivated.

I read to understand things I’ve never

been exposed to.

I read when I’m crabby, when I’ve just

said monumentally dumb things to the

people I love.

I read for strength to help me when I

feel broken, discouraged, and afraid.

I read when I’m angry at the whole

world.

I read when everything is going right.

I read to find hope.

I read because I’m made up not just of

skin and bones, of sights, feelings,

and a deep need for chocolate, but I’m

also made up of words.

Words describe my thoughts and what’s

hidden in my heart.

Words are alive–when I’ve found a

story that I love, I read it again and

again, like playing a favorite song

over and over.

Reading isn’t passive–I enter the

story with the characters, breathe

their air, feel their frustrations,

scream at them to stop when they’re

about to do something stupid, cry with

them, laugh with them.

Reading for me, is spending time with a

friend.

A book is a friend.

You can never have too many.

Gary Paulsen

(Book: Shelf Life: Stories by the Book [ad] https://amzn.to/3uLtUAC)

Dear Death

Death is on my mind lately.

No particular reason. I occasionally flirt with thoughts of death and dying.

It’s a form of interim stock-taking. Thinking about what’s gone before. What may be ahead. Like routine maintenance. What do I have to tweak or do better to make my inevitable end more calm and peaceful?

One good thing about having a total mid-life meltdown is that it can initiate a major reframing of your life goal and priorities. I used to think it was important for me to be someone important.

I came to learn that making others feel important is more important than being important yourself. Depending on your hopes and dreams.

It comes down to whether you choose to lead your life with your head or your heart. A combination is optimum.

We spend an inordinate amount of time running from the reality of death as our last pit stop. If I manage to avoid a violent and messy end, I expect death will be just one long night’s sleep at the end of the day. If I’m lucky.

I fear the disintegration of physical strength and skill more than I fear death itself. I have often considered what I would do with a terminal cancer diagnosis. Pack up and go home, I think. At that actual moment, my feelings may change.

I like running my own ship. I don’t like to rely on others. Though I do.

So the following quotes helped me reframe my recent thoughts about death and woke me up a little.

I expect dying folks are about the wisest folks there is on the planet.

Whether they are happy about dying or not is a whole other discussion.

Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.

It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death—ought to decide, indeed, to earn one’s death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life.

One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.

One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us.

(Book: The Fire Next Time [ad] https://amzn.to/3TcCyl5)

James Baldwin

Mark Twain may have put death in the best perspective of all.

“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.” 

Mark Twain

I expect he’s right.

The Courage to be Disliked

I wanted to be a good girl when I grew up. And I wanted to be a nice girl. What I really wanted underneath all that wishing was to be accepted and loved.

Being liked would have been a nice bonus, too, and, as a child, I thought it was an important part of the popularity package.

In terms of social trajectories as I got into my pre-teens and teens, it didn’t quite work out as I’d hoped.

Pain made me bitchy and short with people. Unresolved, the pain and my bitchiness grew in intensity and volume. This might have continued in perpetuity if I hadn’t had children.

Children forced me into a major emotional 180. I was no longer completely in control of everything. Foolishly, I still tried to be.

But slowly, instead of being exclusively externally focussed to define my ambitions, find acceptance, and grow in pride and self-love, that all started to change. By heck and by gosh.

Instead of “going along to get along,” as I had always tried to, my tactics started to change. Do I really believe what I am hearing from other people? Especially family members? Is his/her/their definition of success what I really believe? Or how I want to live?

More and more, the answer became no. It certainly didn’t make me very popular. Certainly not in my family of origin. At a certain point, it started to not matter. I accepted I was “different” from the rest of my family. I became okay with that.

I have experienced the most joy and personal feeling of success and accomplishment far away from my family of origin. But for years, I was deeply enmeshed and dependent on them for emotional validation. Until that stopped working.

It was not a quick fix. It took years to separate from them. It took the death of both parents. It took a lot of years of processing what I had been through and starting to imagine what I wanted my life to be.

I could have used this book I just found back in the day. It accentuates my underlying belief that sometimes you have to lose everything to finally get everything. The only opinion that really matters at the end of the day is yours. If someone agrees with you and backs you up, bonus.

“The Courage to Be Disliked” by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga is a profound book that presents a dialogue between a philosopher and a young man, exploring the concepts of individual happiness and personal freedom through the lens of Alfred Adler’s psychology.

The book delves into how we can liberate ourselves from self-imposed limitations and societal expectations to find genuine happiness.

Here are some key lessons from the book

1. Freedom from the Opinions of Others: The book emphasizes the importance of detaching our self-worth from the opinions of others. It argues that worrying about what others think of us leads to a constrained life where actions are taken not for personal satisfaction but for external validation.

2. The Past Does Not Determine the Future: A central tenet of Adlerian psychology is that our past experiences do not dictate our future. The book challenges the common belief that past traumas and experiences are the cause of our current unhappiness. Instead, it suggests that we have the power to reinterpret our past and choose actions that lead to a happier future.

3. The Goal of Community Feeling: Adlerian psychology posits that a sense of community and belonging is crucial for individual happiness. “The Courage to Be Disliked” teaches that contributing to the well-being of others without expecting anything in return can lead to profound personal satisfaction and a sense of connection with the wider world.

4. Separation of Tasks: The concept of the separation of tasks is crucial in Adlerian psychology. It involves understanding what is within our control and what is not. By focusing on our own tasks and not overstepping into others’ responsibilities, we can maintain healthy relationships and a sense of personal autonomy.

5. The Courage to Be Happy: True happiness requires the courage to change and to be disliked. The book posits that fear of criticism and rejection often holds people back from pursuing what genuinely makes them happy. Embracing the possibility of being disliked for making choices true to oneself is presented as a pathway to freedom and happiness.

6. Self-Acceptance: A significant barrier to happiness is the lack of self-acceptance. The dialogue explores how accepting oneself, with all flaws and shortcomings, is a step toward genuine happiness. It suggests that self-acceptance allows individuals to make positive changes without being hindered by feelings of inferiority.

7. Contribution to Society: Adlerian psychology suggests that making contributions to society is a source of happiness. The book discusses how acts of kindness and contributing to the welfare of others can enhance one’s sense of purpose and satisfaction in life.

8. Living in the Here and Now: The book encourages living in the present rather than being anchored to the past or overly concerned about the future. It suggests that focusing on the here and now allows for a more engaged and fulfilling life.

“The Courage to Be Disliked” offers a compelling argument for reevaluating our approaches to happiness and personal freedom. By incorporating Adlerian principles into our lives, the authors suggest that we can overcome feelings of inadequacy and live more fulfilling, autonomous lives.

Book: https://amzn.to/49olduR

Lazy, Late and Long

The Universe helps out even when I don’t really deserve it.

I found this wandering around the Internet. Well, it was actually me wandering around the Internet and this post was just sitting there. Minding its own business.

As a literary piece worth cribbing, it hit all my benchmarks. Useful. Informative. Interesting. Weird.

See if you don’t learn something from it, too.

And forgive the lazy scribe who posted it in lieu of some pithy product of her own devising.

Though to be fair, I did find it myself.

THESE ARE TRUE. DO YOU KNOW WHY WE USE SOME OF THE SAYING WE USE???

People used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot & then once a day it was taken and sold to the tannery…….if you had to do this to survive you were “Piss Poor”.

But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn’t even afford to buy a pot……they “didn’t have a pot to piss in” & were the lowest of the low.

The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn’t just how you like it, think about how things used to be.

Here are some facts about the 1500s:

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June. However, since they were starting to smell … brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it … hence the saying, “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water!”

Houses had thatched roofs with thick straw piled high, with no solid roof. The cats and other small animals including mice, bugs lived in the roof to get warm. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes they would slip and fall off the roof … hence the saying “It’s raining cats and dogs.”

There was also nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and droppings could mess up their nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That’s how our luxurious “canopy beds” came into existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, “Dirt poor.” The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way. Hence: a “thresh hold”.

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire … every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and didn’t get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme: “Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.”

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, “bring home the bacon.” They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and “chew the fat.”

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered “poisonous”.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the “upper crust”.

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial.. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a “wake”.

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive … so they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the “graveyard shift”) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be, “saved by the bell” or was considered a “dead ringer”.

14 Sayings USED TODAY THAT KIDS WON’T UNDERSTAND

1) BROKEN RECORD

Few kids today will understand the annoying sound a broken record makes, skipping on repeat. But, most kids know the phrase means someone who sounds repetitive.

2) ROLL THE WINDOW DOWN

Before power-everything, we rolled down the windows of a car with a crank that rolled. Well, ok, so maybe the kids of classic car collectors will understand this one.

3) HANG UP THE PHONE

Back then you actually had to hang up the phone on the receiver in order to end the call. Kids who’ve only ever used cell phones or cordless phones won’t have a clue how we used to talk on the phone.

4) REWIND

Ok, due to the resurgence in cassette tapes, some kids may know what this one means. Remember rewinding machines for VHS tapes? Blast from the past!

5) CLOSE, BUT NO CIGAR

Once upon a time, cigars were among the prizes given out at carnivals. When you inevitably did not win, this phrase was the only consolation prize.

6) BEEN THROUGH THE WRINGER

Back when washing day was an all-day affair, the clothes would need to be wrung out. Even folks who had a washing machine often did not have a dryer. Most kids today wouldn’t even know what a wringer is!

7) ON THE FLIP SIDE

The other side of the record is something kids won’t experience. They still use this term, many without understanding where it comes from.

 8) BLOWING OFF STEAM

Back when trains were the main form of long-distance transport for people and for cargo, the steam engines had to occasionally release steam in order to stabilize the whole mechanism. It was so much fun to ride the train back then! Kids today are really missing out.

9) DITTO

Ditto is a popular term these days, but most kids have no idea that it refers to an early form of copy machine. Used from the 1920s to the 1980s, the small machine produced mimeograph-like copies on the cheap.

10) DROP A DIME

Way back when people used public pay phones, you would drop a dime into the coin slot in order to make a call. It’s hard to believe sometimes that a call used to be that cheap!

11) JOHNNY LAW

The hero of the day, Johnny Law, will fight for justice! The DC comic book character of Johnny Law made such an impression on us that we still use this phrase to mean police officers. In the Golden Age of comics, from the 1930s into the 1950s, Johnny Law was a role model for kids across America.

12) CLEAN SLATE

Chalkboards used to be used in every single classroom. Back in the old days, they were made with slate. Thus, a clean slate is the fresh start of a new day, when the mistakes of yesterday have been erased. Kids today are used to dry erase boards and computers.

13) RING UP A PURCHASE

Oh so many years ago, a cash register was manual and had an actual physical bell inside of it that rang when the lever was pulled for the bill total. Remember hearing that familiar sound?

14) STAY TUNED

Back when TV and radio stations had to be tuned to the right frequency to get good reception and enjoy your program, before a commercial the announcer would tell everyone to “stay tuned” for the rest of the show. How long has it been since you used a tuning dial?!

It’s funny how our technology changes, yet our vocabulary still reflects a time long gone. We remember a time when records and train travel were common. Even though kids won’t know what these sayings really refer to, they’ll still be used years from now!

Lessons Learned Late

New parents rapidly and inevitably learn that children – much less babies – do not come with instruction manuals.

New parents try to sort out daily childrearing based on a phantasmagoric blend of memory, history, personal experience, advice from anywhere, parenting books, doctors, their own parents.

Their own common sense.

New parents’ instincts are informed by a years long steeped soup of knowledge gathered since childhood that they bring to the task.

Depending on the novice parents’ own degree of personal healing and maturity, the baby benefits. Or it doesn’t.

After the birth of my first child, the initial shock settled in that the irresponsible hospital professionals were actually going to release this vulnerable infant into our care.

The initial shocks and semi-settling in with baby hardly foreshadowed the barrage of oncoming shocks and changes that would erupt in our lives.

That vulnerable infant and his sister who followed shape med and my parenting in ways large and small. They still do.

I was only half-healed when my son arrived. Maybe not even that. My son’s arrival ushered in a whole raft of new traumas and attendant insights connected to my upbringing that were utterly unanticipated. I was living with one foot in the present and the other one firmly planted in the past.

For most of my children’s early years, I tried too hard. I was up against dynamic opposing forces. I wanted to do everything right. I had no idea how. I wanted to teach them survival skills and show them the whole world and give them the learning and knowledge they needed to protect and raise them up.

I led with my head, which I trusted more, and less with my heart. I was wrong to have done so. Yet to be fair to me, the heart wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders.

Someone had been putting beach sand in my carburetor. I was only just coming to realize that.

I need not have done anything more for my precious babies than to let them be who they were and who they were going to become. I simply needed to love them. I didn’t know that then like I know it now.

Once the necessaries of hygiene and hunger and sufficient sleep and shelter had been tended to, the rest of figuring out how to navigate life was pretty much up to them. What kind of life they would choose to build and who they choose to build it with and how would be their work. It still is.

With all of this background, the bit of writing below spoke to me. As a hyper-vigilant and insecure parent, I know exactly why and how I tried too hard. Can’t change the past. Only beg for forgiveness and understanding and try to make up for it in the here and now.

One day, much later and when they were much bigger humans, I relaxed and let go. I realized all they needed from me – and all they ever need from me that they can’t get anywhere else – was my love and support.

Would that every parent knew that in the depths of their bones and blood.

Your own sense of self may be shaky but to your children, you are who they love and all they know.

Children develop their sense of self and security in relation to you and the family who love them. However imperfectly.

I learned that lesson late but I learned it. I hope they pass that lesson on to theirs when the time comes.

At least it keeps it all interesting, doesn’t it?

“Do not ask your children

to strive for extraordinary lives.

Such striving may seem admirable,

but it is the way of foolishness.

Help them instead to find the wonder

and the marvel of an ordinary life.

Show them the joy of tasting

tomatoes, apples and pears.

Show them how to cry

when pets and people die.

Show them the infinite pleasure

in the touch of a hand.

And make the ordinary come alive for them.”

The extraordinary will take care of itself.

William Martin

Con Te Partiro

“Time to say goodbye.” The title of one of Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli’s most famous and beloved songs.

Our guests leave today after the fastest two week visit in the history of time.

I am convinced they just got here. The mark of a successful visit.

A completely opposite experience to those visitors whose intrusive presence has you praying for them to leave at the earliest possible opportunity.

“Here’s your hat. What’s your hurry?”

Such is the gift of old friends who become – in the best possible way – part of the furniture and your everyday environment. That may sound dismissive, but isn’t. It speaks to the comfort level you have in their company.

I once learned an important distinction between how to treat visitors who were welcome in your home and those who were not.

It was phrasing that would allow someone to feel welcome or not.

“How long are you staying?” a visitor would be asked if they were welcome. “When are you leaving?” if they weren’t. Subtle but significant.

The joy of visitors and of friendship is the back and forth of spending time with others with whom you have a shared history.

You can talk with them about things you may not always talk about with new friends. They know you better. You’ve laid a foundation of mutual understanding over many years.

You explore places you might otherwise not explore. You get to share their company on your home turf and the memories are indelibly etched on the history of your home.

Diane and Gerry’s visit christened our house and converted it to a home. What good is it to have wonderful surroundings unless they are shared with friends and loved ones?

Diane and I shopped. We bitched. We decried the current state of politics and the world. We made meals together. We did laundry. We frequently made each other tea. Just like home.

When the boys got into their World War II and John Wayne movies, we hit the patio sofa and lit a fire.

The familiarity of routine behaviors and familiar conversation was a comfort. Albeit thousands of miles away from our original home.

I find old friends become more important as we grow older. To start, none of us know how much longer we are going to have each other. It is not a maudlin cloak draped over the activities of daily living. It is simply an underlying awareness.

In days gone by, friends were an essential part of our extended communities. I am sure that degree of constant familiarity came with its own challenges. But it also provided a cushion of comfort and companionship.

You were never completely alone. There was always someone to go to in a crisis or dire need, whether large or small. Someone to look after the kids if you needed to run to the store. That sense of belonging never left you. Not always a good thing but a constant you could rely on.

So I wish my dear friends well on their travels home. Out of kindness, I will not share the climate they are returning to. The reality of that will hit them both soon enough.

We have made new memories and strengthened an old friendship. That is emotional capital to draw on in the coming months as hubby and I retreat back into the relative quiet and solitude of our daily lives.

Life is a series of beginnings and endings. Stops and starts. Backing and forthing. These are the natural rhythms of life.

We were blessed to have our friends grace us with their presence these past two weeks (which I am entirely convinced was only three days.) We are blessed to have these friends in our lives, period.

There is that in a visit. A reminder of how important and special these friends are to us and in our lives. We will be less for their absence.

Safe travels, buddies. Thanks for coming to see us and bide awhile.

C-PTSD – Are Ya Bored Yet?

About as exciting as watching paint dry, right? Noone much wants to hear about other people’s ailments and challenges – physical or otherwise.

And so it was on my personal healing journey. There were dozens of false starts. Therapists who should have been flipping burgers, not perpetually flipping prescriptions at their patients.

I lost friends over the degree of disclosure I shared about my personal experience. Much of it would have had a priest in a confessional writhing in discomfort.

In the midst of the search for answers and the effort to become grounded, I knew nothing of this.

I only know it was a personal watershed to stumble across the diagnostic criteria for PTSD some years back.

I had struggled in a vacuum emotionally for some years. I knew I didn’t feel “normal” though I didn’t know exactly what that might mean if I did.

My internal reactions were too strong. My interactions too intense. My emotions were too jangled and out of control.

I would frequently “space out” when listening to people talk.

I would often have to consciously bring myself back into the room and concentrate on what was being said.

I didn’t think it should require that much effort just to socialize with friends.

When I read Amanda Melheim’s recent review of The Body Keeps the Score, I heard a reflected version of my own life story and healing journey.

Bessel van Der Kolk’s seminal work on trauma has been around for quite some time now.

Like many things, written work can be seen anew through the eyes of another skillful writer. Van der Kolk’s book sat at the top of the New York Times bestseller list for months.

It is still the reference of choice for practitioners and sufferers to help them understand how trauma imprints and manifests in the brain.

Melheim weaves in the manifestation of her traumatic experience in her own behavior with explanations she only discovered in Van der Kolk’s book.

It is bad enough that a traumatic event can suffuse a victim with powerlessness and helplessness. Unresolved, that response can be triggered over and over again in adulthood until the source of the pain is addressed and expunged.

That is easier said than done. The field of trauma treatment is still developing. Thank heaven the established medical profession has at least evolved beyond frontal lobotomies on legitimately disturbed and agitated patients.

But trauma treatment is still spotty and disagreement exists on what the best modalities are to defeat its lingering symptoms. Melheim shares some important insights from Van der Kolk’s book about this.

Much as smoking took years to evolve in the public consciousness as the health menace it is, PTSD is still on the sidelines as a widely accepted and understood health phenomenon. PTSD in soldiers gets more attention and support than traumatized victims of abuse or sexual assault.

In the meantime, Melheim’s review of The Body Keeps the Score makes a strong case for why a more universal understanding of PTSD’s deleterious effects on society is likely to take awhile.

While weaving in elements of her personal story, she illustrates the symptoms of PTSD in everyday life that can be written off by the uninformed as something else – laziness, flakiness, bad character or histrionics.

Melheim has added to the evidence and ongoing necessary conversation about PTSD and C-PTSD. They are similar afflictions but differ in degree.

I am grateful she made that foray. Her article is well worth a read if you are a PTSD sufferer or if you know any.

Even if you just want deeper insight into why otherwise good people seem to act against their best interests, it can be helpful to learn their reactions aren’t always in their control.