Tag Archives: Spirituality

Threshold

Posted on September 29, 2022 | Leave a comment

As I mentioned in my last post, after the failure of our last embryo transfer, we took a break from IVF and all associated meds for four months. During that time we went to a lot of concerts and did some other fun, summery things. The break went way too fast. I quit drinking alcohol in early July, started weekly acupuncture treatments (because why the fuck not try them? At least then everyone will shut up about it) and started meds again in late August. The third and final embryo transfer happened last week. This time I took the entire time off from work between the transfer and the pregnancy test, which is tomorrow. This entire fertility assistance process has been limbo. But today I feel like I am in the most liminal of spaces.

The time off from work has been nice, but I am used to being productive. Taking time off to literally do nothing but avoid stress has been a little weird. I keep wanting to do projects but then stalling out because so much in my life depends on the outcome of this transfer, this pregnancy test. For example, in my basement, which I am perpetually trying to organize, I have bins of my childhood stuff and bags of baby books and items that people have already given to me knowing that I am trying to have a baby. If I get rid of that stuff, I won’t need to buy new organizers, so best to just wait on the organization project. Same with meal planning: if I’m pregnant I plan to maintain animal protein, if I’m not pregnant I plan to move to a plant-based diet. Normally I would do a lot of yoga when I have free time. I have been sticking to walking for exercise until I know the outcome. I am too mentally distracted for most reading and podcasts. Each time I try I find that I have drifted off partway through reading or listening. It seems like every little thing that I would normally do with time off is impacted by “pregnant or not.” My only option has been to pass the time and try not to think too much about it. I have been mostly successful at doing that. I am feeling generally less anxious this time because I have already been through this process twice. I am still hoping for a joyful surprise, but I am prepared for either kind of news.

The results of the test tomorrow will completely change my life, one way or the other. This hinterland that I’ve been living in for the last two (but kind of 15) years has made me feel painfully stuck in so many areas of my life. The last eight days have been a densely compacted version of that feeling (blessedly without the stress of my constant dumpster fire of a job). By the end of the day tomorrow I may learn a devastating truth or a joyful one. Either way it is a new beginning.

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Third Time’s a Charm

Posted on June 7, 2021 | Leave a comment

As I mentioned in Empowered, on May 12 I had a second myomectomy surgery to remove more of the giant fibroid that has been keeping me from becoming a mother. Unfortunately, the surgeons were still unable to get all of it out safely in the second sitting. Not only was it large and connected to my uterine wall in multiple places, but it was also hard and vascularized, and difficult to cut. They had to end the procedure for my safety, to keep me from filling up with water like I did during the first surgery. On June 2 I had my third and final procedure. My surgeon and I agreed that the third surgery had to be the last, so I signed a consent for them to go in laparoscopically through my abdomen if they couldn’t complete the procedure hysteroscopically. The surgeon told me that he has done thousands of these procedures and that I was his most difficult case. What a way to be special, right?

Thankfully, I woke up without any stitches on the outside of my body. The team was able to finally end this period of surgical limbo that has seemed to drag on forever without cutting me. The head surgeon told my husband that they were so excited that there was a celebratory cheer in the operating room when the last chunk of tumor came out. After the second surgery I cried (along with the nurse and the resident) because I had to have a third surgery, and I felt like the trauma would never end. After the third surgery I cried because I was so filled with gratitude and relief.

In the interim between the second and third surgeries, I can say that I still didn’t slip into self-pity or full melancholy. However, I did feel a bit dead inside; so I can’t really say I wasn’t depressed. A malaise set in, and I didn’t know to where or what I could turn for support. My relationship with any version of God is tenuous at best right now. I lost all my new-agey “woo” beliefs between going through IVF and listening to a whole lot of Conspirituality Podcast. I was sensing that the people in my life were hitting a point where they didn’t know how to respond to my continued surgical adventures, and I felt like I was no longer connecting with the therapist I had been seeing for the last year and a half. I also couldn’t go to my old unhealthy coping mechanisms like smoking and drinking, because obviously physical health is paramount when trying to have a baby.  When it felt like there was no direction to go with my emotions, I guess I just checked out and went into autopilot to get through the surgeries. Let’s just say there has been a lot of TV watching and overdoing it at my day job.

Now that the surgeries are done, some of the malaise has lifted, and I recognize that I need to reestablish some habits that will help me stay embodied and grounded through the next part of the process (implantation). A big lesson that I’ve learned this year is that part of being the hero of my own story is being willing to practice. It is understanding that ease will never come without the sometimes un-fun but necessary daily habits: Do the yoga practice. Take the walk.  Write for an hour. Show up for yourself. It’s not something that comes easily to me – I am a master at being “busy” as a form of distraction and overperforming as a means to feel in control. Practice without knowing where it is going is patience embodied (a.k.a., a big challenge).

Here, finally at the end of Phase 2 of my fertility prescription, I still feel strong. I still feel proud of what I have done and what I have made it through already on the road to becoming a mother. This summer I will focus on practice, not only for myself and my own wellbeing, but also because I would love to be able to model showing up for oneself for my children, once they are here.

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Empowered

Posted on May 3, 2021 | 1 comment

The fact that I happen to be heading towards becoming a mother at the same time that I’m having a mid-life reckoning is super-fun. Now I’m not only trying to birth an actual child, but also all of the other things that I want to birth in my life, like essays and books and articles and a daily and more robust yoga practice. The fact that I am picking up a dropped thread with most of those things can feel an awful lot like failure or hopelessness. For a long time, it was my habit to lean into my feelings of failure and wrap myself in “poor me” mentality. It can feel good to feel bad. It can make you feel justified about making unhealthy indulgences and wasting time. I always had magical thinking to fall back on; I was sure that if I just did enough visualization and ritual everything would work out.

Back in January when I lost my magical thinking security blanket, I began a spiritual crisis. The crisis is largely around redefining my idea of God and my relationship with whatever that is, and my current spirituality is still an ungrounded mess that is just beginning to get sorted. However, one of the unexpected gifts of “losing my religion” around manifestation is that I’m no longer falling into the “poor me” hole so often. Magical thinking not only puts the blame on individuals for things outside of their control, but it also depends on some ambiguous thing outside of oneself to do the heavy lifting of dream-making. It can distract and detract from the personal work and changes in behavior that need to take place to actually make things happen. Though magical thinking gave me an illusion of control, losing it has made me feel more empowered.

Two weeks ago I had surgery to remove the giant fibroid that had made me unable to carry a baby. Once the surgeons were in my uterus, they were able to see that it was even larger and more complex than they were able to see on the MRI. The method of this particular surgery can cause a patient’s organs to take on water if it lasts too long. My fibroid is so large that they had to end the surgery before they removed it all because my lungs were beginning to take on water. Waking up coughing in the recovery room was scary, and I had to unexpectedly spend the night at the hospital so my oxygen levels could be monitored. I will now need to have another round of the same surgery in a couple weeks to remove the rest of it. A year ago this would have all sent me into a self-pity downward spiral. Honestly, I think this one would have been justified. I wouldn’t blame anyone for feeling sorry for themself after all the shots and the four surgeries it’s requiring for me to do a perfectly normal, natural, basic thing like have a baby. Weirdly, I don’t feel sorry for myself.

I have always wanted to be a mother. It is one of my dreams for my life.  Thanks to medical science, pregnancy is a possibility for me when it would have been impossible otherwise. The same benevolent mother nature to whom my woo woo crunchy granola self had capitulated turned out to be the thief of my dream thanks to her giant fibroid. I understand that I am blessed to have the resources and technology at my disposal to choose this process, and that this process is a privilege. However, I am also choosing the hard thing. The painful thing. The very expensive thing. I am not giving up. I am doing everything it takes for me to become a mother. Even when some might argue that maybe God or the “universe” didn’t want me to. And that makes me feel powerful. That makes me feel like a badass. That makes me feel like a true creator of my own life. Now I sincerely know my own power to make my dreams happen.

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Grounding

Posted on March 1, 2021 | 1 comment

I am not a patient person. I hear very often that others experience me as calm, or that I am calming to them. I am glad that I am grounding to others, but I wish I was equally good at grounding myself. My inner world is a constant spin that drives me to try to control situations and timing, either through over-performing or through magical thinking. In the case of my IVF process, magical thinking was my go-to.

The common definition of “magical thinking” is the belief that one’s thoughts can control reality. This often shows up in yoga and wellness communities (well, and at this point, just on the Internet in general) as “manifestation.” I don’t think that magical thinking is the only way to frame up manifestation, but I think that definition has become the most common belief for how manifestation happens. I did not know how committed I was to manifestation, how integrated it had become into my worldview, until the experiences of the last year undid it.

During my first cycle of IVF stimulation, I went deep into “mama vibes.” I was doing intention setting, intentional journaling, fertility meditations, all sorts of visualization, and sending positive energy into my ovaries. I was doing all the things that are recommended for successful manifestation, and I had strong faith that it was working. For all of December I had this glow of confident motherhood. I felt my ovaries filling up and responding extravagantly to the stimulation drugs, and the medical professionals affirmed that what was happening in my body was very unusual for anyone, much less someone who is 41. When they retrieved 33 eggs it really seemed to confirm that my manifestation efforts were working.

When I learned that all my efforts and my crazy number of eggs had resulted in only one viable embryo, it was crushing. It was crushing because I had been so confident that my stimulation cycle would result in enough embryos for more than one child, plus a couple to spare. Now I would have to go through stimulation and egg retrieval again, which is physically, emotionally, and financially draining. It was also crushing because it triggered a crisis of faith.

The crisis of faith is far reaching and ongoing, but the outcome specific to my IVF experience was feeling that there were three explanations for only getting one embryo: 1. God really doesn’t want me to be a mother, 2. my efforts at manifestation weren’t good enough (ie. I’m not good enough), or 3. my new age-y manifestation beliefs might just be bullshit. In any case, my doctors assured me that the results of the egg retrieval had nothing to do with anything I did or didn’t do. It is pretty straight forward that the cause is only my age and that the quality of everyone’s eggs declines as they get older.  

As often happens during a crisis of faith, this one event didn’t just cause me to question manifestation “gospel”, but also caused a temporary collapse of faith in anything that I couldn’t see or experience for myself. Almost all the woo-woo new age stuff that I had leaned so hard on for so long went out the window (along with more traditional prayer) and I functioned through January on a barebones yoga framework of getting out of my head and into my body through daily asana. Literal embodiment. My second cycle of stimulation was very different as a result. I didn’t assign any spiritual significance to the process. The shots were just shots. The follicles in my ovaries were just follicles. The eggs were just eggs. The embryos were just embryos. When I learned last week that only two of the twelve embryos from round two were viable, it was not crushing. In fact, I feel grateful. I feel grateful that there are now three little seeds of potential for me to become a mother.

It turns out that the real key to getting grounded is to surrender the illusion of any kind of control, get present in your body (which is itself the ground, the home for your life), and let things unfold in their own time from that place. I knew that conceptually from yoga philosophy, but this experience has really made me feel it. It’s going to take continued practice, because I don’t love waiting, but I hope that the roots have finally taken.

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Homecoming

Posted on September 2, 2014 | 2 comments

Living at my Grandma’s former home, where I spent so much time as a child, I have a lot of moments where I’ll be going about my business and suddenly be transported into memories of the past. I’ll be walking by the green pole barn and suddenly I’m 5 years old and helping grandma put the pets to bed there, or running around on the dusty, straw-smelling floor and climbing up on the farm equipment while dad works on one of the cars, or sitting on grandpa’s lap as he let me “drive” the tractor out of the big back door.

I will be down by the old wooden barn watering trees and suddenly be eight years old and watching my little brother attempt to scale the silo ladder (he fell, and got zapped pretty good by the electric fence). Walking by the big trees on either side of the walkway up to the house, and then I’m four and using the hose to make little pools in the bowls created by the giant old roots. Playing ball with the dog on the drain field, I’m often brought to the oddly silent fort provided by the long, thick branches of the willow tree that’s no longer there, nothing but my nine-year old self, the sound of cicadas and the concentration of weaving willow branches into crowns or bracelets. There are thousands of this type of mental snapshot here.

Me at age 2 standing in front of what is now my front door with my first dog, Tanya.

Me at age 2 standing in front of what is now my front door with my first dog, Tanya.

There are also a lot of moments of just being stricken by the weirdness of carrying out my daily adult life here. I’ll be laying on my couch watching TV and suddenly feel like it’s just too bizarre that I’m watching Family Guy in the same place where I used to watch the Mary Tyler Moore Show or the Golden Girls with grandma and grandpa. Sometimes while I’m cooking it will hit me that I’m walking the same floor, carrying out the same motions, that grandma did while making every meal for 50 years. The weirdest is having fires out in the pit that we made in the pasture, enjoying a couple of drinks, and thinking “what am I doing here, drinking beer and carrying on like the ghosts of my childhood aren’t hanging around?”

Grandma, me and my brother in the kitchen circa 1987.

Grandma, me and my brother in the kitchen circa 1987.

The feeling is a strange mix of deja-vu, amazement, and disorientation that bring to mind the Talking Heads song:

“And you may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?
And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right?…Am I wrong?
And you may tell yourself
MY GOD!…WHAT HAVE I DONE?”

The snapshots of childhood remind me about wonder, freedom, and the joyful creativity of being a child left to herself in an expanse of nature.  I can remember exactly what I was feeling or thinking about in a lot of those snapshots. They are amazingly pure visions back into the essence of who I am when all the stress and pressure, failures and semi-mandated accomplishments of my adult life are peeled away.The moments of plain adult weirdness about the overlap of history and present are little shocks of “who am I and how did I get here? What the hell happened?”

Sometimes these moments will make me feel sad, mournful for the perfectly formed little person I was, and for how far she has been buried. Or sad because I feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the decisions about what to do with the gift of this place, and the fear of doing things wrong; especially with the knowledge about everything I’ve already done wrong in my life. Other times, and these are the ones I am really trying to focus on, I am inspired to tug that little girl back into the present and get to know her again. To use her joy and love and fearlessness as a guide for correcting all the things I’ve screwed up while making decisions out of fear. To know that the sudden feeling of elation that comes with that inspiration is what it feels like to do what’s right for my soul.

Even with such constant and intense reminders, it is hard to make the minute clicks in behavior towards more personal authenticity. Frequently I’m lonely and scared and running back towards approval-seeking and all of the other things I do to soothe the unsettling feeling of free-falling into the unknown that being authentic represents. But the moments of heart-bursting “rightness” are increasing, and they are inspiring many subtle shifts in how I interact with the world. I am still very, very tentative, but I am also deeply grateful for whatever currents brought me home to the farm where I can hear myself again after so much time spent thrashing around just  trying to stay afloat. 20140831_220347

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Renewal

Posted on May 8, 2014 | Leave a comment

I have recently been feeling a big pull towards the concept of renewal. It makes sense. It’s spring time, and the winter sucked really hard this year. But I am feeling it in a way that is a little more intense than the norm. I think a lot of it comes from living on a farm, and just being more generally in touch with what nature is doing. Living here forces me to take a more active part in the cycles of the seasons. During the winter I had to learn to just sit with myself a little bit more than I’ve been used to. When big snowstorms came through it could be days before the roads were reasonable for driving into the city. There were several times where we had to cancel plans with friends because, even a couple of days after the storm, it would have taken us hours of stressful driving to connect with them. No plan, no matter how longstanding, is completely within my control out here. When nature has other plans, I simply need to relinquish my will to her.

Being forced to let go has changed me. I have a long-term habit of trying to control my environment in order to feel O.K. I have done this with my behavior and also with my thoughts and judgements. I know that most people do this; it’s what we call “ego.” This strange idea that simply having consciousness means that we also have control. Over and over again in my life I have made careful plans to try to control “my” world, and over and over again the real world has said “fuck you, chicky. This is not how I want it to go and I’m bigger than you.” The point of this blog was, as the name implies, to document my roadmap, my plan, to gain further control over my world. What I’ve learned is that I don’t, and can’t, have control. Trying to wrest control from the universe has actually been the biggest cause of distress and backwards movement.

I wish that I could say that over the long winter I took advantage of having so much unfettered time to myself (true to the story that I always told myself “I just don’t have time to write, exercise, meditate, etc.). What really happened was that, while having to sit with myself, I spent most of my time trying to escape myself. In the absence of my old city-living mode of escapism,hyper-socialization, I turned to higher levels of solo escapist activities: unhealthy and excessive eating, too much TV, too much drinking. Even reading novels can take on an obsessive quality for me. For a couple of months I was in the midst of the deepest depression I’ve had since I nearly lost it at the tail end of completing my master’s degree. I was dwelling a lot on everything that I have not accomplished in my life, and on how my life seemed to just be happening to me in ways in which I didn’t want to participate . I felt hopeless and dead inside, and as usual, couldn’t seem to conjure up the energy to do anything about it.

I’ve known for awhile that I am an escape artist. I can look back at my life and see a clear road to “anywhere else but here, with anyone else but myself,’ wildly zig-zagging and wrapping around and through the hard lines of control that I try to draw for myself. It is the counter-balance to the part of me that wants to control and be too perfect to ever really accomplish or create anything of value because life is messy. After being forced to hang out with myself more, I know more deeply than ever before that the escape-artist in me is there to keep me from seeing the things about myself and my life that I don’t want to see. In it’s most recent incarnation, it has been padding me from the whole idea that I have no control, when the truth is that taking one’s hands off the wheel isn’t the same as being a victim.

I started to come out of the depression in February, and have since been actively poking at the things in my life that scare me. I am still scared, but am coming round to the idea that in order to get past some things, I have to actually go through them. When your hands are off the wheel, your vehicle can go in any direction. It can go to places that scare you, or it can go to places that exceed all expectations of joy. Either way, if you jump out of a moving vehicle you are going to get hurt. The point is that I have to step into my various roles in life. That doesn’t just mean the parts that I “like” or feel safe in. Being able to observe myself a bit more closely than usual out in the country, I didn’t just see what I was doing via my escape-artist, I felt it. In the past I have beat myself up over returns to deep escapism. This time I have some compassion for the fearful parts of myself. However, I feel like the winter was a death-rattle of a lot of self-destructive parts of me. It was a final tantrum of the escape-artist. Now, little by little, I’ve been stepping back into my life. Even the scary parts. It feels like a revival, and even though I’m still uncomfortable, I’m grateful for it.

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A Small Gift Amongst Many Big Ones

Posted on April 19, 2012 | 6 comments

Holy Crap. This has been a strange week. It’s not often that a family patriarch passes away at the same time that you’re just beginning to pull yourself out of a three-week dead-eyed depression. But that is what has happened this week.

The man in question was my husband’s grandfather. He was truly a patriarch in the old-fashioned sense: He was an active Lutheran pastor for 70-some years. He had 5 children and 11 grandchildren, and he performed baptism and marriage ceremonies for almost all of them (including our wedding!). At age 94 he was still a fountain of support for his family, spiritually, emotionally, and physically, right up until he got sick less than a year ago. Even though he was quite elderly, he was the type of person that it was nearly impossible to imagine ever dying. My husband said “I just really have always felt like he was invincible.”

Grandpa (which everyone in the family calls him, regardless of whether or not he is your grandpa, specifically) lived simply in terms of material wealth, and was a very busy person. He was a master gardener, a key member of the senior cooperative he lived in, a family man, and continued as a substitute pastor and otherwise active church-member until the end of his life. He was passionately faithful, and he lived it out by being passionately giving and open to others. I knew him for nine years and never heard him utter anything remotely judgmental.  In other words, the man did not pull any punches. He was the real deal, a true model of what it means to “live a good life.” Because of all that, his passing, once his discomfort ended (he wasn’t in pain, but for some people, dying can be hard work. One of the last things he said was that he felt “dead tired;”and yes, that was meant to be a joke!), hasn’t been terribly mournful. Everyone is sad and grieving because they will miss him, but everyone knows that he was satisfied with his life here, and was ready to move on.

I am lucky to have known him, and to have had him as a little bit of a surrogate grandfather (both of mine passed away a long time ago). As for the depression, it is impossible to remain in a funk when contemplating such a well-lived life. He wasn’t super-famous, or accomplished in any superhuman ways, he just did a really good job at life. It’s a little gift that he didn’t even know he was giving: whatever you’re doing, don’t be bummed that you’re not doing something “better,” don’t think so hard about it. Just do a good job.

“O me! O life!…of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless — of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these O me, O life? Answer. That you are here – that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.”
– Walt Whitman

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The Experience of Change

Posted on March 27, 2012 | 2 comments

It seems like a lot of people that I know are currently going through big changes in their lives, and I’ve been thinking a lot about how change is experienced (well, and I’ve been experiencing my own changes, too!). Change, whether it is self-imposed or imposed by the universe, can feel very scary. I think change is scary because it feels lonely. Even if it’s a positive change. Even if you have a lot of support. Even if you feel cared-for. Even if you know that you are loved. The experience of change is very personal, and nobody can know how it feels to you. Depending on where you are at, or what the change is, your perception of the situation can make the responses of others feel very thoughtless and mean when they are actually quite innocent. Also, you know that nobody can really know how you feel, because they aren’t walking around in your head. So, even if people are trying to give you support, your mind can twist away from it, just because you know that they don’t really understand how it is for you. Finally, change is transformation. It is moving away from what your loved ones, and sometimes society in general, expect from you, and a lot of us have a very hard time tearing ourselves away from what other people want from us.

For me, the changes that I’m intensely trying to make in my life are imposed by me. They are only loosely dependent on my relationships. Nothing catastrophic or sad has happened to me. The process is, for the most part, under my control. I feel lucky for that: not only do I get to choose own perceptions about my results, but I am also the instigator of the change in the first place. However, it can be a little bit confusing sometimes. I get frustrated or sad because I feel isolated. But I’ve been isolating myself deliberately, so I can’t really go shaking my fist at the sky! I chose to take it easy on the social front because I needed some space to get into a new groove before putting myself in situations where I’d be likely to derail myself. When I look at it that way I am forced to acknowledge that feeling sorry for myself is silly and unhelpful and not a real problem but one I’m creating in my head. And then I feel like an asshole and immediately make myself feel better by laughing at what an asshole I am being. Problem solved!

Another side to the loneliness of change is that my default is still, though much less so than at other times in my life, to want to put the desires of others before my own needs. I struggle with guilt, and feel like I have been a terrible friend/daughter/granddaughter/sister/etc. But, as cheeseball as it sounds, I’ve grown to really believe that you can’t really love others fully if you don’t love yourself – kindness isn’t as kind as it could be if your acts of kindness are, deep-down, about self-validation. This concept is totally self-help 101; I’ve frequently heard it on The Biggest Loser, for god’s sake. But for some reason it’s a hard one for a lot of people to grasp.  Ultimately the thought that helps me get through those moments of guilt is that I want my relationships to be about mutual love and support and happiness. Not about validation or control on either end (I realize that there are some relationships that are dependent by nature – they have to be! But I am not a parent yet, so now is a good time for me to get a grip on these concepts!).

Are you experiencing a big change in your life? How are you feeling about it? Is it scary? Lonely? Exciting? Invigorating? All of the above?

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A Time of Preparation

Posted on February 22, 2012 | 4 comments

Although I frequently allude to spirituality here, it’s pretty rare for me to talk much about religion. Overall, I think it’s safe to say that I’m not big on organized religion at all. I’m not into dogma; though I believe religion can do very good things for people, I don’t think that any particular religion has the golden key to “salvation.”  That being said, I have no problem still self-identifying as what is perceived to be one of the most dogmatic faiths around: Catholic. There’s some further clarification in this post, if you care to know more about my perspective on the topic!

Anyhow, today is Ash Wednesday, which is the beginning of Lent. Lent is a 6 week time of preparation before Easter (the resurrection of Christ, and for a lot of Christians and our not-so-subtly-hidden pagan histories, the official start of spring). It is meant to be a time of contemplation, and a time of penitence. I am fine with contemplation part, but penitence (which essentially means deep remorse and shame for what a rotten person you are) doesn’t really jive with me so much. Personally I feel like Jesus would be more down with me spending this preparation time getting ready to be a better person than beating the crap out of myself. So, contemplation of where I’ve gone wrong and where I can improve is fine.  Self-punishment: not so much.

Since I’m not into penitence, I haven’t really given anything up for Lent since I moved out of my parents’ house.  Even when I did live at home, my parents weren’t that big on it either. We did not eat meat on Fridays during Lent, but that was about it. However, this year it has dawned on me, in relation to Lent, that giving things up doesn’t necessarily have to be self-punishment. It can be an exercise in contemplation and preparation as well. Duh. Fasting has been used in all sorts of spiritual practices for a billion years.

Accordingly, I have chosen this time to do an elimination diet. This means that I am giving up a lot of stuff. However, rather than punishing myself, I look at this as a a time to face some demons (physical addictions as well as emotional struggles) and come out with better clarity of mind and vitality of spirit. Seems like a perfect Lenten practice for me!

I will be posting about the diet, and lots of other wellness-related things, in more detail on my BRAND NEW health and wellness blog, The Cranky Hippie (more tomorrow about the decision to start a new blog on top of this one that I haven’t been consistent with)!

Finally, on top of the elimination diet and being a more consistent blogger, I might try to delve back into The Artist’s Way as a means to kind of jump-start my spirit/intellect a bit.The hubby and I have made a point of keeping our social calendars pretty clear during this time so we can rest and have down time to recharge our batteries for spring. But I will have to see how I’m feeling with the other changes.  Elimination diets (also somewhat of a “cleanse”) can be kind of difficult and draining at times, so I want to be sure to not press myself too hard. We’ll see how it goes!

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Is “Ridiculous” kind of like “Crazy”?

Posted on February 21, 2012 | 2 comments

Like, if you’re aware enough to know you’re ridiculous, you’re probably not that ridiculous? I hope so! Because:

Recently I gave everyone in a five block radius downtown a dirty look. Especially the ones that looked too cheerful. Maybe there’s no hope for me anymore. Maybe I will never be able to “bring back the love” again. Or, maybe I’m just a person who gets frustrated by the same things as everyone else, but just happens to have a bit of a dramatic flair when expressing displeasure! The jury is still out.

Things started out well that day: I got up and got to work early enough so I could make it to my favorite Yoga class at 4:00. The day was a pretty easy work day. I felt generally peaceful, and find that my mood has been greatly improved by my upgrade to a window cubicle at work (totally bragging! I get lots of sunshine now during the day and it has been SO AWESOME!). Anyhow, everything was going down according to plan. I left work on time, walked across downtown to catch my bus, and got to the bus stop right as my bus was pulling away.

I figured, “no big deal.” It’s a high-traffic bus, so I thought that there would be another one in about 5 minutes. I looked at the schedule and I was wrong. There wouldn’t be another one for 20 minutes. Having to wait for 20 minutes would be DISASTROUS! Not because I would miss class, but because I wouldn’t get there early enough to secure a spot in the back of the room, and avoid any possible judgements about my yoga form or less than tiny ass (yoga is supposed to be non-judgmental, but frankly, in Uptown, I have my doubts).

Rather than doing what any sensible public transit user knows to do, and just waiting for the next bus, I foolishly tried to take matters into my own hands and ran to try to catch a different bus. Ya know that quote from The Princess Bride, “never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line”? Well, this is like that, except something to the effect of: “Never go in against Metro Transit when timeliness is on the line.” Unlike Westley in The PB, you will never, EVER win. And thus, I fell into the dreaded “bus void.”

I spent the next twenty minutes running back and forth between bus stops trying to catch a bus, and missing them every time. The entire time I was cursing god in my head, because there was a strong and absolutely frigid wind that day: “Really? Really, god? I’m already mad, and stuck in some kind of transportation vortex, why don’t you go ahead and freeze my face off too!” Anyone that I saw who looked cheerful (why wouldn’t people look cheerful? It was Friday afternoon!) automatically got the look of death. I might as well have been shaking my fist at people. I’m sure I looked insane.

Obviously, I should have just waited for the original bus. At least I would have made it to Yoga. Instead, I was just shit outta luck all round. This is what happens when I try to grab too much control. The universe just kicks me in the teeth. So, having missed my class, and having already learned my yogic lesson for the day (let go!), and not wanting to subject my husband to the mood I was in, I did surrender. To the bar. Where I drank two Leinenkugels and wrote in my journal. I guess there’s more than one way to find your bliss!

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