Welcome to my Weekend Coffee Share and a little slice of my life and dreams, where I am the writer, the producer, the stage hand, and the main character. It has been quite a week! Pull up a chair and a brisk coffee or a relaxing tea, whichever works for you. I am lingering over my V8 and coffee, having slept in and missed the pilates class I was considering taking. I suppose I needed a relaxing day!
I think I have mentioned before that, after working on and completing physical therapy for my back and shoulder pain (which may or may not have been due to arthritis), I am now going to work on the mind. Mind you, I’m still keeping up with the body work on my own; today is arm/shoulder day! Along with my aches and pains, I need to work on my anxiety and OCD or slight perfectionism, and I have been doing so. One of the things I’m doing is using an app called Curable that has a lot of writing exercises, meditations, and factual information on the mind/body connection regarding chronic pain. I have particularly benefited from the visualization meditation, while the writing exercises have me digging into my past and things that sparked anxiety for me. I believe the goal is to identify the stressers you have or had and deal with them, confront them. So, this week I was talking with my practitioner about my ex-husband. She asked what the last straw was that broke the proverbial camel’s back. So, I told the story. It made me feel so tired to conjure up the setting, the actors, the events, picturing myself back in the house I lived in with my then husband. I felt sad, scared, and angry as well. I hadn’t told the story in quite a while. Still, having done so, I felt more better equipped to deal with my present and future. I went home tired, though.
I lay down at some point in the evening to relax, and in my mind, I recalled events of the day and the story I had brought up again. I pictured hands reaching in and moving/removing stage props, my old house, furniture, the garage, the backdrop of trees. Maybe this was demonstrated on a movie or something, I don’t know, but it popped into my mind and I observed all these things being removed and leaving an empty stage. It made me feel triumphant! I had brought up the images, the story, and the actors and processed them, and now they could be put away. I could move on and create the next act. Of course, it is never good to dwell on the past, but if you must process it, and if doing so lets you move on, then, eureka! Something works! I think we are all different. But the mind/body work through the app does emphasize acknowledging the stressers from your life/past and that your way of dealing with them may have hurt you, i.e. caused chronic pain, digestive issues, or migraines, etc. I stuffed so many negative emotions down since childhood that they were bound to hurt me inside.
So, perhaps the stage is my mindset/focus. I know one should not focus on the past, but it comes up whenever I see the doctor and we discuss what tests I should have done; for instance, I had been tested for rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, both negative, thank God! I was plagued with pain for a while when I was so busy tending to my son in his rough patch of his youth, and now that he is moving along and doing fairly well, it is time to tend to me, to learn and unlearn my anxious reactions to his rough spells, to deal with the physical trauma of having been worried and trapped in hospitals or ERs several times. Parenting a son on your own is nothing to shake a stick at. Now, he is choosing a life, an honest, hard-working life and not that of a hitch-hiker (one of my past worries, silly me! :))
So, the stage is cleared and waiting. What will the next set be? Who will be the actors there with me? I have some great people and a support network as it is. Will I explore a meditation group? A writer’s group? Improv comedy? Will I continue my teaching career until retirement or find another way to approach my ‘golden’ years? The stage is waiting for me. The backdrop looks pretty magical, especially when fear and distrust have exited stage left!
*Am I truly done with fear, distrust, and anxiety? They are getting better. I can be brave for others and at times, for myself. I’ve been working on this. Being of a certain age, I can get hot flashes and brain fog as well as anxious moments, but they’ve improved with my recent mind/body work which I plan to continue. We’ll see what comes, but I am much better equipped to deal with it now!
Have a great week, my friends! I have Spring break and no travel plans, so this little fellow will have some play time with me, I’ll be writing/editing, and I’ll be getting some mundane appointments taken care of as well as relaxing and sleeping in some more!
**The Weekend Coffee Share is currently hosted by Allison at Eclectic Alli. Give her site a visit and say hello!
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