Christmas 2021

Dear traveling companions near and far,                                                Dec 29, 2021

Wow. Has it been a year since I wrote anything on my blog?

Well, I guess that makes sense, considering everything.

I’m going to speak from my heart. Brace yourself; here comes some drastic vulnerability.

 

Last year was really, REALLY hard for me. Starting in November 2020, I sank into depression and it only deepened into the new year. My doctor tried changing my depression medications, but the new ones caused new problems. I started having tremors in my hands; I lost my coordination and balance; I just wanted to lie in my bed and sleep. It became increasingly hard to focus on my online job, (which paid very little for the time I was putting in). I needed organizing jobs! But the pandemic roared on.

 

Then in April, I broke my foot. (Thank you, negligent management company.) All my efforts to provide for myself became moot. I descended into a deeper despair than I admitted to myself.

Through denial and self-will, I persevered. By June, my foot still wasn’t healing properly. I had gained 15 pounds. The handful of “imminent” organizing jobs in NYC had never materialized. I hadn’t contributed to our rent since December. I was in debt AGAIN. I felt helpless and stuck, with my health deteriorating weekly (no balance, coordination, or endurance). I was utterly powerless to effect good on my own behalf and saw no reason this would change. I was so frustrated and angry! Thoughts of suicide were circling.

My faith has been through many phases since my naïve and shiny youth. It has been through times of tremendous depth and a sense of closeness to God (wonderful). It has been through a sense of God’s abandonment, followed by a long time in a spiritual desert wondering if any of the past faith had been real. Most recently, while I believe God has everyone’s best long-term interests at heart (think “afterlife”), God also lets us suffer all sorts of earthly misfortunes without protection. I had no sense at all that God would keep me out of the mental hospital or pay my bills.

 

It was during this darkest of times that I got a good hard look at how much pride I have had in my own abilities. I have been creative and persistent. I have risen from catastrophic loss and reinvented my life again, and again, with “my” irrepressible optimism and creativity, and faith. I am strong.

 

But this time I couldn’t rise. I had nothing. I couldn’t get myself out of this nosedive. I was not in charge of my life at all.

Into this desperate space came the words of a dear friend. “You must pray for a resurrection. You must ask for your life back and pray for a resurrection.” I choked up, both at the ridiculousness of the notion (a resurrection for me?) and at the poignancy. I wanted a resurrection with all my heart!

I began praying daily for a resurrection that I doubted would ever come. I cried over my journal day after day, sick and still limping, gaining weight, unable to find regular work, and sinking in debt. I prayed for a resurrection, not even knowing what that meant. I just wanted to live again.

 

As the days passed and tears flowed I came to an important realization: Nothing I had, NOTHING was ever mine. “My” creativity? A fluke of genetics and environment. “My” perseverance? Sufficient privilege plus pure stubbornness and wishful thinking. The peculiar blend of talents and academic ability I had enjoyed? Just what came with along with brown eyes, depression, and a love of theater. I was responsible for none of it. I never had been.

This felt incredibly vulnerable – reduced to the absolute dependency of a newborn. Nothing I had ever done or been was of my creation. It was not of my will, nor from my “powerful manifestation skills,” nor because I “tried harder” than others. Nothing. NOTHING. I was 100% not the creator of any of the good in my life. I have been helped my whole life long even while I took all the credit.

 

Then followed this realization.  If I am not the source of “my” gifts and talents, neither am I the source of my misfortunes. I don’t deserve blame for my current suffering any more than I deserve praise for any successes. By owning my successes, I was also owning my failures, when in neither did I have much power at all.

That release of responsibility for all success and all failure in my life landed deeply in my body. I gained new ease, moving away from quite such desperate EFFORTING in my life.

 

Slowly, my life began to improve. My psychiatric practitioner let me discontinue two of the new medicines. In quick succession coordination, stamina, and balance returned. I could sequence thoughts again. I began to be interested in life again. My broken foot was a little less painful each week. Nevertheless, it was mid-September and I still had no way to make a living. I will never again underestimate the physical and psychological toll of having no income and no way to get one.  

 

Then, on the 27th of October, money from Dad’s estate landed in my account. It changed everything. I paid all my debts. I paid Sam’s debts too, making up for all my missed rent at the same time. I found myself trembling with relief. I cried repeatedly as the tremendous weight slid off my shoulders.

 

I now had a way forward. The inheritance is by no means enough to retire on. But it is enough for me to return to Canada where I can finish my psychotherapy certification without starting from the beginning. I can go into practice and finally earn a living wage. My inheritance is making this possible. My inheritance has produced what feels like a full resurrection.  I feel as though I got an amazing, undeserved miracle (my life back).

We have always planned to retire in Canada. It seems I’m making the move early and building a place for us there. Sam can’t follow me yet. His workplace just slammed the door on working from another country. Still, we can visit each other. We will be a two-country couple starting Jan 31, 2022. It’s going to be hard, but it is the only path forward that I can see.

 

Sam’s job has remained steady throughout the shut-downs, re-openings, and re-shut-downs, which is a huge blessing. In October we attended a long-planned family reunion with my kids and their families in Muskoka, Ontario. This was near Canadian Thanksgiving and one month before my 60th birthday. It was also over Sam's and my 5th wedding anniversary. We had a LOT to celebrate! The colors were stunning. Sam really took to the Muskoka region (finding craft breweries) and fit in well with the family.

 

Granddaughter Andrea presented me with a portrait. It has my top-knot, my glasses, and even the string I keep on my glasses so I don’t lose them. I am officially a grandma and no denying it.  

I spent two weeks in my hometown caring for my dear “adoptive” parents, Paul and Beryl Simonetti, who had both descended abruptly into disability. It felt wonderful to be there and care for them. I felt needed and also valuably helpful as the family adjusted to disabled parents, doctor’s visits, stair-lifts, and a search for assisted living.

 

As soon as I got home we set out on a Caribbean cruise, a treat from Sam’s sister. Before we flew home we spent several days with my sister Marcia and her wife in Florida. It was so good to see them in their new home.

Do I have a spiritual message to share? I will leave you to draw your own this year. Maybe prayers don’t change God, but these ones changed me and carried me from June - October. Can money be an answer to a prayer? It has given me freedom and dignity. It has given me hope and a future. That feels like an answered prayer. I feel like I was granted a resurrection, which is a gift of incalculable worth.

 

Thank you for listening. Thank you for reading all the way through this!

 

We send wishes that all created beings might find freedom from want, the dignity of autonomy, inclusion, comfort, and joy this coming year regardless of what any viruses are doing! 

AliSam

The new address for Alison 

as of Feb 1, 2022, will be 

57 Queen Street North, #712

Kitchener, ON. 

CANADA   N2H 6T7

The Colour Purple - Thoughts on Pride and Self-reliance

So my life took a dramatic turn yesterday.
Actually, my ankle did.

In an innocent moment descending some stairs, I caught my heel on the front edge of the final step.  As my weight kept transferring forward, my toes dropped to full extension, then past full extension as I continued forward over my ankle to sprawl on the floor.
Embarrassment, several swear words, and a registering of the nasty crunching that had just happened in my ankle all pressed forward as I rolled onto my back.  I propped myself up against the wall, trying to calm my breathing and assessing my next move.
I was in a secluded public stairwell.
"I realized with dismay that there was no way I was going to be helping my congregation serve the Easter dinner at the soup kitchen in an hour."
My primary feeling was one of shame.  I was thoroughly embarrassed that I had allowed this to happen.  On top of that was shock and nausea and a tremendous amount of ankle-pain.  I breathed and rested and trembled, knowing that sometimes these ankle-turns can settle down quickly and not be as bad as they first seem.  After a bit I got on my hands and knees, then reached up to a hand rail on the wall.  I took a firm grip, and placing as much weight into my arms and my good leg as I could, I attempted to stand.
No go.
Weight on the injured ankle was like an electric shock.  I realized with dismay that there was no way I was going to be helping my congregation serve the Easter dinner at the soup kitchen in an hour.

I collapsed in tears, frustrated and angry.  Self-pity and "poor me" soon joined in. To get to my car I would have to cross the lobby, a wide paved landing, ascend about 6 concrete steps, cross a road, then a large expanse of goose-poop littered grass, then about 30 yards of paved parking lot ... crawling.  It was about 5 degrees out. (40 degrees Fahrenheit.)
The more the new reality hit, the faster flowed the tears of frustration and pain. And on top of everything else, I was mad at myself and ashamed that I was crying.
I called  my son to advise him of my situation and asked him to come get the car.  Then I called 911.  As I was speaking to the dispatcher, two women came in, chatting away with coffees in hand.  They glanced at me as they went by and then slowed to a stop on the stairs as I answered the dispatcher's questions, tears still flowing.  "No," I wasn't bleeding.  "No," I wasn't having trouble breathing.  The two women had a quiet whisper and then one asked, "Are you okay?"
"To get to my car I would have to cross the lobby, a wide paved landing, ascend about 6 concrete steps, cross a road, then a large expanse of goose-poop littered grass, then about 30 yards of paved parking lot ... crawling."
More tears coursed down my cheeks as I shook my head, no.
The dispatcher assured me an ambulance was on the way.  The one lady stayed with me while another went to fetch help.  I kept on feeling angry with myself and embarrassed, mixed with gratitude for the kindness.

A first aid worker brought ice and propped my foot on a chair.  That's when I noticed that my ankle had a large egg-like swelling where my ankle bone ought to have been.  That was just plain unnerving.
The police arrived next, (both with shaved heads.  Randomly I thought, "Do all police now want to look like 'Ed' on Flashpoint?" but couldn't figure out how to ask that.)  Then the ambulance arrived, and the three ambulance gentlemen quickly had me assessed, splinted, and on my way to the hospital.
"Randomly I thought, 'Do all police now want to look like "Ed" on Flashpoint?'"
So I could choose to write about the professionalism of the paramedics, or the goodness/brokenness of the Canadian health care system, or government budget cuts, or any number of other things.
But what I want to reflect on today was how hard it hit me to realize I needed help.
I have done my fair share of noticing how "this" person or "that" person's stubborn self-reliance has gotten them in trouble, and thought, "If they would only admit they need help and ask for it...." or "Why are they trying to do everything alone?"  It has been easy to decide that their pride was getting in their way.
But it is a whole new thing when it is me needing help.  Why is it such a hard thing to accept?  I suspect that I am not alone in this.  I even sometimes minimize how hard someone else's struggle might be, assuming that *I* in their shoes, would handle the same problems much more easily.... But at least I now have had enough humbling personal experiences to know that such minimization is probably a lie.  I suspect it comes from my fear of experiencing such vulnerability myself.

So there I was, (and here I still am,) chewing on the amount of shame and anger I felt yesterday, and wondering about their sources.  They certainly weren't "logical" (she said, in a Spock-like voice.)  I cannot see how either the shame or the anger served me in any positive way.
I suspect some of my fear of dependency comes from being raised American, where complete self-reliance is valued so highly.  And I know enough about myself to know that I do take a lot of pride in my own self-reliance.  But this runs deeper than just pride, though pride is certainly there (as if I could take credit for the privileges and benefits I have known, or for being born with a creative mind that problem-solves pretty decently.)
Upon reflection, the shame and embarrassment were not so much about anyone seeing me down, but instead were a response to an immediate inner chorus of criticisms, as though a host of nagging, ruthlessly critical older siblings live in my psyche, ready to jeer at any foolish move.  "That was stupid!"  They shout.  "Why weren't you watching where you were going?"  "What an idiot!"  "I knew your multi-tasking would get you in trouble!" "You and your stupid Blackberry." etc, etc, etc.
I think the deep embarrassment and shame were in response to those thoughts.  Had I had nothing but compassionate and curious acceptance of this abrupt turn in the road, my journey would have been so very different!  I could still have made note of the contributing causes to my spill and resolved to pay better attention to my footing, without needing to beat myself up inside with abusive self-talk.
"Had I not been so ashamed and angry, I might have been fascinated by the illogical quality of the emotions running through my being."
THAT is what I'm noticing.  That even though I am resolved to rewire my thinking to be more supportive and compassionate and solution-focused, I still have a long way to go.  The habit of self-criticism and name-calling runs very deep indeed, it seems.

But there was more.  I truly believe the tears also came from a deep fear of vulnerability.  It felt fairly primitive, as though now as a cripple, I was a liability to a tribe who could easily abandon me.  And abandonment by the tribe, especially now that I was wounded, would mean death.  Had I not been so ashamed and angry, I might have been fascinated by the illogical quality of the emotions running through my being.  "Really?  This brings up the fear of abandonment and death?"
It certainly seems as though stresses can bring out some pretty illogical, primitive emotions.  Am I am the only one who experiences this?
 "Really?  This brings up the fear of abandonment and death?"
With my foot up on a pillow pondering life from a sofa, thank you for listening.

 Alison    http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2012-04-06/