For the past month or so I have felt busy. Busy in my skin, busy in my head, busy in an unknown direction. I have been bouncing around from this to that and feel overstimulated on a level that I can’t explain. Something is shifting and I sense it and it’s making me feel busy, stirred up, provoked. Like endless midnight munching, I feel hungry and unsated, that what I am eating is not nutritive but I can’t stop the snacking. I feel like I am missing it. I haven’t written anything in so long and today the burden to sit and release is pressing, although I don’t have a shape or idea of what it is that needs to move. The craving that I feel I am searching for is depth.

I recently went on a self-inflicted “strike”, dropping almost all of my social intentions due to burn out. Maybe it’s an introvert explosion of needing some major space, feelings of rejection, isolation and disappointment stuffed me to the brim. Small talk literally is killing me and I am out of balance. It feels almost impossible to reach a deeper part of people that I know. So much of the activity around is group focused and individual interactions are few and far between. I feel pressed to be the “listener” but haven’t felt listened too let alone understood. Heartfelt conversations are dried up, except in my job. Talking with parents about their kids and difficult health situations fills up much of my connection need; however, it’s still guarded with me in the listener role. I don’t lament that, I love being able to support, but I get stuck wearing the “professional” hat in those conversations and I find the imbalance is the inverse, who in my life do I have a relationship with that I can dump my heart on? There are some. Most involve complex scheduling, extreme distance and that itself feels burdensome.

When I moved to Colorado I felt free, open and available. I was deeply connected to myself and my relationship with God, who got me through my divorce-as that was mostly a solo journey of healing with friends on the edges in the darkest times. My relationship with God became regular and very personal through years of bible study while married and met me on another level through divorce and moving to another state with only Teddy. After moving to Colorado I didn’t seek bible study, but rather time in nature and the friends I could find seemed to be “hobby” related. We got together for a specific hobby, but lacked deeper conversations, and rarely did I have a conversation about God that was met with understanding let alone open curiosity, rather complete disinterest and shut down.

A few months ago, I fell into a pit of deep burnout and imposed a self initiated “strike” on my social engagements. I literally quit them all as it was so much effort and I felt deeply imbalanced with the outcome. In the time since my strike, I have started to pay attention to what is missing to create such burnout and what the remedy could be.  I happened to find the show “The Chosen”, which is not new. I don’t even know how I stumbled across it on Prime, but I binged it. All 5 seasons in about 2 weeks. I couldn’t wait to get home and watch it. I would think about it all day. It captures the truth of Jesus in a way that just reading the gospel doesn’t. It brings to life the humanity surrounding the verses and Jonathan Roumie does such an amazing job playing Jesus, it truly bolstered my faith. Paying attention to the community aspect of how they all travel together and how women are presented helped me recognize that I am missing a faith community. As I neared the end of season 5 and discovered that I would have a tremendous waiting period for season 6 (still filming), I started to search again for a bible study or a church near me-which are seriously difficult to find. Bible study used to be something I was hard core about, I went every semester and did some independently, even starting one at work in the past-which I absolutely loved and seriously miss. Even though I never made true friend to meet with outside of bible study in my previous attendance, it was still a place to share some of my spiritual movement with others and find connections in a shared faith. There is something unique about fellowship with other believers and I haven’t sought that or realized it’s importance since getting divorced. Apparently that needed healing due to my avoidance of unprocessed hurt.  As I was sitting on my couch with the last episode of “The Chosen” cued up and wondering what I would do next, a man walked by with door hangers advertising a church in my neighborhood, so close that I can walk to it. I literally took it as an answer to my pondering what to do next and went.

The stirring isn’t quelled, I still feel this busy unquenchable thirst or munchable hunger that I can’t satiate. There is also a humming, a different energy, a vibration that has increased in it’s presence. I don’t know what that is. It isn’t going away but settling in my bones. I think it’s a spiritual energy and it’s pushing me to move-although I am not aware of where I need to move. Maybe it’s just a readiness energy for what is coming down the pike and it’s making me aware of changes I need to make in my life.

I haven’t sat down to write in a long time. In the past it’s been a pressure to express and in the writing I reveal to myself a lesson, unleash feelings or find an impression left behind from a struggle. Ending my writing with more form. This doesn’t feel formed, it feels raw and unshaped. A beginning. An idea that hasn’t had time to marinate, but I will put it out there anyway, because it’s the process for me.

Something has changed, something has shifted. There is something amiss in the world of spiritual forces and I can feel it. I have to move. God lead me.

I can’t find the center, or the balance. I feel like I am careening over on one side rather than bouncing up and down from the center. Moderation has left and I am starving with an insatiable appetite for more information as my “work” life pulls me out of alignment and into a hole sized for a rabbit, or two, or twenty.

Maybe winter is to blame for my extreme polarization, I have a case of the homebodies, once I walk in the door, it’s so hard for me to leave. I don’t make plans, feel zapped of motivation and happy to just sit down. Maybe Spring is to blame, rain rain go away, there is more than normal precipitation this year over here in Denver. We’ve been transported overnight without warning to the pacific northwest, I’m living an episode of the twilight zone. Who wants to go outside and get hailed on, rained on, or caught in the lightning (with chances of being struck much more likely within a Colorado zip code), not me, I don’t like wet clothing touching my body, gag.

Biking used to pull me and sway my weekly plans. A ride after work meant the bike rode in my car and a group kept me focused on an end goal that moved my body, usually griping up a steep hill till the downhill pulled my frown away and left my lips in a smile across my face. That rhythm has abandoned me as I fold in creases from too much time in a chair. The concern that niggles is that I don’t appear to care. Where is the protest? Hmm, I hear silence.

Maybe pollen is to blame, my sinuses drain with the loudest “achoo”, and the tissues are always gone when I need them, what room are they in now? Teddy, my dog, follows me around, hoping to help make the used white balled up tissue disappear from sight, gulp. The sun stays up late, I love knowing it’s out there, somewhere above the clouds but I haven’t enjoyed it yet. Keeping my eyes open past ten is a dream I only dream when I am awake since sleeping is complicated. I wake with lines running down my face. They no longer rub away after rising, but like a ridge to a valley they stand out in the mirror now a permanent part of my face. So much for collagen. Maybe the mattress is to blame. I wake up with numb shoulders and arms, unable to toss and turn staying stationed on my side, sunken into the foam someone calls a mattreess…it offers no support to any part of me, crooked, crooked I don’t feel rested. Is it nine pm? I would like to fall asleep now, rats is only 6.

Chai, it tastes good all year long, warm or cold mixed with oat milk, it’s spicy creaminess makes me happy to see the morning and I tell myself it keeps me going throughout the day…but I doubt it has that much power. I dream about the families that I work with, taking home their problems, trying to find the solution, curiosity killed the cat…I wonder if it’s killing me? Is that why I can’t focus? I have traded the world for a dark den shared with too many rabbits. Achoo. Am I staring into space or at your face while we talk, not blinking? Oh sorry, maybe that’s my liver detoxing the cheese I ate. Cheater, cheater, I just had to have those enchiladas. I feel like taking a nap, why am I so tired? Can allergies make you sleepy? Achoo. I have found a niche and want to know everything, break it down, build it up, question this and try that. Bottle feeding, breastfeeding, problem feeding, rabbit hole…Jackie don’t forget your own feeding eat some lunch, it’s already 2pm. I am melting. Maybe missing lunch is to blame?

More staring at the wall and out the window watching bugs circle round, swat-smack a mosquito didn’t make it off my leg, but his last words are swelling on my ankle. What’s for dinner? The same three things that are quick to make, where is the convenience of healthy choices…my tastebuds need a trip. Boring flavors, boring tastes, why is eating mandatory? Three times a day is really over kill, it’s an offense to my senses, It’s really not practical and much too frequent for my planning skills.

Hello tree, can I stare at you for a while? Your leaves are green and happy mesmerizing me as they dance in the breeze, you remind me of life when it feels so carefree. Sometimes I need to just be on empty and coast a while without looking for the gas station like it’s an emergency. I forget the pause button and life is barreling forward too fast…summer is almost here and it’s already feeling over. BARK-BARK! The revorie is over, too many dogs barking, please oh please STOP! My sensory system is overloaded and I see the edge, don’t snap.

Winter was long, cold and hard and spring is only just letting up with sunny days filling the sky. It’s hard to monitor the weather from a foot underground, burrowed down deep with the fluffy white tails. Running is easy, when I want to do it, but lately that feels hard and my body said no thank you so it walked instead. I didn’t mind the organization that I felt come over me, bouncing back into a shape that is more familiarly me. I joined the gym to go back to yoga…I haven’t made it there yet. Accountability is hard for me to create for myself…when did I get to be so lazy? Do I smell enchiladas?

There is a magnetic pull on my life and it’s pulling me stuck, I need it to flip so I can run out. Sitting on the porch to write and view a tree, smack-slap another one bites the dust, now there are 24 bite marks that I must scratch. Vacation, I need you, I want you so bad. Not just a weekend but two weeks instead. To lie somewhere pretty, near the beach or a lake. A kayak to paddle and something to do, with no phone, no internet and, gasp dare I say, no rabbit hole. No decisions to make, just when to be where and for someone else to tell me the agenda and how to move to get there. Pick me up, drive me there, get gas and food, hand it to me when I am hungry, take me home when it’s done, just in time for lights out. Far, far away where all things are new, people watching seems different when you change the point of view. Out of the country, I would love to be, but budgets aren’t friendly when you’ve made down payments on a rabbit sized hole.

Contentment is longing for me to come back. I remember it’s calling with each single breath, but I’ve been too busy to entertain its lament. Longing for simple, yet dying to thrive, responsibility curiously has eaten me alive. Maybe I will resurface and relax one day soon, remember the present with simpler times. For now, I am sleepy, I’ll just rest my eyes, like the dogs who dream beside me, running in their sleep, I am sure they understand the trap that I’m in, of chasing the rabbit and diving headfirst into its hole.

It’s so strange how holiday traditions change over the years.  My youth was encapsulated by family and I had no idea it was a tradition until it came to an end.

Christmas used to be my favorite holiday. I was the instigator of putting up the outdoor lights and would help my dad, who was brave enough to hang over the roofs edge to clip them onto the second story while I fed the untangled lines to him. Wrapping lights around the balcony as we got older I think we eventually avoided the roof line. Setting up the wise men and nativity set were also my chores I readily flocked to,  decorating the piano gave it purpose as it became the only time of year it had any attention. Heading to the tree farm to cut a real tree, there were at least a few years I cut my own mini tree to adorn my room and give my cat D.T. a place to sleep under it’s boughs. I didn’t mess around with Christmas spirit.

As an adult Christmas was a family tradition,  no way could we make alternate plans, it was never about friends,  unless they showed up to join our family. When I was married it was a flipped celebration, one side had the eve the other had the day and I wish now I had every Christmas for my side.

I don’t really remember the gifts, we drew names among the Mayfield side and it never seemed to matter what we opened, some years there were more memories with the items (hot sauce comes to mind) but I remember the dinners…mostly at my Aunts house.

We ate early around 4ish, with relish trays to pick off of while the cooking wrapped up,  many fingers covered by olives while we “kids” now in our 20s and 30s gabbed and caught up within the cousin circle. Dressed in our better clothes, I wouldn’t call it fancy, but it possessed effort, we would indulge in a cocktail or glass of wine engaging in our social circles and laughing at stupid jokes thrown around.

Once dinner was served, we sat ourselves at the table, sometimes in assigned seats-depending on the level of fancy Aunt Mary felt for the occasion- it was nice to age out of the kids table and just sit at one very long extended table with all of the real adults. Passing plates of delicious pot roast,  turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes,  green beans, random veggies, salad, and cranberries around until everyone had their fill and conversation slowed. We’d clean up and find out way to the other room where everyone would sluggishly make their way to the TV, where occasionally we’d have a show of old home movies,  games and our gift exchange. Eventually feeling like dessert, we would cut ourselves slices of pie and maybe another round of beverages until the night inevitably wound down and we’d make our way to our cars fir the drive home.  Even though many of the years I was driven home by my ex-husband, I only remember going home with my parents having my Dad at the wheel. The memory brings me such comfort and may be a much younger memory of falling asleep in the wayback of the van with smooth jazz or Christmas songs playing softly on the radio and my parents conversation muted in warm background noise.

The last Christmas that had any semblance of these memories was in 2015. My Aunt died only few short unexpected weeks later.  I couldn’t tell you then that life was literally altered and Christmas has never been Christmas again.  Spending 4 years by myself on Christmas, it felt better to stay home and have my own tradition with Teddy, my dog, then show up to any Christmas party I was invited to, the contrast being to much to take. Christmas just simply lost its purpose. I think having spread ourselves out all over the states,  my parents and sister likely feel the same loss, with no one close to one another. Although I’m sure my mom would still like to have the time together.

This year I feel the gap more deeply than I have in the last 7 years. Maybe it’s due to changes in the depth of my current relationship with Alex and spending the holiday with him and his mother,  or the fact that everyone is much older and life feels dangerously fragile near the holidays, or the simple fact that the holiday feels long and drawn out like winter…it has become and indoor activity that’s dark and cold. I think the main reason is that it lacks tradition…and family. I feel orphaned in a way.

I know the holidays are hard for many people because as you live life you experience loss and that loss is always more evident during times of expected traditions.

Cheers to the memories that feed my soul,  cheers to the people who built my youth,  and cheers to the future and possibility of creating a new tradition that holds my future memories in the second part of my life.  Merry Christmas to all: to the ones in the midst of the good times and to those who hold the memorues of the past with tears in their eyes.

There is something in the air these days that feels uncertain, I find myself primed for unexpected bad news. Recently different circles in my life have collided with each other over the loss of loved ones, mostly all were unexpected and 3 were children. Working as a speech language pathologist I work with some medically complex children who seem to live on the edge of life and death every flu season, but the ones who recently passed weren’t hovering on the brink. Watching the newly licensed SLP’s cope with their first patient loss I was reminded of my first loss.

Years ago I found myself working my dream job. As an SLP in a non-profit world there seemed to be less tape for billing, handwritten paper notes were still in fashion and parent education and participation in therapy was mandatory in our program. I loved every part of that job, mostly the specialization in early intervention with all of my kids being under the age of 5. One day I got a new client, his name was Zane and he was BUSY! I think he must have been around 18 or 20 months old when we started speech therapy and he kept me on my toes. He would dart around the therapy gym so fast I would see his toe-head blond head wiz by as he chased his older sister around the room. Getting him to sit down was a short exercise that lasted mere minutes at most. We would eventually make our way into my treatment room and out of the big gym but the door would have to stay open, if I closed it he would become focused on opening the door to exit and see what fun was happening on the other side of the door. He loved to play cars and we would take out all the little cars I had and roll them around making crashing sounds and other sound effects working up to approximations for real words like “go fast”, “Slow down” or “don’t crash!”. He loved the action and after playing he would hear a pin drop in the other room and quick as he could jump up to check it out, I would holler at him with shock in my voice and he would turn around to see what the drama could be about. Pointing to the cars I would say “oops we forgot to clean up!?” and he would smile at me, mirror my shock and come back over to the cars only to start playing with them again. His father would always say after our visits with incredulous confusion “how do you get him to stay in there for so long with the door open!?” I would simply laugh and say “I don’t know!”

Zane wasn’t the easiest kid to understand, his speech rate matched his energy and it was one fast ramble that sounded like a bumble bee in flight. As he got older and we worked together he started to slow down and if you had context you could understand what he was saying. I remember one morning his father dropped him off and told me that the family had gone out to eat at a restaurant and they were seated in a booth. Zane stood up and was looking over the seat talking to the man seated there, and to his father’s great surprise the man conversed with Zane alone and actually understood his words! When he shared that story with me he expressed his thankfulness for my work with him. Back then in my mid twenties, I didn’t know what to do with compliments and sincere thanks. I didn’t have a bucket available for receiving and I likely brushed it off as though it was just a natural progression in his development rather than direct intervention at my hand. I remember commenting often to his parents when he made me laugh that “his soul is too big for his body, it just leaks out of him that’s why he’s so busy.” His parents shared my thoughts, especially when Zane would get caught mid action, he would turn his head say “huh” and smile his mischievous smile and I swear his eye would twinkle as he thought about his next move.

I saw him Friday mornings, as he was nearing his third birthday he started to attend our little preschool transition program Friday after speech. His father would drop him off and I would walk him to school after our time ended and see him again with his friends during our push in story/language activity. When he first started the program he thought I came in to see him again and would try to sit next to me or jump out of his chair to engage with my materials, and I would have to remind him to sit in his chair like his friends. He would respond with “oh!” and run back to his seat ready to participate.

On Monday I was the first one in the clinic with an early morning session and I checked out voice messages at the front desk. As I was going through the messages Coley walked in and we said our morning greetings while I wrote down messages. I came upon the next one and recognized Zane’s father’s voice but was unable to understand his words, something about a memorial fund in Zane’s name and the rest is lost. Coley saw my face change into shock and disbelief as I grabbed my chest, she asked “what’s wrong!?” but I couldn’t form the words. Between sobs I choked out words resembling “Zane died” and she walked me to the office and set me on the couch to cry as she went to greet my 8am client. Since we were a small clinic my 8am client knew Zane as well and we didn’t have much to say during our session, avoiding eye contact to maintain composure.

Zane’s family reached out to me and his mother was horrified that I found out from the voicemail system and not the email she had sent me. They invited me to his viewing and I went thinking other therapists from our program would also be in attendance, but I was the only one. When I got there Zane’s mom greeted me with the deepest embrace I have ever been enveloped in and we stood there bawling in each others arms for what felt like hours. For the rest of my time there she wouldn’t let go of my hand and introduced me to everyone in attendance that was mostly family. It was the first time I had ever been to a viewing for someone that wasn’t over 80. And it was the first time I cried publicly, without shame, because of a broken heart and shared such deep grief in such comfort.

At his service there was standing room only. I was somewhere near the front, seated in a pew as directed by the family. I remember my foggy brain and holding back my tears, I couldn’t work my head around his loss. He was only 2 years old and couldn’t be by himself anywhere, he needed supervision and who was watching him now!? As I sat through his eulogy I was amazed how his parents were able to stand up and share their story telling us all with composure about Zane and making everyone laugh at his antics. I couldn’t talk at all, all my grief was just stuck in my throat. Aside from crying with his family and occasionally at work I was alone with my grief and out of my depth trying to process the death of a child. Life was out of order according to my experience and it didn’t sit well, you died when you were old, not 2.

I felt stuck with this grief. I wasn’t skilled enough in processing my grief to know how to ride it out and I was troubled still worrying about Zane being alone and uncared for. Weeks after the service I had a dream. I was at the beach with Zane and we were playing tag, I was running away and fell down in the sand and could hear him laughing and chattering behind me. As I rolled over he dropped down next to me and kissed me on my cheek. I immediately sat straight up in bed and woke my-then husband who asked me what was wrong. I said “I was dreaming about Zane”. He asked me if I was ok and then asked “why is your cheek wet are you crying?” I wasn’t crying. I wiped my cheeks and on the side where Zane kissed me it was wet like a two year old sloppy kiss wet. Zane told me he was ok and I was ok after that, I stopped worrying about him. But I haven’t ever stopped thinking about him.

Over the last 15 years in this profession I have worked with many kids and I can remember most of them. Not all kids weigh the same and some have dense footprints on my heart. Zane was one of the first to leave his prints behind, I remember his death because it broke me, but mostly I remember him and I still hear his voice and laugh at my memories of him. The kids are always easy to remember and some parents stick in my head or stay around as friends as their children graduate from my services, but Zane’s family left an imprints on my heart that will never fade. I couldn’t receive what they offered at the time they gave it, I was incapable of understanding my value or receiving that others could simply care for me and about me. I didn’t see myself with any importance.

10 years later I still cry when I tell Zane’s story. The lessons I learned from his parents have stayed with me. They showed me in their inclusion of my grief that I was important to them and they loved that I loved Zane. There was no comparative suffering of who hurt worse, just comfort that we could feel broken together.

Recently two of the therapists I mentor lost their first patients, both unexpectedly. We as society are not equipped to deal with grief. We feel dismissive of our feelings, compare suffering and judge our right to feel the loss. We struggle with what to say, or judge what to do and never get off the page keeping our intent buried from those we might be able to share with. If Zane’s loss taught me anything about grief it came from his parents. If you are hurting and someone else is hurting, just reach out. The words will never be enough because you can’t erase it, but the gesture goes far to those in the hole even if they are unable to respond. I reached out to Zane’s mom recently just to share a story and say I remember, I often remember him around his anniversary, when his footprints run across my heart.

Thoughts just roll around in my head with no way to get untangled from the mess of cobwebs, never rolling out at a convenient time when I have my computer in front of me ready to hold my purging. Today I sit with it conveniently in front of me and feeling mostly intimidation. Feeling that it stares back at me with some kind of expectation for what it’s about to receive and I have nothing to offer. I think I have an excess of flow tangled within itself blocking the outlet, every thought wants to exit at once and feels rude running over the others so it waits, like people at a four-way waving the others to go first and no one ends up going. I am sitting in a coffee house in Vancouver Washington on “vacation” for a long weekend. The time it took me to get here with a delayed flight I should have ended up on Hawaii! Last weekend I went to my cousins wedding down in Albuquerque New Mexico. As it always is when we get together there are feelings that run deep, specifically in a milestone event such as a wedding and tears inevitably flow, not from deep joy but from pain that comes from loss…even years later.

I’ve thought about my aunt dying several times and have missed her almost successively each day that has passed in lessening gut wrenching hurt. She runs through my mind and I catch myself wondering what her perspective would be, what thoughts she might have and how she would see the world. I mostly miss her laugh. Sometimes I think I laugh a lot less in my life without her in it, she made things funny just by choking on her own laughter trying to lessen the sound but with no success. Everyone around would turn to look in our direction when she opened her mouth to gasp for air while covering her mouth with her napkin and turning different shades of red and blue from lack of oxygen, she could never seem to find her breath while laughing, and once she did, she inhaled the whole room with a single sound drawing more attention to herself. You really couldn’t hold it in if you were within her radius, she made you join in even if you didn’t know her. My mom and sister were the worst, the three of them would go in spurts together setting each other off over and over forever! I miss family events without this routine of exhale to inhale, my abs never hurt anymore.

Her youngest son, my cousin, was the groom last weekend. Her baby had a wedding, gained a wife and has plans to grow his family in the future. The wedding was lovely and lots of fun with family from California surrounding him in joy. It was evident that Mary was missing and Donny her oldest son made mention in his speech as best man, she loved Tessa, the bride of the evening and would have been so happy to call her a daughter. The emotion was contagious to those who knew her, our eyes leaking out in our mutual loss once again we connected over the empty space she inhabits. Like a vacuum it sucked her out of our past in a moment she was gone and forever I knew that time could be divided into before Mary and after Mary. But what I couldn’t have really understood in that moment was how she would be missing from the future and yet still so present with each of us. “it’s not fair” resounded through my head and came off of lips. The void that she left wasn’t just personal loss that she no longer came to events she would have fought to host, the relationships around her changed and her place has been lost.

The mention of her name doesn’t come up as much, I think sometimes grief lies in wait and sneak attacks in the dark and unsuspecting places. How much she is missed goes unnoticed until wham it smacks in the face. Having an uncle that was married to my aunt for close to 40 years disappear in her loss. He seems to be unrelated to us now, moving on with his life and ignoring his pain, it seems we lost a whole family with the loss of an aunt. He gave up the Mayfield’s so now we’re all orphans. Spread out across states, with one more to come, no one talks to each other without Mary’s orchestration.

Seeing my cousins after a few years together I noticed our age in this round of greetings. We look like midlife’s…or at least the adults. Our foreheads keep lines from our expressive wrinkles and our eyes show our lines from all the years of laughter…we aren’t even 40 yet and this age is already evident. I started taking notice of my own face expressions, as wrinkles are pronounced all over my face and most people don’t move their faces when talking. Seeing these wrinkles on my family cousins I felt quite at home that we share life on our faces when every inch moves when we use exclamations! 

Life is hard, no one says when your small that it will be forever, adulting and responsibility brings independence, but loss and heartbreak…no one prepares you. At the time of her death all I felt was collapsing. Grief, gut wrenching and denial broke hard. Crying was common, mostly pouring out in the car, making driving quite hard to see where I was going, or brushing my teeth the drool increased falling off my face with my tears and into the sink. It was easy to hurt, we all felt the same. We could call or hug while tears ran down knowing we all felt the same way for a time. But now it’s all separate as we’ve moved on through time, we have to mention our feelings to see if it’s shared, putting ourselves out there and possibly “ruin a good time” by bringing it down to what is rumbling inside. But even with that hug still abound, freedom to feel is a lesson were all still learning. Hurt feelings of being ignored or left out, family gatherings were the norm for holidays and weekends, so much time spent together my cousin lamented “she’s like a sister to me” at his wedding. It’s true, once upon a time we were connected that close, but now maybe once a year a text makes it through.

I wish we were pulled so far apart, in this state and that state with personal lives to maintain. It’s hard to catch up on the phone and keep depth. Children get older and I’m not around. The dreams I had once of being close to the next generation of family is lost on the wind. To pick up the pieces is easy to do but sustaining that connection seems to just fall by the wayside when real life resumes. I lose track of time…how is it already half way through April? I remember February as yesterday…did I lose some memory?

I worry about that as words seem hard to find, I lose track in conversation and nothing is in my mind. A name, a label and location all gone…. the nouns disappearing…is something dangerous lurking? Work is forefront in my daily thoughts, the families I see are so close to me. I see them each week, sometimes two or even three. I know some things that go on in their life, with distance of course and it made me realize, I know nothing of day to day with my family. It’s me and my dog and on the weekends a boyfriend, the weekdays too full for planning out time. I don’t want so much separateness of knowing people deeper. Unless I plan every single day on a calendar it goes by in a blink and echoes silence that I don’t even notice. It makes me realize that the only people you see day in and day out are the ones you live with and you still have to notice.

I see know as an adult how much work it took to parent me and my sister and why we were always “home”. My parents needed the weekends to do stuff at home, where I would lament the lack of interaction. Now as an adult I have hobbies and trips, but the trips take more work as they suck out the weekend and Monday starts over less fresh than it should. Everything feels like a giant task…where is the fun?

I don’t mean to imply that life is all boring with nothing fun to look forward too, but I will blame the shut down of covid for stealing my fun. I look forward to events, but mostly the planning or packing I have to do to get the event covered instead of the good time I will be attending. When did that happen? Where is the freedom? Am I so burned out on life that nothing is fun? No, id become a hermit if I felt that way so there must be some light heartedness I am missing. Maybe it’s laughing? I giggle here and there and a joke makes my laugh, but really really laughing deep down from my gut…that is definitely missing.

Maybe what I am feeling is the miss of my family, the one that I knew. Seeing my cousins, I am reminded that I had a childhood. There aren’t many people in my life today that knew me as a child and still know me today. Most of my fiends only know me post-divorce, they can’t even tie the Jackie before to the Jackie of now…. they are most different indeed….and I wish my aunt knew the one of today. I wonder often what it is she would say. She would have noticed the smallest change and made some comment about how I seemed “you look happy and fresh” or she would ask “how are you doing?” with the expectation you would share as much or as little and she wouldn’t judge but she could tell I was lying.

I miss that gift. The gift of seeing, she could handle big feelings and call them out in us without pressing for an action or demanding a change. We are sort of similar in this way, maybe it was our Pisces nature showing, our birthdays four days off we were water. I hope in the loss of her missing from us, I have picked up with part with my cousins, sister, mother and uncles to be able to see a feeling or mood and call it out without judgement to simply say “hey you, I see you” in whatever it is. Mary had a way of seeing. She held us together in her care. I feel the let down of missing this part of her so often and the missing giggles.

How do you define family? I have my childhood memories with faded edges, the good the bad the shared and secret stories. Looking back on it know I think my family extended provided a childhood and light heartedness that feels a bit unraveled. Getting together is less and less often, with money shelled out to spend short weekends together across state lines of travel, it takes planning and intention, we have little in common as far as hobbies.

Its hard to see the future and to know if somewhere down the line we all might be closer, to spend time in our midlife living not quite as neighbors…to move the intention across paper into action is hard but important. There is charge to do more…

Is it me or did the mood change with the weather? Is everyone else feeling a little squashed by life? Not wanting to make plans to do anything because it’s suddenly too hot and it costs too much to get anywhere. I don’t want to drive anywhere…not even to a lake to cool down because it’s going to cost me nearly $100 to fill up my tank…and I already fill up 3 x week for my job and the weekend. Having fun isn’t fun anymore. I would rather just become a lethargic potato hogging the couch and a nap sounds perfect. Work is stressful. My response, be like a clam and just shut it down. Close the lid, stay inside and forget the world as it is.

It’s a mess. I am not a political person and I have avoided the news for years in the past because it really gets me down. Lately I can’t avoid the news and when I see it it’s just a bunch of censored crap and I wonder…did I move to Russia? Is anyone else aware of what is going on with our “reporters”? Why are we no longer a nation with a border crises that is literally being ignored. Drugs abound with people shooting up in the street. Automatic gun fire is going off in the city of Denver. The cops literally aren’t allowed to stop crime or enforce laws…because they no longer matter. Want something!?! Just take it! The rhetoric is insain, literally insain…no one can think anymore. Critical thinking has gone out the window and people are brainless zombies who literally can’t form an argument because they are no longer taught to form sentences, reading and writing aren’t important, you don’t even need to do it in order to graduate! Go to college, sure you can! You don’t have to have skills to get a degree, just claim victim and you’re a shoe in! Have no where to live? Don’t worry you can camp on someone else’s lawn, have a fire in your tent with a can of propane right next to the fire and no one will make you put it out (it’s only dangerous if you have a permanent address and pay taxes to have a fire pit in your yard). Want to go out to dinner? Ok, but you have to be willing to spend at least $100 for two people with the kitchen fees that are added because of inflation and living wages, and you have to be willing to wait longer for service because no one is working and everyone is short staffed. Want to own a gun or learn how to shoot one? Oh be ready for people to hate you and assume that means you approve of innocent people being shot down in schools because guns are evil and thus you are now evil too…not the criminal who lost his mind and did a bad thing. Mad about gas prices? Simple fix, drop 65k on an electric vehicle, then you can also save the world from Armageddon climate change (never mind how your electric vehicle is built using lithium batteries that die and have no second life purpose but rotting in some junk yard, along with the car. And while you’re at it where exactly does lithium come from and how do you get it?) Don’t worry…you are still totally saving the world! Gas is bad. Green is good. But how do you pay for it? It’s not 100% replaceable.

This idea that everything is black or white. Binary options with easy solutions. (with two sentences labeled as racist and bigoted instead of modifiers to describe, and a noun simply meaning “plural, a whole composed of two. Mathematics”) You quote the script, you sing the jiggle, we all drink the cool aide and nothing is fixed. The only change is that two sentences instead of describing a picture become racist and bigoted. What happened to conversation? To talking through issues because your confused and need more information. No one talks. Everyone yells. Anger abounds and blood pressure rockets. Words are screamed or avoided and suddenly friends are no longer called as lines in the sand create barriers to connection. Where is the grey? Does anyone else live here on earth? Where nothing is simple and everything has multiple views…and complications? That was why we had 2 parties. One to check another to keep the course straight ahead working for the good of the people…the nation that votes for it’s elected. We have all gone soft and have lost our direction. What direction are we heading in? From where I sit it doesn’t spell democracy. Guess we are all slowly becoming illiterate.

Where is my head? I feel fragmented wondering where does the day go, catapulting through time…. did you know it’s already April!?

I think I spend too much time looking back in the past thinking “I used to…” playing the what if game in reverse thinking if I could just go back to doing things like I used to then I would be in the magical place of where I want to be. But the thing is I can’t go back in time. It isn’t just coming up with a strategy or changing one simple thing to align the stars and have a feeling or routine that worked before, it won’t work now because it wasn’t a shift in a single variant but rather everything.

In the past my dog was younger, we could hike for 5 miles after work beating the sunset to explore the front range and feel like we left the city and chaos of life to find a magical world of nature. Wildlife was caught close by and we weren’t in any hurry to leave so we’d simply watch the watch us until the moment passed and we would stroll apart. Something would catch my fancy and I would snap a picture, whether it turned out the way I saw it in real life or not, I had a minute captured somewhere, marked for time and linked with a breath…I was here for this moment and Ted my dear old pal was with me smiling ear to ear while panting for his own breath while we paced each other along the trail of evergreens. Making dinner at home wasn’t late and I didn’t mind cooking while music played and a candle was lit creating a calm space to catch up with the thoughts leftover from my hike having been jostled free from the cobwebs of my mind. Nothing felt sticky or left over from the day, stress melting off id crawl into bed tired enough that sleep came pretty easily. Dancing alone in my living room with headphones on, I really felt free to give into my body to let it do it’s thing finding a smile on my face and lightness in my step. Darkness didn’t matter I could set the mood with candles or simply watch the moon from the window as it rose over my house. Sunset was a thing to chase walking at the park, a mile here or maybe two with a sit down by the lake. A flower would catch my eye or people passing by would make for simple entertainment. Sometimes dinner at the park picnic style was just the thing (I didn’t need to cook). A greedy Labrador drooling with each bite waiting impatiently for his turn for some kind of crust of spilled food I dropped.

Somehow those simple things have become lost to me. Perhaps back then my focus was on life with just my dog. Being newer to town I didn’t have a lot to schedule out, friendships meant events on dates but weekdays were mine to flesh out. Filling empty space was novel and spontaneously unplanned out. I can’t just add in a hike a week to make the past me free. More than excuses its lifestyle fleshed out, ted is too old to hike more than a mile, after driving all day the last thing I want to do is drive home and out again. Plans are laid out for summer events and weekends full of plans. Where can you fit in a relationship when the week is already over, add it to the weekend when everyone else wants to fit in.

I am a scheduling genius when it comes to my work life. I can accommodate missed visits 30 minutes south to the same up north. Spread out all over the place my day is one long errand, running from this house to that house within 15 minutes, every hour I am somewhere else burning gas and rubber. I enjoy my interactions with the families I see and feel fulfilled most days that I have a kind of purpose. It’s too easy to fill those hours up and I often over work, taking Friday’s off so I can get my own appointments in often ends up lost. My boundaries blur in strength and I hear burnout calling. But this round I don’t feel like it’s work to life balance, I feel like I have forgotten how to fully be myself.

Giving up too much of my time to try and make everything else work I feel empty and dissatisfied that my personal life is a job. I know this place of burnout; it comes from too much adulting. My heater won’t turn on and my house is freezing cold. Even with the warmer days my house is still so damn cold. Wearing a down jacket to sit upon my couch…my house doesn’t feel like home when I might as well be outside. It will be at least 2 more weeks before I can call someone to tell me I’m going to be broke. The timing could be less perfect. Seeding my yard in hopes that grass will choke the weeds seems like a pipe dream that was too much work. Weeds from last year still taunt me along the street as new sprouts are already popping up to yell “when will you pick me!?” “Never!” I yell back, because it’s true there is no time. My house runs over me and I never seem to be home, and when I am pulling weeds that never die is the last thing I want to do. Sidetracked the laundry is done…when did it turn off? I don’t remember hearing that it was time to dry it off, now I have to stay up late to wait for it to finish. What time do I wake up tomorrow? My schedule feels off…oh like this morning when I forgot to leave on time, confused by the fact that I can’t teleport myself. 8:30 is when I should be there…ops thought that was when I left. Lunch break tomorrow? Nope, forgot that blank space was for lunch and I gave it away for a reschedule. Where am I at?

I don’t even have time to write a thing that feels like resolution. Or spend time lingering in my head and processing something bigger. Reflection is for seconds right before bed, and lately feel more like a list of chores and maybe some worrying (like what will I wear to the wedding since I couldn’t find a dress!?). I bought a new laptop with the hope that I could write more often on something more dependent, and here I am the true issue with being undependable. I don’t know if its just this week that things feel some upended or if it’s a cluster that just gained weight and drew out my attention. I feel fragmented, all the pieces are supposed to fit but I don’t know where they go.

I need to sit and stare at a tree with nothing else to do. 

I’m having a hard time being still.  And I don’t mean still as in sitting in a chair with nothing to do,  covered in a blanket staring out at the snow piling up on the ground kind of still…I mean my thoughts,  my insides,  my being finding stillness.  Quiet stillness.

Looking at myself from the outside,  I’m definitely being still, lazy almost, lacking all desire to be productive, although my list of things to do is unending. Even the dogs are listless lying at my feet. The house seems to be in a repose of calm, I could maybe even fall asleep… if it weren’t for this feeling of unrest buzzing underneath my skin like an outlet humming softly nearby that is only heard when all else falls silent.

It’s an insatiable craving.  I’m looking for the answer in my cupboard. Rice cakes? Maybe, a munch or crunch to satisfy this need, is snacking what I crave? Or will a quick Google search pull up an interesting article, learning something new…is the answer a craving for my brain? Still searching through apps uncertain what I need, a game of solitaire? Payday updates? Or is it a social need that must be quenched? Facebook or texts?

Empty still,  the buzzing fades as my body acclimates to the constant now dull ring. It’s none of those things, feeling overcome with burnout in my attempt to satiate and move on I lose a little more sense of myself.  This craving is so present and yet so easily numbed. The more I search the more blurred it becomes. I think the problem might be in looking from outside in.

My body feels on defense. Tension lines my face,  I feel frowned and pulled down I don’t know what I’m thinking about.  My shoulder pinches constantly and my low back must have broke.  My feet ache in ways I’ve never known before from new exertions in running.

I used to find release in a yoga class,  twists were fluid and breath was easy to trace.  My mind connecting with my body and slowing down is pace. If leave a class feeling renewed and whole again. These days the classes don’t seem to hold their weight.  Simple flows that leave me longing for instruction that allows my body to yield in its unfolding.

I think the craving that I have comes from a stillness inside that I cannot seem to find.  Forgetting how to see inside out, feeling from my somatic self. I’ve exhausted all attempts to track down a way to get back inside.  I need a reboot,  a full day of somatic release, an instructor or guide to lead me in again to letting go of everything I’m storing and find a way back to silent peace.

I think I’ve been storing up hidden bouts of stress, with masks demanded to masks not needed to yo-yo rules of chaos, that with other invisible society stressors absent of truth and real conversations, has made me shut down becoming too limited. The world is chaos and I feel like I’ve retreated.

Taking stalk I don’t feel as light as I used to. I still laugh but I can’t remember laughing hard enough I couldn’t breathe.  I can’t remember dancing when I was free like no one was watching.  I can’t remember a deep conversation that wasn’t a recap or catch up that left me feeling grounded in a friendship.  I can’t remember lying under a tree looking up with contentment washing through me. I can’t remember going slow enough to take a picture of soothing i found beautiful. I can’t remember being urged to write from a place of reflection. I used to do it all so easily, so in tune with myself. I guess I failed to see that it was actually a practice and I forgot how to practice.

I’m craving a rich experience of being alive and aware of my senses. Being in the practice of looking at myself from the inside out, present with somatic awareness, being in tune again. I want some richness, some soul food, some depth. I want to let go of what is pent up, and feel present and free. I want to practice again.

Sometimes they come in 3s. The death march, catastrophes or really bad luck.

6 years ago, as of yesterday, I unexpectedly lost my Aunt. The minutes following the phone call were numbed by denial so deep I couldn’t feel anything. Grief was delayed temporarily like a damn holding back an enevitable flood.

11 months ago I recieved another unexpected phone call that a dear friend my age had unexpectedly passed. Shock hit me in waves as my thoughts came crashing together trying to unpack what I was hearing, looking for the loophole that would make life continue in its familiar form instead of a shape-shifter.

Today I had an unexpected text from a family letting me know that a patient of mine had suddenly,  yet not unexpectedly,  pass away yesterday. I haven’t picked up the pieces of that news just yet, perhaps this is how I’m sorting them…

I’ve had more losses than just those 3, many expected with grandparents dying when I was younger and they were much older, the proper time to die, the end of a full life, the reasonable expectation of narrative we all can accept on paper. We are born, we live, we die. I was okay with that script until death came into my life with an unexpected narrative,  that didn’t follow acceptable directions.

The unexpected loss of a 2 year old client rocked my world as a young adult fresh out of grad school. I saw him Friday. We played cars. He made me laugh with his sound effects while crashing them and melted something inside my heart looking at me with a silly mischivous twinkle in his eye.  He was special to me;  to big for his britches, an old soul some would say… his parents and I did say. His heart stopped on Saturday.  No one really knows why,  but hours of trying didn’t bring him back. I found out Monday morning when I got to work and checked voice-mails for the office. I was unprepared, nothing was numb, just an uncontrollable flood of sobbing, so much so that I wasn’t able to convey what was wrong. His parents invited me to his viewing,  I was the only non-family member there.  His mother wouldn’t let go of my hand and we bawled into each other’s hair embracing our collective pain. We loved him. Each as we knew him, differently yet our pain didn’t see the difference.

That loss shook me upsidown, sideways and backwards. It raised questions I never asked and provided no answers,  no matter how hard I pressed I couldn’t understand how the script for death was so utterly misread.

Having been raised with a biblical worldview I found that the answers from church friends fell short of reaching my hollowed out insides. “Why did he have to die?” As serious as I meant it, it couldn’t be comforted by pat answers such as “because it’s God will” or “he’s in a better place now”. I wanted to scream back “NO HE ISN’T! HE’S ONLY 2! HE NEEDS HIS PARENTS! HE CAN’T GO TO HEAVEN ALONE!”.

Being in the midst of my own hell in my personal life, his death egnited a struggle that was merely the tip of the iceberg. I railed, yelled and cursed at the God I believed in, throwing questions, hatred, confusion, pain, desperation, ultimatums, threats and petty demands at him for years. Demanding that I be treated with respect by being answered,  demanding that I be treated like god and not a mere human trapped by limited comprehension and blinded by pain.

My answers didn’t come. Everything had to fall apart so that all I had left was surrender.  To stop pushing the questions,  to stop demanding the answers,  to just be there living in my hell.

I’ve learned to have a loose acceptance on life, that it really is temporary and will constantly change,  mostly abruptly and when I’m not looking. I’ve learned that B doesn’t follow A and that C won’t likely get in line either.  I’ve learned that pain isn’t too be avoided but embraced. I’ve learned that judging or storing feelings only burries the living into a hole. I’ve learned that grief takes is own time and will not be pushed,  but rather likes to be acknowledged and shared. I’ve learned that none of us learns anything about life until we’ve lived it, tried unsuccessfully to control it and continually release it.

My dad morbidly said to me once when I was a kid “you either live long enough to see all of your friends die,  or you go first and die young”. As terrible as that sounds it feels like a truth.

The patient I lost yesterday was only 20…

My friend 42…

My Aunt 58…

None of us chose when we go out,  and I can’t help but think about what’s next. I think as humans we’re utterly uncreative at imagining an afterlife. Culturally we balk at the idea of heaven: such perfection sounds dealthy boring and hell sounds like the place to “live forever “. If all the entertaining-creative-non-rule-following people go to hell and only dull-pious-religious-nobodies go to heaven… then is there really a choice?

Individually I think we all have to grapple with our own approaching deaths. Running away from it out of fear, embracing it to find comfort…

Personally, I’ve grappled, questioned and pondered on repeat and I’ve landed somewhere peaceful. My death is enevitable. As I’m living with my thoughts,  I feel grief if I die out of order and for those I leave behind, I’m saddened that I’ll be unable to comfort them in their grief. But if I’m dead I won’t have grief missing out on participating in it…what a relief.

I believe there is an afterlife of some kind,  I believe this life has purpose and meaning and cannot just stop. I believe that not all things are coincidence and some people are meant to be in my life, and I in theirs.  I believe in God as love that’s personal and that I will see loved ones again. I’m not concerned about the science,  the rationality of proving a point,  making everyone share what I believe,  or the truth if I’m wrong.

Death is hardest on the living. I’ve heard deaths come in 3s, but I think they just come in time.  Grief takes its own time to ease and has to be shared…or it might be what kills you.

Fall was lovely this year. The trees rejoiced having full permission to take their time adorning themselves in glorious gowns of burnt red, fired gold and crisp orange. Basking in the attention of passers-by and peepers hoping for more than just a look. With such a show, Time yelled out “Encore!” holding off the snow, without interruption the trees delayed their final bow.

With such distraction of beauty and warmer weather lingering, the calendar seemed to forget, speeding up for holidays we slowly bundled up until the time change made late risers aware that darkness filled the air.

Later and later the sun is rising to warm the morning air. The struggle of winters darkness has been pulling me by the hair to wake up in the dead of night and call it morning hour. The daylight shining down as I run all over town, from that house to the next house with patient after patient, only to get back home after dusk has ditched the sky. Going out at 5’o’clock feels like I should deny, it’s late you know, the moon is already laughing high up in the sky.

Winter feels long with hours of darkness pulling me to bed, my energy wanes and I’d rather stay comfy in my sweats. March feels like a far reach to come alive again. The only joy from now until then is December 21!

Today the darkness ends his reign, the sun has set its latest yet and refuses to continue on. With tomorrow matched for time, the sun stakes its claim and forward we move on. The gift of getting through winters chill is a minute of daylight for each day to come!

Happy winter solstice everyone!