Fit and Fab at 50!

I read an article recently about how much money Jennifer Aniston spends on the "upkeep" of her looks. . . .it was a shocking amount of money that she spends, an amount each month that many people don't even make in a year! There's no denying that she looks great. . . .but it comes with a hefty price.

As for the rest of us, we have to make the best out of what we've been given. . . .

I posted earlier on my Facebook wall my goal for when I turn 50, which is in just over a year. 50 situps. . . .50 push ups. . . and 50 miles of hiking. I am fortunate, of course, that I live in a national park with the grand canyon as my back yard, but I guess fortune has nothing to do with that choice.

It all comes down to choice.

I don't feel 50, although I'm not sure what 50 is supposed to feel like, and when I look at the graphic for this blog I know what sillouettes I do NOT want to be. I also know that the two and a half years of living here  has improved my health markers significantly. I've dropped 35 pounds, significantly lowered my cholesterol and triglycerides, increased my bone density, eliminated gallstones, and developed a confidence in my body's ability to solo hike in ways that I never thought would be possible for me.

But changing the numbers is not enough.

I think it's a baby boomer thing, but I love my lifestyle here at the canyon. I have a job that allows me to do what I want (and get paid while I do it). I have one of the world's greatest playgrounds for my backyard where I can hike (and backpack) to my heart's content. I awaken to deer and elk munching on grass outside of my window. I walk everywhere, with no daily need for a car. On most days I can't imagine ever living anywhere else, so I'm going to take advantage of the life I have for however long I am going to remain living here.

I've never really been a physically active person, but I am finding a great enjoyment of a physical lifestyle. I'm almost afraid to leave the canyon, actually, because the physical activity is such a naturally integrated part of my life here. To move back out into "the real world" means that I have to pay for gym memberships and schedule time to do these things. . . .but right now I am really enjoying how physical activity is just a natural part of my daily routine.

And it kind of shocks me to see so many people here sitting in their dorm rooms playing video games or getting drunk rather than getting out into the beauty of the canyon, espeically the younger kids who feel displaced from the delights of city life. Perhaps they will feel differently when they, too, are on the verge of turning 50 and all too aware of being on the long, slow, downward decline.

As for me, I refuse to just age gracefully. . . .lol. . . .so I'm going to run and walk and hike and backpack my way to making the best out of what I've been given :) I may not have Jennifer Aniston's money (or the look it buys), but I do have this canyon, so I'm going to take advantage of every opportunity it offers this baby boomer on the verge of extinction. . . .lol.

Parallel Worlds

I've been working my way through online FEMA disaster preparedness training (as part of the requirements for my job), and it struck me tonight how this training could actually be applied to "life management" in general. There is some wonderful information in these trainings, but specifically of interest to me tonight is the Post Incident process of reviewing everything that happened during the disaster response to determine what worked well, what didn't, and what could be done proactively to better prepare for the next disaster.

This is the key to personal growth, of course. . . .that ongoing process of identifying and uprooting the parts of our life that aren't working for us, and finding ways to change or improve them in some way.

What makes this "post incident" review process work, however, is to "establish a nonthreatening environment for the discussion" where the purpose is "to improve future operations, not to assign blame." The same is true for the process of healing or personal growth. It is essential to look at the conditions that helped to form or create a dynamic, but to understand rather than to look for a cause to blame.

We can not outgrow that which we do not understand. Awareness is the key. Understanding is essential.

I am really enjoying this FEMA training, as my way is to draw parallels with my life from whatever source I find clarity and inspiration, and I am finding great clarity and inspiration in this metaphor of disaster management (for obvious reasons). My life is what it is, but I no longer try to hide my personal baggage, because I find much more value in seeking to create a more functional response to all of that nasty stuff I carry around inside (rather than to avoid it or deny its existence entirely).

It is my belief that I live in a Prozac world, a world obsessed with feeling happy and wonderful all of the time. But I also live in a world where disaster happens, and the course of human lives are sometimes forever altered and diverted. So I am going to sift through however many crap-tons of debris I need so that I can learn what I can (when I can) from the disasters that have blown their way through my personal world.

I think what most people don't get, is that there is great beauty to be found on the other side of the disaster, a deeper appreciation for life in spite of its fragility, a beauty that is forever untouched even by the worst of human trauma. Other people may watch me sorting and purging through the endless piles of debris and wonder why I don't just move on, but what they don't understand is that the debris isn't trash. . . .it's all of the broken pieces of life that once was me. . . .so there is still great treasure to be found. . . .and when I find another piece of my spirit amidst all of the ruin and rubble, it is a gift of the heart that no words could ever describe. So, no. . . .I'm not going to walk away from the debris. . . .because this debris is still me.

The archeological dig of one's spirit is not for everyone. It's a painstaking process with hours and hours of slow and deliberate work with tiny brushes delicately removing the sedementary dust that entombs the treasured prize. But for me, it is everything. . . .and the recovery of my spirit is so very much worth the work. . . .

Splintered Truth

One of the best parts of my graduate school experience was my exposure to postmodern modalities, because it allowed me to sit with couples and families without needing to search for a single objective truth that everyone could agree upon. Every person experiences the same set of circumstances in their own unique way, and I am OK with that, because that's how God made the world. . . .and just like how God splinted language in the story of the Tower of Babel, truth and reality were splintered, as well.

Objective truth does not exist, as it is created through the subjective lens of human interpretation.

I've been processing some layers of my personal experience this past week, and I received a personal message from one of my mom's sisters in response to one of my posts because her perspective of events was very different from my own. . . .which is precisely the point of what I've been blogging about. Because even within my own self there are multiple perspectives on how I could have interpretted a given experience, so why is it that I choose one over another?

I have read statements in family development books about how each child is raised by a different parent, and I completely agree. The oldest child definitely has one set of parents, and by the time the youngest child rolls around, the parents have developed into completely different people and parents. Another way of saying this is, no two children are raised exactly alike.

I once had a conversation with my brother, this was about 10 years ago. We were processing various pieces of how we grew up, and I said something to the effect of how we didn't have a childhood until the year that we lived with an aunt and uncle. His response to my statement was, "No, YOU didn't have a childhood, but we did. . . . you gave us a childhood." His response stopped me dead in my tracks because he was right, although I had never thought of things that way. . . .but while I was inside taking care of my mom and the household duties, my brothers were able to go outside and play or do whatever it is that little boys do when they're growing up. And the point of this is simply that even given the fact that siblings grow up in a relatively similar family environment, their experience of that environment is still completely different. There is no objective truth to be found in the way that we grew up, even with my siblings.

So experience is what it is, in and of itself, with the truth of that experience changing with each observer and participant.

There have been many studies done on this precise fact of human perception. Police officers know this fact very well, because if you have ten witnesses, they will have ten different versions of what happened. Some pieces may overlap, but essentially people perceive events in their own unique ways.

For me, I have spent my life perceiving events through the lens of feeling inherently unwanted and unloveable. And each time I do, I reinforce this skewed way of interpretting the world, but my lack of awareness of this fact is what causes the problem. Becoming aware that I do it is what will give me the foothold into making changes to the negative way I interpret events and experiences. Another factor to changing this belief is taking into account how other people perceive and interpret the events and experiences, as well.

And that is what makes sharing personal truth so important, because if I had held all of this process inside, I would still be working with the same skewed perspective. Listening to how my aunt perceives and understands the course of events and experiences adds new layers of possible ways to interpret and create meaning, because the fact is that my mom's truth died with her all those years ago. So all I have left are these fragmented artifacts of experience that I hold, and the multiple perspectives of how the rest of us are interpretting them.

Roots

Roots are what they are. They feed. They nourish. They grow where they can and how they can. But if you remove the roots, the plant dies. It's the same with human beings. My roots feed me, and nourish me. And if I try to remove my roots, I cease to be who I am. My spirit dies.

I am a psychological archeologist for a reason. I understand the nature of roots, and I dig them up so that I can understand, not to look for causative sources of blame.

On an ordinary and inauspicious day I look upon the weekly schedule at work to find that I am scheduled for a solo shift. . . the only one who's scheduled for a solo shift. . . .and I am curious about the internal reaction that immediately makes me feel bad. Upon deeper self investigation I find that my initial reaction is fueled by the insibile thought that my boss has scheduled me for a solo shift because my coworkers don't like me and don't want to work with me. There are a million possible reasons to explain the solo shift, but my initial reaction is to think that I my coworkers don't like me and don't want to work with me.

Yes, indeed. . . I find myself curious about this. . . .

One of the tools I continue to use from the PTSD treatment group is a framework of deconstruction that challenges unproductive beliefs called "stuck points." So I had already begun the deconstruction process of this obviously unproductive belief, but what struck me most was the absolute absurdity of the belief, because it's not the case at all. And yet, regardless of the absurdity of it, that remained my invisible reaction to seeing my name scheduled for a solo shift.

And that's when I started asking different questions.

I've been processing my process long enough to recognize familiar themes, and the theme of feeling unwanted and unloveable is the core theme that runs through the course and flow of my entire life, which is why I needed to trace the roots as far back as needed to find out why my reaction to pretty much everything is that I'm not liked or wanted. . . .and the source of this pervasive belief is rooted in the environment into which I was born. And this "truth" doesn't relinquish me from responsibility of my reactions. . . .but it does explain why I have come to believe on an almost genetic level why I so invisibly feel inherently unwanted and unloveable.

I was thinking about timing this morning. To track back from when I was born, that would mean that my mom had got pregnant around September of 1962. . . .just two months after she had turned 21. . . .which explains why she was at the bar in Robin's Pond singing with my apparent father to be. She had just turned "legal" for drinking, so she was out enjoying her new found freedom. . . .and ended up pregnant. . . . with me. My (married) father who wanted nothing to do with the situation fled the scene down to Texas. My mom's family was shamed beyond shame by her behavior, and she was considered a "slut" by friends and family alike, so there was no support for her in New England.

There were a lot of choices that my mom could have made, but she chose to chase down my dad, so she followed him down to Texas, which is where I ended up being born.

My mom's mother couldn't even call me by my name at first, as she refers to me in her first response to my mom after my birth (nearly two months later) as "the baby." I'm glad to hear that you and the baby are doing well. Even my God parents are a sign of my mom's isolation, as they were a hispanic couple that had befriended them in Texas, not a friend or relative from the life she had fled when she chased after my father.

My birth was a crisis in my mom's world, a shameful and unwanted event, not something to be celebrated or embraced. And these are the facts of the world I was born into. . . .facts that formed the roots of my exsitence and shaped the way that I would come to think and believe about myself. I am not inherently unwanted and unloveable, but a child doesn't have the ability to separate themselves from the invisiblel truth that surrounds their early development.

My mom may have had her limitations as a person (and as a mother), but she was a kick-ass warrior, and she wasn't going to let anyone else define her path for her. And these facts about my roots make me feel proud of who I am, and proud of my mother who fought for my life at great pesonal expense, because she wanted and loved me even when everything else in her world didn't.

Of Ropes and Rivers

Today is Archeology Day at the canyon, so I meandered on down to the Shrine of the Ages to check out what great projects they had for the kids, but it seems that the rest of the world doesn't operate in "grave yard shift" mode. . . .lol. . . .so the event was pretty well wrapped up when I showed up at 4.

But as I was walking along the rim on my way to the shrine, it struck me how I live my life very much as a psychological archeologist or sorts, always mulling around and digging through the terrain of my life in search of fossils and artifacts buried within a family history that helps me to understand the person I am today.

One of the things I love about the Grand Canyon is how she is not afraid of her history, how she openly displays the layers of her depth without fear or shame. Her edges are rough and jagged, but there is no judgment. In fact, the magestic beauty of this canyon is created precisely because of the erosion of facades that would have forever hidden the geologic treasures beneath the surface, treasures uncovered by the most tenacious and patient of archeological pursuits.

I am here at the canyon for a reason. . . .

A few days ago, one of my Facebook friends had a birthday, and she posted this wonderful post about how her mom calls her every year on her birthday to retell the wonderful story of her birth. Such a sweet story of how the love and adoration of a mother for her daughter continues through the years, with layers of meaning being added with each telling and retelling. Such a lovely gift each year, to be reminded of how loved and cherished you are, even from the moment of your birth.

I believe that all children should be raised in environments where they feel loved and cherished, regardless of the circumstances of their parentage and birth.

I have continued to think about my own birth story, not such a warm and fuzzy story as my dear friend's birth story, perhaps, but it's the story that belongs to me whether I want that story or not, so this is the story through which I must dig to find my personal truth. But that's what's so lovely about living my life as a psychological archeologist, because I love the process of digging for the treasure buried within my spirit. And what I realize today is that our birth stories are actually a very complex interweaving of stories that hold and contain us until we are willing and able to start writing our own story. So I was born into my mother's story, as well as my father's. But I was also born into the story of each significant person at that specific conjunction of time and geography, stories that continue to shape and inform my birth story, I suppose, but these interwoven stories are actually not my story at all. . . .these stories belong to the people around me.

My story is still in the process of being writtten.

My friend Christine reminded me today how baby elephants are trained with thick and heavy chains around their legs when they are young. For the baby elephant, these chains are strong enough to restrain and contain them, and once they have accepted this reality, their keepers no longer need to use the chains. So the full grown elephant full of an unrestrainable strength is thusly restrained by nothing more than a simple rope. The full-grown elephant never question the truth of what is wrapped around their leg, because of the reality they lived with in their developing reality. Such a wonderful metaphor of how the stories we are born into have the power to become nothing more than tiny ropes around our spirits that if we test them at all would snap in an instant.

My spirit is the river that carves its glorious path through the canyon, a layered landscape formed and created out of the sediments of a history that may contain the river, but does not define the path the river's spirit cuts through it. And it is this dance between the river and the canyon that calls to me, for some days it is the canyon which shapes the course of the river, as some rocks lie defiant, like hard dying beliefs embedded within the hardened sediment of stories that came long before the river, appearing from day to day to never erode away.  But the river, just like the canyon, she is patient and tenacious. . . .and the more contained she is, the stronger and more powerful she becomes. . . .and so the rock eventually yields and gives way to the undeniable strength of the never ending flow of the river spirit's path slowly carving its way home. . .

The Immortals

I watched The Immortals up at the Rec Center tonight, and while the movie itself was only marginally entertaining, there are some pieces of the story that I have continued to process. . . .in specific, the part about Theseus being considered an "undesireable" and forced to live by a different set of rules, because he was born to an unwed mother who had been raped.

What is it about human beings that makes them feel like it's alright to treat other human beings like second class citizens based on the circumstances of their parentage and birth?

I understand Theseus, for I, too, was born to an unwed mother. And I have always felt like a blacksheep of the family, like a second class citizen within family systems bound by rules for membership that I have never met. And while I didn't come to feel that way all on my own, tonight is the first time that I have been able to separate myself from the burden of this truth, because the fact is that I was born into an environment that didn't want me, even before I was born.

And, yes, I was treated differently because of the illegitimate status of my birth.

This is not me feeling sad and sorry for myself. . . .these are the facts of the social environment into which I was born and the way that I was treated by a family system that just couldn't find it within their personal constitutions to accept the circumstances that brought my "shameful" existence into their pious and righteous world. And I suppose I should probably feel grateful that I wasn't raised as my grandmother's daughter so that she could continue to weave the deception of having daughters who would never have children out of wedlock.

It's just so insidious. . . .how these invisible beliefs formed long before I even had the capacity to question them still have the power to raise their nasty heads as masked intruders cleverly veiled by smoke and mirrors! But a person can not move on from an outworn belief until they are able to accept and integrate this "truth" into their experience.

So, I may have been born into an environment bound by rules that deemed my existence as "undesireable" and treated as if I were unloveable and unwanted, but this "truth" does not make it so. And my mother's family may have been limited by their personal or religious beliefs to accept my birth on equal terms with cousins who were born within a more "appropriate" and "acceptable" marital context, but that was their limitation, and not some inherent truth about my status as a human being and member of a family system into which I did not choose to be born.

In this moment I feel great respect for my mother, because it took a great deal of courage and personal fortitude for her to choose to have me, as unwanted as I was given the limitations of her family, and as unsupported and alone as I'm sure she felt.

As for me, it may take a while to uproot these weeds of poisonous belief that suffocate the garden of my spirit, but I will uproot them. . . .uproot them I most certainly will.

Living in the Blessings

I found some words yesterday, words about blessings and what a blessing actually means. . . . at least one person's perspective of what it means to bless and be blessed. For some thing to be blessed means that all of the negativity attached to the person, place, or thing has been removed. I love this way of thinking about being blessed.

So I did two things yesterday. . . .

First, I made a very heart-felt request out through the universe to be blessed, both within and without. . . .to help create a barrier of protection around me so that I am not so affected by the negativity that surrounds me, but also to help remove the negativity that is within me.

The second thing I did was take action to remove some very powerful sources of internal negativity, which is an interesting act in and of itself because what I have started to realize is that negativity arises within me when there is some kind of an internal conflict. . . .such as when what my deeper self needs is in conflict with what my human self thinks I need to solve a problem. So I was able to identify two sources of this internal conflict and detach from them. This was my part of the blessing. . . .to do what I can to remove or transform the sources of negativity in my life. And the amazing truth about negativity arising from this internal conflict is that the thing itself is not a negative thing in and of itself. . . .so it's not always easy to see what the actual source of negativity is. . . and this is the great truth that is working its transformation through my world.

And so I awaken into this day with an unexpected fresh perspective on another source of great internal conflict that has been generating a huge amount of negativity for more than two years. But today I am able to envision a renewed sense of possibility, something I think I can actually live with. . . .because the negativity that surrounds this life issue is being removed, even if it's layer by layer. . . .electron by electron. . . .lol. That really is what's happening today. . . .these new plans are possible only because the negativity is being removed. . . .the blessing I prayed for yesterday is working. . . .and what a glorious gift this is for me.

It seems so simple how it's not always about removing the obstacles in our lives, but sometimes it's just about removing the negative associations attached to those obstacles, and miraculously, they're no longer obstacles.

Why is the simplest truth the most difficult to see?