Three Words – Not Those Words!

Acceptance, Courage, Wisdom

I’m writing this on Mother’s Day.  Missing my mother more each year as I realize all she went through while alive and how I didn’t understand her while I was growing up.  And reminded that “mothers” come in different packages:  single moms, dads who have become moms, same sex partners, broken family moms, abused moms and even fur baby moms.  I’m in the latter category as mom for three female dogs.

And here’s where this story begins.  I’ve rescued three dogs these last two years.  The first two are sisters, Miley and Casey.  Casey is hearing impaired or deaf.  They’re four years old now but I rescued them at three.  They’ve always had each other as they moved from household to household.  And of course Casey looked to Miley for everything – her actions, knowing what was going on around her and even when to go outdoors.

It was love at first sight when I went to look for a dog.  I went looking for a dog eight months after I had lost Martin, my husband, to suicide.  It took that long for me to find some semblance of being able to take care of myself.  That’s when I felt I’d likely be okay to take care of a dog who needed me.  I found instead of one dog, a package deal.  Their whole lives until then, they’d been together.  How could I split them up?  It was a package deal and I brought them both home.  A year later I realized how happy they’d made me.

While viewing photos of dogs from a Rescue site, this one girl tugged at my heart.  Mabel was in urgent need of a foster home.  She was very heartworm positive and that concerned me.  But I couldn’t help the overwhelming feeling I had that I needed to take her in, at least for a little while.  And so it was Mabel came to live with us as our foster.  She too had moved from household to foster household for various reasons.

That was five months ago and today we’ve adopted Mabel.  She is now heartworm FREE.  The vet and assistant were amazed and I was thrilled.  Funny thing is after the heartworm test, Mabel began acting “happy” and had a smile on her face.  We arrived home and she was jumping around and playing with Miley and Casey.  In her heart, she knew and it was her way of telling her soon to be sisters.

Which brings me to present day.  Today at the end of a favorite movie of mine, The Notebook, I lost it   and cried uncontrollably.  Not for my mother, oh no, these were tears for my late husband.  It felt as bad as when the tragedy first occurred.   I began grappling with my feelings and asking why?  Why had Martin hurt me this way?  Why did God allow this pain to consume me still?  I realized how silly it felt and yet I couldn’t stop myself.  I had come so far in forgiving Martin.  And I had learned from therapists and support groups that you don’t ever get over a tragedy like this.  You just learn to live through it.  It has been two years now and I should be living through it so what’s up with the uncontrollable feelings I now had and the tears and wailing?

While Miley and Mabel were laying at my feet, my little baby Casey climbed into my lap.  She stared at me as tears flooded my eyes and streamed down my face.  She began to kiss me with constant loving licks.  She couldn’t hear me crying – she’s deaf.  Instead, she felt my feelings and was trying to console me.  And she wouldn’t stop for as long as I was crying.

It took a while, but I was consciously able to think through my feelings and the tears began to stop.  That and her kisses did much to ease my heartache.  It was like coming out of a small meditation and I could grip reality.  Casey had fallen asleep in my arms and I recognized that my heartbeat had finally slowed down to fairly normal speed.

Something important washed over me at this time.  A while back I acknowledged that I’ll never get over the tragic death of Martin but I’m going to live through it.  But had I … and these thoughts brought to mind The Serenity Prayer.

The Serenity Prayer

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

The ability to live through something awful means acceptance.  The acceptance that this tragedy had nothing to do with me and that nothing I could have done would have prevented him from doing what he felt he must to stop the pain.

We find acceptance through learning to seek love and happiness in different other ways.  For me, my furry girls love me and I’m so in love with each of them and for different reasons.  They’re different and seem to provide me with something special in their own ways and collectively for the things dogs are famous at – compassion, forgiveness, undying love.  Isn’t that what we all want and need?

Which brings me to the wisdom part of the Prayer.  To be able forgive ourselves when we seem to falter and to love ourselves when we don’t feel loveable is to collectively take all we’ve learned and apply it.  We only need to understand that we can make ourselves happy or happier by learning what makes us happy and applying it to our life.

For me right now, my girls are everything.  Happiness abounds whenever I’m around them.  There are other things which create happiness for me also.  And I’m learning more about those things hoping I can implement them into my little part of the world around me.

I’m learning to live one day at a time and enjoy each moment.  I’m trying to accept hardship as a path I need to take.  Winston Churchill once said, “If you think you’re going through Hell, keep on going!”  He was right.  There is light at that tunnel’s end and peace and happiness too.  Sometimes all we need do is to trust in ourselves.

Three’s Company … Also a Family

There’s a saying, “Who Rescued Who” referring to saving or adopting a pet which in my case are dogs. I wrote last April about my two white boxers in “We Are Family — My Dogs and Me!” Extra extra … now there is another dog saved. Or was I the one saved, again?

As I learn about dancing in the rain, May 4th is a reminder of the terrible tragedy that I encountered in 2010 – the horrible suicide of my husband. So tomorrow is the 2nd anniversary of that awful day. Sad, yes…angry still, can’t help but be a bit. However, this year I made a firm decision as to May 4th. Going forward, I wanted it to be not just a memory of sadness and grief. Oh no, I want to show progress and I need to find positive reasons for progressing with my life. This year on May 4th, I’m officially adopting my foster dog, Mabel.

I’ve learned quite a few lessons in two years’ time, about myself and my life, and about others around me. Your real friends will always be there for you no matter what you go through. The others … well, they were really only acquaintances anyway.  And what is family these days?  It’s very different than it once was in our parents’ era.  Broken homes, single parents, blended families – you name it.  It’s not homogeneous and uniform; it’s heterogeneous and different.  That is America today.  And I believe family is what and who you make it.  In my life, my little family is made up of three wonderful creatures who love me unconditionally.  They are always there for me, just like my real friends are.  And I couldn’t be happier with my family.  I wonder how many people feel this way.

And also I made some decisions.  I wanted to Speak Up about the tragedy to inform people about suicide, its statistics, and that there is help out there.  So many positives I felt could come about from such a dreadful situation.  And I’ve made further decisions, one important one is to make May 4^th much more of a positive.

Now I had viewed many photos of dogs that need to be rescued.  But already having two, I had no feelings to have another.  When I saw Mabel’s photo and read about her, it all tugged at my heart.  She felt to me like some kindred spirit needing me.  Once I brought her home as my foster, she immediately made friends with my other two dogs, Miley and Casey, sisters.  Her timid demeanor, soft and gentle ways and she is the sweetest girl I’ve ever known.  Which leads me to the original quote above.  Who Saved Who here?  I think we saved each other.  What a wonderful way to help remember May 4^th with new beginnings and a new life.

As I work from home now, the girls are here with me and seem to love it.  The Florida weather allows me to open the sliding doors to the living room and the girls go in and out, like little kids.  After playing outdoors for a while, they’ll trot inside for water and to check up on me.  Life is good!

So look into your hearts and see if maybe a pet needs your saving.  Or perhaps you could be helped a bit by “being saved” and becoming a family.

Four Little Words: I Don’t Have Time!

How often have you uttered the words, “I don’t have time?”  Were they ever conveyed to you?  Life can be challenging though manageable.  Inaction however harbors fear and fear breeds errors and inaccuracies.  William Shakespeare said, “Defer no time; delays have dangerous ends.”

I once worked with a manager who presented this type of problem to her team.  After shrieking “I don’t have time” an inordinate number of times to her team members, their work became fraught with errors.  They became fearful of making decisions on their own.  If they decided differently than she wanted, they dearly paid the price and no one wished to become jobless.  What she was left with was a team who lost creativity, excellence in problem-solving and their resourcefulness.  What the manager gained was a resentful team laden with distrust and trepidation of her.  A good manager is one who isn’t worried about his/her own career but rather the career of those who work for him/her.  Rather than accept what she had done, she shifted the blame to them presenting nails in the fence of life caused by abuse.

And parents who respond to pleas for their time from their children have done likewise.  Both moms and dads have become too busy and stressed out themselves with work demands, they no longer having sufficient time to know what their children are up to these days or who they’ve become.  Those parents do not realize what their children are going through with peer pressure of their own.  Bullying has become prevalent in schools, along with drugs, guns and other threats.  Life should not have to be this cruel.

If we don’t do something about our lives and relationships with our family, our friends and loved ones, then who will?  Ask yourself how you want your life to be.  Remember that we all have the same amount of hours per day as did Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, Michelangelo, Albert Einstein, or Helen Keller.  They didn’t seem to think about time.  They took action when needed.  Which brings me to the following.

We have all heard or read about the epidemic of suicides in the United States.  Nearly 40,000 Americans commit suicide annually.  Almost 1,000,000 “attempt” suicide in American annually that we know of.  That figure could be higher.  And according to suicide statistics, suicide is the 10^th leading cause of death nationally.  The latest data available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that 36,909 suicide deaths were reported in the U.S. in 2009.  That figure is rising annually and is the highest rate of suicide in 15 years.

Suicide is a desperate attempt to escape suffering that has become unbearable.  Blinded by feelings of self-loathing, hopelessness and isolation, a suicidal person can’t see any way of finding relief except through death.  But despite their desire for the pain to stop, most suicidal people are deeply conflicted about ending their own lives.  They wish there was an alternative, but they just cannot see one.

Don’t let yourself, your family, children, friends, or loved ones become a statistic.  Make time for yourself and your family and friends.  Be there for them.  There will be difficult decisions to make from time to time.  We can choose what path is best for us and have loving relationships.

 

I speak from some experience on the subject.  It’s difficult to leave a job, or speak up about the abuse whether at our employment or in our household or in school.  Yet we need to be strong and take action.  We need to confide in someone who cares enough to listen try to help.

My husband suffered from major depression, yet he hid it from everyone until the end.  I cannot tell you how many “what ifs” and could have or should haves I have suggested since that fateful day.  I’ve found what’s important is not the past, however, but how we react to it and create a better future.  Or even more important, what “action” we take to prevent further unnecessary acts going forward.

I chose to write and share my thoughts, experiences and the information learned with everyone I can reach.  I still have moments of pain and tears, though I’ve learned how to live through it.  But you don’t have to – not if you take action now.  What I hope for you is to see the world around you again as the beautiful, happy place it can be.  Life is NOT all pain and suffering.  That’s optional.  We can learn to fill our life with love and joy again by choosing what is most important to us and making improvements.  Much like a house, our life can become cracked from stress and abuse and needs rebuilding.

No matter what has happened in your past, remember it is the present and the future that matter most.  Everyone can start over.  It’s just a matter of deciding to do so.  Nothing stands in the way of you and your future happiness.

 

 

 

Do You Believe In Yourself?

 

Recently, I saw on TV that Oprah Winfrey did Tony Robbins’ Firewalk.  It reminded me that 12+ years ago, so did I.  A lot has happened since that day – and suddenly I began thinking this was partly the reason for people telling me how strong I am under serious conditions.

Firewalking is the act of walking barefoot over a bed of hot embers or stones.  To walk over fire – what a thought!  My friend Polly B. invited me and another friend, Cathy W., to the Tony Robbins UPW (Unleash the Power Within) event where the Firewalk is offered.   Firewalk:  very scary thing to do one thinks in the comfort of your living room, safe at home.  But I was intrigued and vastly curious.  So I attended, thinking I’d watch others do their Firewalk.  I considered the experience in those terms and I was fine with that.

When it came to the point in the seminar where Tony walked us over and showed us how they prepare by setting the fire and waiting until it burns down to red-hot embers, it only served to re-emphasize the scariness.  Could people really train their minds to do it?

What is the point of doing a Firewalk anyway?  The idea is that rather than just get a ton of theory in any book or DVD, you have to experience the challenge of facing something you believe you cannot do – something IMPOSSIBLE for you to do, and then face up to it and just go ahead and DO it.  It teaches you to face your greatest fears, and all the other challenges in your life become easy by comparison!

Suddenly I felt like the only one insistent upon not doing the Firewalk.   Now it was time and we ALL walked over to the site of those now red-hot embers and began to walk.  We’d been told how to prepare, what to do and what to think.  We had rehearsed mentally over and over again until it was memorized.

 

 

My friend Cathy walked first and completed the Firewalk with passion!  When it was my turn the “coach” asked me if I wanted to do this.  I said, “I’m not sure,” and began to tear up.  I was petrified and yet felt something inside urging me to go ahead!  The program coach reminded me what we had memorized.  Told me that I could do this and it convinced me that I at least had to try.  And I did.  And the additional joy came as my friend, Polly B., was the one catching me at the end!

The take-away from this Firewalk provides life transforming tools to help push you through obstacles, achieve your goals, take consistent action on your ideas, and ultimately redefine and improve the quality of your entire life.

A heart-breaking tragedy in my life recently from the suicide of my husband made me aware that my life will never be the same again.  The Firewalk also made me realize that I would never, ever be the same again!  I just forgot about it for all these years.  Oprah’s Firewalk reminded me that “I can live through this” and live my life with love and happiness, and achieve goals I also had forgotten.  Or maybe, realign my goals to match my present day needs.  I have the power within and I know how to use it to live my life with more passion, happiness and fulfillment than ever before!   And I won’t settle for anything less.

 

How I’m Learning to Dance Through The Rain

I am reminded today of Garth Brooks’ song: 

The Dance

Looking back on the memory of

The dance we shared beneath the stars above

For a moment all the world was right

How could I have known you’d ever say goodbye

And now I’m glad I didn’t know

The way it all would end the way it all would go

Our lives are better left to chance I could have missed the pain

But I’d of had to miss the dance

Holding you I held everything

For a moment wasn’t I the king

But if I’d only known how the king would fall

Hey who’s to say you know I might have changed it all

And now I’m glad I didn’t know

The way it all would end the way it all would go

Our lives are better left to chance I could have missed the pain

But I’d of had to miss the dance

Yes my life is better left to chance

I could have missed the pain but I’d of had to miss the dance

How true those words are.  Living through loss is difficult.  Living with and healing from a tragic loss is beyond the scope of natural understanding.  We don’t get to select which memories we will have.  And I admit that had I known my darling husband, Martin, would leave this world through suicide, I would have tried to change things and who knows what would have transpired.

However, as the song suggests, I’m glad I didn’t know the way it all would end.  We don’t want to experience the horrific pain that often comes after incredible joy.  But would we stop or try to prevent that extraordinary love and joy?  I wouldn’t, not for anything.

In this world, we are born to die.  An amazing beginning of birth, and a heartbreaking pain through death for those our loved ones leave behind.  Some day I hope to understand these things, but for now I accept that they occur.  And acceptance is the very factor which will see us through the anguish, pain and suffering.  Winston Churchill said, “If you think you’re going through Hell, keep on going.”  And I agree … not pleasant, but necessary.

What have I learned through this agonizing experience so far?  What must I still do to complete the healing?  Here are some facts and thoughts I’ve been through and offer all of you.

When a loved one dies, your grief may be heart-wrenching.  When a loved one commits suicide, your reaction is more complicated with overwhelming emotions.  You may be consumed by guilt, wondering if you could have done something to prevent their death.  As you face life after a loved one’s suicide, remember you don’t have to go through it alone!

  Shock, anger, guilt, despair all play a part in your healing.  You may continue to experience intense reactions months or years after your loved one’s suicide – including nightmares, flashbacks, difficulty concentrating, social withdrawal, loss of interest in your usual activities – especially if you either witnessed or discovered the suicide, as I did.

I’ve learned to do what’s right for me, not my friends or family.  I’m living through this and I’m the one who needs patience, kindness and understanding.   We need to be gentle with ourselves and grieve in our own way and in our own time.  Don’t be hurried by anyone else’s expectations that it has been “long enough.”  Losing someone to suicide is a tremendous blow and healing must occur at its own pace!

And be prepared for painful reminders such as an anniversary, or a birthday – his is tomorrow, August 17 which is what prompted this writing.  Some days will be better than others, even years after the suicide – and that’s okay.   Healing doesn’t often happen in a straight line I’ve learned.  One step forward, two steps back sometimes.  And that’s okay!  And if you experience intense, unrelenting anguish or physical problems, don’t hesitate to ask your doctor or mental health provider for help.  Depression is all too real.  As of 2007, there were
35,000 completed suicides in the U.S.   Every 16 minutes someone dies by suicide and it remains the 11^th leading cause of death in this country.   It is estimated that close to one million people made a suicide attempt each year.  And research has shown that 90% of people who die by suicide have a diagnosable psychiatric disorder at the time of their death, most often unrecognized or untreated depression.

Most important, I’ve learned I need to face the future with a sense of peace.  In the aftermath of a suicide, you feel like you can’t go on or that you’ll never enjoy life again.  In truth, you may always wonder why it happened – there is never closure or questions answered.  We must learn acceptance for the unknown present.  And eventually the raw intensity of your grief will begin to fade.  The tragedy won’t dominate your days and nights.  You can reach inner peace and healing without forgetting your loved one.

And I remember … all those loving memories and still would never want to have missed the
dance!  I am glad I left life to chance!