Living As All of Me

[Papa Coco]

Hannah1,

Nicely written. I can feel your struggle and your contentment combined. You succeeded to create a handful of children who can handle this world. Not everyone can say that. On the other side of the coin, you became a loving, caring, compassionate person because of every single thing you've ever been through. And you're pretty amazing, so...there's that.

But as the children wander off these next few years, I hope your day in the sun comes, and your passport becomes so full of travels that you can barely squeeze all the stamps into it.

Sometimes I like to listen to the song by Tom Petty; You Belong Among The Wildflowers. It fits people like us. The song says, "You belong somewhere you feel free." You'll get there. And you have a lot to be proud of around where you've been up to now, and where you are right now.

I believe in you!

[HannahOne]

PapaCoco, thank you for reading and commenting. I am thrilled, because that is one of my favorite songs! I fell in love with it in high school and chose my stereo based on how that song sounded on the speakers. Then it spoke to me of what I one day hoped would be true. Now it just rings true. Thank you for getting it. There is both struggle and contentment. Content with the majority of the Herculean task reasonably well done, struggle to let it go, struggle that yes, it doesn't ever end, contentment with that reality.

[HannahOne]

I parented in such an intense way. Because I had to, for myself, I wanted it to be me and to give All of Me to the task. Because my partner could not. And because one of my kids had a lot of extra needs. In the last five years, I gave up everything to care for that child, 24-7 for months, and then on end for years through crises. I had to do a yearslong legal battle to get what was needed for schools. And my partner had a crisis during the pandemic as well. The pandemic itself was a crisis for our family with deaths and unemployment. The last five years were *.

I don't regret what I did, but I do regret some of the losses. Like lost time with friends, not going to see them the last five years. That all the stress ended me in bed so depressed and chronically exhausted, the toll that being so flattened took on my health, not exercising, not eating well, not seeing doctors. I have a lot of cleanup work to do on my health. I have two specialists left to see and hoping I can repair some of the damage. Thank goodness I got my screenings when I did.

Progress report from February 20 goals:

Hire the PT to do personal training once PT runs out. DONE. I joined the gym, it's only 50$ per month! When I finish PT he will work with me till surgery, and then help post surgery. I'm so thrilled with my progress. Exercise is changing how I feel in my body. How I walk. How I move. How I sleep. How I eat. I do PT twice a week and twice a week I go and workout on my own. It's a kind of community, too.

Go to new art studio and see what happens. Studio located, haven't attended yet.

Continue "Swedish death cleaning" to take charge of my space and so that we can relocate once kid graduates. IN PROGRESS

Find a mentor to continue painting training. I reached out to someone online. Unsure if I actually want to keep painting. It was a social activity, not sure I like doing it by myself.

Find a context in person to be with other people at least weekly. DONE. I will be reading poetry at an open mic coming up, and joined a hiking group to try. I was curious that I'm no longer interested in spirituality. I used to attend every yoga, meditation, or New Age class I could. For now, I seem to be done with that quest. I like this change for me. I feel more rooted, more free, more grounded and focused. I'm no longer seeking, in that sense, and that feels good after a fifty year quest. What interested me was nature, books, animals, and art. I also applied to go to a camp this summer for breast cancer folks.

Find a volunteer opportunity in person. DONE I am volunteering at an animal rescue farm. This is a new farm, not the one where Frank was found. I'm really excited about it. they want to also start programs for special needs kids to come to the farm and that's right up my alley. We'll see what comes of it.

Figure out what to do with my small business and find a new career goal if I want to close it. Partly done: Redid the budget and I've decided to stop taking new clients for now. I have to focus on my health for the next foreseeable months. The work was making my stomach hurt, I'm just not happy in it. Being so detail oriented was requiring me to hyper focus for hours on end for days. I no longer want to operate on that kind of adrenaline and cortisol.

I am working my way through the medical appointments. The pathologist review does not agree on my exact situation, apparently there's a fine line, but surgery will resolve it either way. And further scans and tests show two new problems, both of which rule out the medication route for treatment, which confirms surgery is the plan. Clarity is helpful. The new problems can improve with exercise, perfect. And diet, which is a new goal. I eat very well but I would like to spend a little more energy making meals and have more regular meals. I tend to eat randomly throughout the day and I need more of a schedule. I don't like to eat at a table, I do it with the kids but it's hard. I would like to overcome this trauma trigger and am thinking about creative ways to make eating at a table, and eating regularly, more pleasant.

Additional new goal: travel to see all my far-flung friends this year. I am going to see one special friend in June depending on surgery schedule, and I have at least one and maybe two other friends I need to make travel plans to see. Before 2020 I traveled to them yearly. It's been five years, and I deeply regret that gap. I couldn't leave my kid at the time. But I need to go see them now.

Final new goal for now: Consider the possibility that self-hatred is no longer needed. "To love someone else is easy, but to love what you are, the thing that is yourself, is just as if you were embracing a glowing red-hot iron; it burns into you and that is very painful. Therefore, to love somebody else in the first place is always an escape which we all hope for, and we all enjoy it while we are capable of it. But in the long run, it comes back on us. You cannot stay away from yourself forever, you have to return, have to come to that experiment to know whether you really can love. That is the question---whether you can love yourself, and that will be the test." Carl Jung. The idea that loving others can be a kind of escape rings true. And yet, I cannot stay away from myself. I am returning. I have to experiment to know if I can really love---which means loving myself. What does that look like, through illness, through recovery. What does it look like not to despise my life, my experience? What does it look like not to experience my life as a punishment? I would like to find out.