Amazing year

We're coming up on a year since Mim passed - went into the hospital on June 27, slipped from us on July 3.  As Peter said the other day, "It doesn't seem possible."

Last year, I used many weeks to post memories of my sister, recollections of her impact on me, on others.  For the next week or so, perhaps longer, I will be sharing some of the surprising insights I've had over the past year about my sister, especially the struggles she faced, struggles that so often seemed to overwhelm her.

It is almost freaky to be taking a workshop this coming weekend based on Brene Brown's Daring Greatly, a book about vulnerability & transformation.  The fact that it happens to be offered at this time, will be held two days before Mim was admitted into her last hospital for her last stay, is so in line with what's happened over so much of my life - the just-right thing showing up, apparently unbidden, at the just-right moment in the just-right way.  It feels like that seriously amped up over the past year.    

I still remember hearing Princess Diana expressing one of her deepest regrets over the failure of her marriage - that they could have been such great partners.  Except she was married to someone who wasn't able to understand what she meant by that term, certainly wasn't able to do it.  It wasn't a failure on his part;  it was a non-starter because it simply wasn't in him.   There is no slamming a person for not doing something that they cannot, if they tried & tried & tried, see.  Charles & Diana showed the world what happens when two people attempt relationship with the assumption that the other understands what they seek in that connection yet where neither has the slightest clue about what makes the other tick, that the core assumptions each apparently holds is diametrically opposite from the other.

What a blessing that I'd come to that understanding, made peace with it, long before Mim was admitted into the Toms River Medical Center.  We could have been such great partners, except we never could have.  What my sister expected from life & what I do were opposed in ways I'll never fathom.  

Before I start writing about sensitive subjects, am taking this opportunity to offer up thanks for the reality that from the time I was ten or eleven, Mim left no doubt in my mind that she didn't like me, didn't like me on the most profound level.  I believed her.  That was liberating.  I didn't think, as so many people have said to me over the years, "Oh, she really did love you."  No, she really didn't.  I really scared the shit out of her.  You cannot love what scares you.

Luckily for me, I loved Mim.  Loved her on the most profound level.  For years & years & years, that precluded loving myself (several postings in that!).  But even when I didn't love myself, deep down there was a sense of worthiness, aging like some awesome wine waiting to be uncorked.

We could have been such great partners - except we never could be.

Realizing that could have left me in an endless loop of regret, frustration & unacknowledged anger.  Weird, that for the brief time I experienced it, that loop felt comforting, like I was DOING something, the energies were so present, so palpable.  Praise be for realizing they go nowhere, do nothing except feed a bottomless sense of grief for what might have been.  Luckily for me, the energies were so clear, so negative, it was obvious the best step to take was away from them.  To NOT repeat Mim's mistakes.   

Brene says the two things we need to live a wholehearted life is to engage with the world & feel a sense of worthiness.

Here's why I think this past year has been even more awesome than the jaw-dropping wonderful ones that came before - - I get to do that, engage with the world from a place of worthiness, from myself & also for my sister.  It was heartbreaking that Mim clearly couldn't, for reasons I cannot fathom, do that basic thing from that basic place.  It would be a tragic farce if I didn't, since I can.    

The other day, perhaps the most amazing thing of this amazing year happened.  John & I were out walking the Pennypack Trail, where we're headed in about an hour.  John walks with me for a short time, then I tell him, "Fly, Budgie," and off he goes, to walk at his own brisk clip.  For most of the walk, I am solo.  Last week, on the second half, heading through the cool woods back to the car, was sweetly startled to have the sensation of Mim walking next to me.  Not talking to me, not looking at me, not even feeling differently about me - just walking at the same steady pace.  

It's been an amazing year, crammed with reading, getting new perspectives & fresh insights.  It's seen builds on things started in recent years, new challenges embraced, core goals reached.  It's been filled with wonders & excitement & great promise.  But the most amazing thing of all, the thing that will stay with me through all that rolls out before me, is knowing that my sister is always at my side - not talking, not looking at me, not partnering, just there.  

 

Two things I told John when we fell in love

Sometime after our first dates I with John two great truths about myself, two things he needed to know if the relationship continued unfolding the way it seemed to be.

The first was that he was NOT convenient.  My life was very nice without him, thank you, and I did not feel that being single made me less a person.  Quite the contrary.  I'd finally gotten my life into a semblance of balance & REALLY did not want it whacked out by really & truly falling in love.  

Playing in love - that was fine.  It was manageable & relatively pain-free.  But REAL love?  Yikes!  I was inexperienced in real loving, but knew that it was disaster to any easy sense of centered being.  

The second great truth was that being really & truly in real & true love would make me vulnerable.  And I had a huge fear of vulnerability because it was my natural way & had been the cause of what felt like breathtaking betrayals.  

Being in love with John left me not only wide open to being vulnerable, something in me KNEW that being vulnerable was part of the deal. But from the start, there was never any choice - love was always there.

Since those earliest days, awareness of vulnerability has been front & center in our relationship.  Ah, but HOW we view it has changed immensely, thanks to teaching  high school biology to at-risk students.  That's when I discovered that the quality of vulnerability is ESSENTIAL to our health, because it is the quality that allows things into & out of our cells.  The light dawned!  Vulnerability is a good thing, that our health depends on letting things in & letting them go out.  Eureka!

With that awareness, my life changed.  Turned out that vulnerability, which I'd always experienced as a negative to protect against, is an essential, to be appreciated.

That was where I more or less left my feelings about vulnerability - it was good, it was essential for my emotional health & the emotional health of my relationship with John & for our marriage.  But my  understanding of WHAT vulnerability actually is was still limited to the image of the cell relying on its ability to let things in & let things out.  Until late last fall, when I discovered Brene Brown.

 

Brene was introduced to me via a TED talk, one of many I played without knowledge of the subject.  As she started her presentation, "life changer" didn't occur to me.  But boy, did it!

Okay, I'd gotten past my forever sense that vulnerability was something to be avoided at all costs.  But here was a well-spoken, well-informed woman describing in reasonable terms WHAT it is.  Zowie!  

Imagine my feelings, reading the title of her 2012 TED Q&A - Being vulnerable about vulnerability.  Did it feel like a homecoming?  Oh, yeah!

When Brene first became a phenom - in 2010 - I was in a crucible of crises, not ready to hear her message.  The titles of her books - I Thought It Was Just Me (and it isn't) & The Gifts of Imperfect - would never have clicked.  
For some reason, I associated Brene with understanding shame, which didn't resound with me. It's doubtful I'd ever have looked at her 2012 TED talk, Listening to Shame.  Wouldn't relate, not even seven months ago - still too raw.

Praise be, I love rambling around cyber space, where I stumbled across her 2010 TEDxHouston presentation, The power of vulnerability.  Interesting - this would have been around October 2015.  Fascinating timing.  It was possibly the first time I was ready to hear what Brene had to share.  

Ready?  I was rarin' to hear her!  Still remember my breath going shallow & rapid reading her described as someone who "studies human connection — our ability to empathize, belong, love."  Again, the sense that came over me was of homecoming.  Of being within the safety of a long-sought tribe.  

The past eight months have been an orgy of reading & rereading, journaling & discussing Brene.  Amazed to report that John & I are about to listen to Men, Women & Worthiness - together.  
 
At the 26-year mark in our marriage, we are going to circle back to the beginning, back to my feeling wary because a) wholehearted loving would leave me utterly vulnerable ~and~ b) there was nothing to be done about it, because I was over-the-moon in love with this guy from the moment we met.  At this point in time, we'll be present with the awareness that vulnerability is essential to healthy loving, that it makes it possible for anything to be done.

Will keep you in the loop!

 

A STORY FOR BEAR - 06/10/16 Cupcake Lady give away

This week's book give away is the heart stealing, A  STORY  FOR  BEAR,  John & I fell I love with it on my birthday ramble around Bucks & Hunterdon counties.  He gave it to me as my birthday momento.  

Can never decide which is the most disarming - the entrancing story or the tender illustrations.  Will spend a lifetime debating.

One of my all-time favorite books that hits so many levels of irresistible. And now I get to give a copy to someone else to love & treasure it & maybe even share it with a child!