Rain Dance

 

 

“She loves to walk out in the rain

Can’t tell the raindrops from the paindrops

She loves to walk out in the rain…”

-Jeff Desjarlais- Song for Carol

 

I have always loved soft, warm, Spring rain.  I, typically, get out in it.  Sometimes, at night, in a canvas teepee, listening to the beautiful drumming of night rain.  But, there is more to this.

Rain is cathartic for me.  One day, after a dramatic, chaotic night spent trying to find and sober up someone, I could do no more than weep, but I have always seen weeping as weakness.  The only time and place I could/can freely weep, for myself, is when I walk out in the rain.  I walked for hours, no umbrella, out into the forest and wept.  Later on, that evening, when I returned to the house, there were words to a song for me left on for me to read.  Some time later, he sung it.  I had let go of the night before and stepped into the sunshine of the next day, emotionally wrung out.  I told the person he had to leave.  After he left, there was a cassette tape with all his songs, left on the kitchen table, and he had added “Song For Carol”.  I was never around him again, in the last 27 years.  He never gained his sobriety nor freedom from other addictions.  He was both tender and a terror.  Lately, he passed away and now I am his widow.  I needed to walk out in the rain one more time.  Rain is my baptism, of sorts.

*****I do not have a copy of that song any more, but this one, is another he wrote during better times before he left.  It also, is, in part, about our relationship and the drama of living with an addicted person.

Acceptance

 

 

 

“to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.”
― Ellen Bass

Our reaction to difficulties in life, is what counts most.  We can think we might act one way or the other, but, when one is suddenly forced to action   “…action speaks louder than words”. The sudden reaction, when called for, will define our truths, our authentic values and beliefs.  I am great in sudden crises.  Physically, I react right away.  It is the ‘afterwards’ that shows me my truths.  It is then I shake and act emotionally.  When sudden decisions do not need to be made, it is then Ego (the thinking) can get in my way.  It is that that I am most accountable for.  When things are out of our control, at some point, we need to accept, to surrender, and to get on with getting on.

Immediately after a reaction, we may, then, feel sad, frustrated, angry, vulnerable, and all emotions that are necessary, betimes.  The important thing about these feelings is that we need to learn to let them go.  The less critical situations, are when we can get all wrapped up in the emotions and can cling to those emotions, such as feeling criticized, victimized, and we have moved into defense. 

Emotions of the past need to be allowed to be what they were and we work through it all and refuse to move into depression, etc. emotions that belong in the past.  Future can bring on anxiety.  Some of us, and, believe me, I am one, need to work on staying Present rather than fussing over past things that have happened, or worry about what is going to happen in the future.  Covid definitely made me more Present.  I find, if I allow feelings of the past or for future to muddy my Present, I stay miserable longer.  Learning to say to ourselves, “It Is What It Is!” can help ground us in the Present Moment. 

No matter what happens in life, and life can surely suck sometimes, we are or will be called on to act.  We can change or we can resist.  A great deal of life calls us act, to change, to do something.  There are things we simply can not control.  The inly thing we can control is ourselves, as I said yesterday in the post.  We can make a thousand thousand plans and set a thousand thousand goals, but we have to understand that life can, and most likely will, get in the way.  WE have all hit that place where there is nothing we CAN do.  We have choices; let it be what it is or stay stuck in a negative reaction.    I am sure you have noticed, as I have, that, if we stay stuck in a past emotion, we miss the opportunity to prepare for whatever might come in the future. 

Acceptance can sometimes be really difficult without heavy emotion attached to it, like surrender.  The main thing we want to remember is that we must acknowledge the emotions and feel them so that they are less likely to trigger you in the future, because some feelings will be triggering.  It is not as if it is all going to be gone.  No!  Life hands us more to deal with again and again, and seems to be a constant, sometimes.  Simply getting through is tough, betimes.  But, believe me when I say that we have to let some things go, through acceptance of things being as they are, in order to make room for the good stuff. 

©Carol Desjarlais 4.29.22

 

Control Issues

 

 

 

“He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still.” ― Lao Tzu

 

Something inside us remembers…remembers being let down, being used, maybe even abused.  We may have been taken advantage of, neglected, and a myriad of other reasons why we may have control issues at some level.   We can begin to be controlling in order to feel empowered because we grew up feeling vulnerable.  In reality, we have little trust of others, of life, of God. 

At some point, in my own life, I lost belief in a good and loving God.  For many years, into early adulthood, I set out wanting no others to think there was not good and caring and loving people and to feel as abandoned as I felt.  I gave and gave and gave and cared and loved openly and deeply thinking that I would help the lost and rejected and abandoned kids and adults believer in life and a kind god.  It drove my personal relationships in that I chose needy, wounded, men who would be grateful for me since I felt I would not be accepted by any others.  I paid great prices for this because my relationships were doomed to fail.  It was, in some warped way, a way to make sure I would be abandoned, eventually, physically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually.  My life was full of anxiety and a drive to do more than I ever could, in reality, and I became, more and more, a perfectionist who would fail miserably at perfection.  The more I tried, the more I failed, because I could not, always, sustain such a highly service-oriented life.  I always rode the cusp of losing control and it caused a great deal of drama and chaos I my life.  I became more and more emotionally sensitive and almost manic in my need to control what I thought I could.  I placed too highly personal expectations on myself and could not sustain even that and failed and felt shame because I failed, when most people would have known that the stakes were too high.  Not only I paid, but the relationships paid, my children paid, since my expectations for them were too high as well. The more I felt that I was losing control, and felt I was failing, the more I set higher expectations of myself.   The more I ended up failing, the needier I got.  I wanted others to give what I gave.  I had no idea that I was a control freak, that I was breaking my own heart, time after time after time. 

One day, when I was working all hours and going many extra miles, a peer sent me a fax.  It read, “Sometimes you have to let go and let me do my own work.  Signed, “God”.   It was like someone had turned on a light switch.  Who did I think I was?  How much misery had I brought on myself and others because of my need to control? 

Eventually, I figured it out.  I was a slow learner.  I came to know that my sense of a need to control, in its many disguises, was rooted in fear.  I was controlling because I was deluded into NOT thinking about what would happen if I did not.  But I came to know the freedom of letting go.  I wrote my book about the story of my life and in doing that I came to know my many flaws and in knowing such, I learned to release and relinquish my need to control and let be what would be.  How incredible freeing it was.  I wrote a sign and put it on my bathroom mirror where I would see it every morning: “Let go!  Let God!”  It did not happen suddenly.  It took a great deal of self-awareness to rid myself of the need to control.  I freed my own self and in doing so I began to thrive.  I still have to really watch myself that I do not slip, easily, back into those expectations of self and others. 

Right up until last year, I was working hard at this.  I really began to look at how fear-driven I had lived my life and I met those fears head on and knew them for the WHY of them.  This awareness allowed me to let go of more insidious ways of being.  I freed myself more and more, even yet but each little change makes me feel more empowered than I ever did when I was controlling things.  I stopped expecting others to be what I thought they should be.  It took the pressure off me and everyone else around me.  How healing it has been.  How grateful I am to relinquish the wheel.