I Am Resilient With You Holding Me Up

 

 

Life will knock you down, do not doubt it, it will knock every ne of us down at some point.  The point is not getting up right away, but to learn the lesson and then get up and go again.  But, what happens when you have no “get up and go” left in you? 

Sometimes joy and purpose is not enough to keep us afloat.    Resilience is the ability to get back up, to bounce back, from adversity, trauma, or something devastating to you…only you…because, what would perhaps devastate me would seem paltry to you and perhaps visa versa.  What I have overcome might be unsurmountable to you and visa versa that, as well.  When I think of what I survived, overcame and went on to thrive in spite of, amazes me.  I just took care of my daughter in law, son, and seven children because she had two brain bleeds... yet, she begged and was released the first week.  I knew what I went through to survive, overcome and then thrive after one brain bleed.  Her mother, the same.  And, yet, she made her way home and began organizing and scheduling and I know it took incredible effort, but the survived and was overcoming.  I had been laid low for months, almost a year.  I am not sure about her mother but I do know she is physically unable to do many things even yet from hers decades ago.  How did we do it?  How did I go from brain bleed to University in two years?  I even wonder how I raised seven children plus some extras.  I soon discovered that I was not able to do what I did when the triplets were born 8 years ago, but I did more than I could ever believed I could have.   Yes, I am worn out, yet, but that is nothing.  I did it.  We all did it.  How did we come back so quickly?  Resilience!

I have a sense my resilience to have surmounted many things is something inside that I have n control over.  Some will say they have learned resilience.  Some never learn it.  We are born with resilience.  You can learn to be resilient.  You just need to develop more of it.

When you are down and out, weeping, gnashing your teeth in despair, you need to learn to FEEL IT.  Know its name.  realize we cannot be strong all the time.  Resilience is not strength.  Resilience is knowing our weaknesses and expressing that sadness’, that frustration, however we can.  I choose to art journal, to paint, to etch, to draw it out.  Expressing how we are truly feeling, that despair, is acknowledging it and as we express it, we are actually beginning to cultivate resilience.  We have all the answers within.  We need to absolutely feel all those emotions of grief, of anger, of sorrow, and all the myriad of emotions that come with trauma of any kind.  As we work through our authentic feelings, things begin to clear.  In that clearing is hope.  All of our feelings are gifts and knowing our sadness (Hello, Darkness, my old friend) means we can know joy.  If we know darkness, we can know light.  Somewhere in the beginning of acknowledging and naming and expressing our lowest moments, is when, like a blossom begins, it will blossom to reliance.

When we surrender the control we thought we had, to experiencing life being in control, then we truly are able to begin to stand up and flower in sharing our stories so that no one has to feel alone in our moments of weakness.  It is good to gather as grandmothers, aunties, siters, sisterhoods, as women of the Red Tent, and in that gathering of sisterhood, we share our weaknesses and strengths.  That is truly empowering.  It takes a village….

Our village, our Red Tent, can take on any form in many arenas…yes, even online…in groups like our Facebook group.  It is there we can turn to be nurtured, to have our resilience nurtured.  Here we are, waiting, in a circle, to hold you up until you can gather your own feet and rise.

 

On this page is another way to express yourself with collage.  Sometimes you can use many different techniques and materials to collage.  You can use needle and thread, staples, tape, image transfers and, as in this page, you can add interest to a collage by sewing, embroidering, etc.  On this page, I gathered up some tissue that had an antique print of a woman’s face.  I choose a decorated pocket.  I use an extra heavier piece of cardboard to do the stitching through so that the page was a heavy enough backing for the extra ribbons and tiny flowers.  You can add anything your page can hold.

©Carol Desjarlais 7.3.22

 

The Anxious Brain

 

 

Do you get fixated on worry about the past, the present, the future and did not realize that your lizard brain (limbic system) is sorting out if you are in danger and whether you need to fight or flee?  See, worrying causes anxiety that causes your piece of 150-million-year-old brain to try to do its old old job.  See, it does not know our present-day discomforts and annoyances and decides your thoughts are about real danger and your worry is something as big as a dinosaur about to attack.  We can seriously jump off a cliff to get away from such thoughts.  And, I am not sure any of us has wings to save ourselves.  When we worry and are anxious, we need to ‘cool it’ by reasoning ourselves out of the fear that comes.  We need to relearn how to live in the present moment with some logic…there are no dinosaurs about to squash and gut us. 

Getting to know why how, when, where, why of our anxiety is key.  We need to look at the times we get anxious and see the patterns.  We need to know our triggers.  Ok, so I am.. get this.. afraid of rabbits with yellow big eyes and claws on their back feet.  Ok, and I am afraid of dark so I put up twinkling lights outside everywhere.  I have to talk myself down if the lights go out.  I blogged before about being fear-based and making fear-based decisions.  I am still learning how to flick on the lights of inner calmness when I sense a trigger.

I can go from my son being off riding his new electric bike, to seeing someone who looks like him walking towards his home, and I had him crashed and wrecked and in big rouble and I had better prepare myself for the worst.  Wasn’t him.  He puttered easily home from the other direction but I had just had him nearly crashed and burned before he did.  Yes, My imagination catastrophizes. 

I have had to learn, and practice, still, how to stay mindfully present.  When a thought comes, I have t chase it away and seems, while I am chasing, my anxiety lessens because I moved myself away from what was making me anxious.  The worst thing I figure I can do, is go search on google for answers to something I have been worrying about.  Yeah.  It is all there and a quick stumble down ‘rare complications” can have me diagnosed to call 911.   I have to remind myself something I used to say to my whining, crying child, when I knew they did not even know why they were crying: “Are your guts hanging out, are you bleeding to death?  No?  Then I am pretty sure you are going too live.  A quick hug for comfort and they quit.”  I need to ask myself that a lot of times during the day. 

What is the real fear?  Ok, my brother had those massively big albino buck rabbits.  They were mean and can move fast when they are attacking you.  And, they did attack me.  And I still recoil when I see a big rabbit, god forbid they have pink eyes.  And since I know why the fear, I can now control it.  “No, thee are not big albino monster fast-moving, attacking rabbits.  These are the kid favorite little brown bunny and he is toooo friendly.”  There, now I can start controlling my fear of “Jelly”, or whatever his/her dear name was.  I am not ten any more, either.  Still, I did not go downstairs where his hutch was, not once, because he escaped all the time and ran free… nope, I did not put myself in a position to worry.  LOL.

I have learned to not deny what I am feeling, but to get to the trigger of it.  I have learned to accept what I cannot control.  Sometimes I must think I am god and can control things not possibly so.    Thinking I can control things I cannot, should not, will not, could not control only makes me feel more anxious. 

In the end of it, anxiety is just old baggage, most times.  Getting to the key trigger is the key.  Then being mindful and watch for the sensation of beginning anxiety is key.  The only thing I can control is me and my misbegotten worrying.  How about you?  Do you need to stop and listen to the music and stay in the Present moment?

The word “Collage” comes from the French word “coller” (to glue) to combine mages in art.  Collage is when you combine found objects to create a new image to convey a message or theme.  The found images you can add come from newspaper clippings, photographs, print advertisements, text, culled paper products, fabric, wood and any and all ephemera that is glued on to a substrate of any kind to create a new image.  There are no hard fast rules for collage.  The art is very intuitive.

This art journal page is a collage that is very simplistic but it tells a thought I was having about anxiety. She is made up of several different body parts clipped from vogue magazine.

©Carol Desjarlais 7.2.22

 

Sometimes, I Buy Myself Flowers

 

 

 

“With every act of self-care your authentic self gets stronger, and the critical, fearful mind gets weaker. Every act of self-care is a powerful declaration: I am on my side, I am on my side, each day I am more and more on my own side.”

-- Susan Weiss Berry

 

I said to myself, to myself, I said, “You are doing good.  You got that list in your head all done.” And then I make a new list.  Somewhere in my past, I equated “Goodness: with working and staying busy and doing good, I am giving service to others, I am nurturing others, and doing more…”.  But I forget to nurture myself.  Sometimes we have to stop in our tracks, or find ourselves stopped in our tracks, and we need to ask ourselves, not if we are worthy, enough, etc., but if we have we nurtured ourselves.  We often forget that our emotions rule us.  Our emotional health dictates how we feel, no matter where, when, how, we are trying to work through it all. 

Remind yourself how strong you are.  Imagine going through it all again.  Imagine you future now.  Yes, there was every experience anyone can imagine and you made it through... yes yes yes, we made it through.  We plowed through, we wept through, we thought we would never get through… but we did... here we are… no matter the way we limp through, no matter the times we fall into that deep hole of feeling we can not make it another day…we did.  We do.  We did.  We can.  In spite of ourselves, sometimes. 

Self-worth is a mighty hand in our lives and lifts us up when nothing or no one else can.  We need to nurture that in ourselves.  We need to give ourselves flowers.. oh, yes.. Comes the Dawn

 

"Comes the Dawn"

"After a while you learn the subtle difference
between holding a hand and chaining a soul.
And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning
and company isn't security.
(Kisses aren't contracts and presents aren't promises.)

After awhile you begin to accept your defeats
with your head up and your eyes open,
with the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child.
And you learn to build your roads on today
because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain
and the inevitable has a way of crumbling in mid-flight.

After a while you learn that even sunshine burns
if you stand too long in one place.

So, you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul
instead of waiting for someone else to bring you flowers.
And you learn you really can endure,
that you really do have worth.
You learn that with every good-bye comes the dawn."

Author Unknown

In an art journal page, there is something so evocative about lines.   Finding a way to use lines can really enhance a page.  This page has simple straight lines around the three aspects of the theme.  Repeating lines can define forms.  Sometimes you can use straight lines and then curve around a subject or object.  (You know the hand and line making an optical illusion?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0teupIUsNXI  )

There is no rule or set way to do it.  Experiment with line.  Mine is simplistic but works for this page.  Let it be intuitive and see what magic happens.

©Carol Desjarlais 7.1.22