Not sleeping has an effect on me. Or several/various effects. Ariel wakes up every night frantically crying. This has been true for more than a year.

On the nights when I sleep right next to her, she still wakes up. But she is comforted more easily.

Fiona wakes up all nights as well. Winding down a road of feeling sorry for myself, I stretch my imagination to remember what it was like to lay down at night and not wake up until the sun came up (or an alarm).

Yet, if memory serves me correctly, I had more angst ten years ago about relatively nothing. I wrote so much more (than now) about the many, many, many things that presented as struggles from my perspective.

Burn-out has been defined (in one spot) as, “an imbalance between the psychological resources of an individual and the demands being made on those resources.”

That definition can be broadened to include more than just psychological resources. We all have resources; inside and outside of ourselves. Imagine a quilt. Each patch is a resource. Each patch is someone to talk to, a book to read, exercise, eating well, prayer/faith, writing, hot running water, a car that works, a house that is fairly clean.

I feel like I have resources. I don’t always use them….

“Imbalance” is a helpful way to conceptualize how it can possibly be that one person…I’ll use myself to be fair, can have a healthy family, own a home, have a car that works, multiple family members, friends, co-workers, and neighbors who all care about me and provide me with tons of help….can possibly get the level of frazzled that I get. It absolutely boggles my mind!

My husband fixes everything around here. If some piece of equipment gets faulty, he finds a way to breath new life into it so that machine can wash dishes or clothes or whatever its particular function. When I remember to think about it, I appreciate all these actions that keep our home running.

Sometimes, when I’m driving, I’ll look down at the little red hand that keeps track of how much gas is in the tank. The best word I can think of, for how I feel as I look at it, is Jealous. What I wish is that I could have a monitor of how much fuel I have available for the things that I want to do. This seems to be the biggest problem I encounter again and again and again.

Ideas that look good on paper are physically exhausting. I over estimate what I can do in a day, in a week, in a year. Other times, I under estimate and begin to do less and less until I feel a cold tiredness that comes…not from honest exhaustion…but from moving too little.

Keeping track is something that I used to do. Journaling was my thing for many years, until I started to think, “Who cares about this? This is boring or silly to read.” when I would pick-up an old journal from a few years back.

The benefits, though, aren’t so much that my writing is interesting as much as writing frees up space in my mind and heart to be with the people I love. The things I write about are often boring or selfish or silly or dramatizations of reality.

There I things I carry, carry, carry when the healthy thing to do would be to set that shit down.

Writing is resource.

Well, time for me and Tricia to head to church 🙂 Terra

My eyes open with a tiny face an inch away saying, “Pee! Yeah!” and this prompts me to sit up and look for a puddle above or soaked into the bed. I’m not startled, exactly, because I know that I’ll handle it. Having children expands the (exponentially!) the capacity to adapt.

No pee spots that I can find without my glasses. I put them on and bring a smiling 1 and a half year old to the potty. She giggles and points at her accomplishment and we both smile.

This is the first day in 5 or 6 days that I feel like I actually slept. Often, I am filled with the feeling that the kids need more than I have to give. This is an ongoing, unhelpful, inner conversation where a part of me arguing with another part about what it means to be a parent.

Lots and lots and lots of people have this or similar strife about raising children. More than anything, it feels like a split between caring for others and caring for oneself. And the balance is constant and hard to maintain.

People ask me for things, for answers, that I simply do not have. I try to remember a time when I pressed someone for information that no one can know. I try to remember what was said to me that gave me hope.

Hope is its own entity. Existing without reason or proof. Words don’t capture what it feels like, what hope is like. Language is something we made so we could share experiences with one another, but language is limited. The most important pieces are felt and known.

You know when you are doing something that is congruent with Hope.

You just do.

“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

― Mark Twain

For me, it’s 35. This is the year I fully realized all the many, many things that my parents had tried to show me all along 🙂

Take time to cherish the ones you love!

Terra

I hope for a future where children and older people are treated with as much respect as a CEO or a President.

Think of this: the way you treat different people as you go about your day. The clerk at the gas station, your kiddos, your friends, a co-worker or supervisor. People who are beautiful, who match, and have cared for lawns. People who are smelly, and overweight, whose children are sticky and tell you that they hate you.

Sometimes, when I am mean to my kids, I imagine myself very old and frail. I think of them caring for me and feeling exhausted. And I wonder if they will yell at me or just not listen or pay attention to me. I think of all the power I have now, over their lives, and I ask God to help me to use the power I have to serve in their development, in their growth, in the spirit of Love.

When I drive to work, I try to see each driver. For a moment I think, “Who are you? Where are you headed?”

I read a book called, “The Body Keep the Score” where a researcher reviewed the nature of trauma, the effects of being harmed or neglected by other people, and one part that really jumped out of the page was the phrase, “Seen and Known.”

Bottom line: People can endure so much if they only experience someone else as seeing and knowing them.

And we all have the chance, the opportunity, to be there for each other in that way. Seeing and Knowing.

There it is! The abandoned building at the end of our block. It used to be an addiction rehabilitation/mental hospital.

If I was incredibly rich, I would buy it and convert it into a community center and a rabbit rescue.

What it’s good for, right now, is a safe place for Sam to bike around the empty parking lot. That’s right…Sam learned how to ride a bike this past weekend with his Dad while the girls and I were at a Bridal Shower 🙂

More on this dream at a later date. Happy Monday!

Terra

He is heading for the lab,

She holds her hands to call a cab.

smile and wave and watch the car;

In the future they are far.

Hear the baby snort and snuff,

this moment is my

Enough.

You want me to eat the crust,

oh, I will Love you

long after I

am

dust.

Twenty months ago, in the garage that has been transformed into a movie theater, I was watching, “The Big Lebowski” with my husband. My first time watching the film, I was feeling glad for the chance to find out what the buzz was about. Bowling, white russians, and a tumble weed. The side door of the garage opened, my husband paused it, and my step-dad and my mom come in.

My Step-Dad hands me a box of tissues, “You’ll need this.” He says.

“I have stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer.” He gives me a hug and I cry. Mom cries. My husband cries. He goes on to say that he is uncertain how much longer he’ll live. Without treatment, a doctor tells him that he has two months left. Six months pregnant, at that time, I wonder if he will live to meet this little baby.

I drift away. Far off, to a place, where this type of news is seen but not felt.

More than twenty years ago, in the basement of my aunt’s house, I was watching a drama about a girl having an adventure with her family. On Wednesdays, my aunt and her husband would go bowling while I babysat their three children for a couple of hours. The kiddos were sweet and I looked forward to watching movies after I put them to bed.

My Dad comes down the stairs and asks, “Do you want to watch, ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos?”

I decline that offer on the basis of not wanting to watch people fall into tables, wedding cakes, or each other. My Dad’s hurt expression lives forever in my eye lids. I try to take it back, but he is heading up the stairs and out the door.

I stand there. Holding on to a clear understanding that some mistakes can’t be undone.

All my life I’ve loved to read. Books are filled with stories. Pieces from the hearts of my fellow humans. Romance, mystery, historically accurate or completely outrageous; they all fit together on a shelf. I have lived so many lives, seen so much of this world (and other worlds!) and the amount left to learn is limitless.

Twenty years old, a sophomore in college, I destroyed one book. It was not something I had done before or since. The smug smile of the author caught my eye and I torn all the pages out. Then, I tore them into smaller bits and threw the bits up. I watched them float down, angry snowflakes falling on dirty dorm carpet.

Rewind back, two months before that, I was highlighting and underlining feverishly attempting to rework my mind. All of the chapters seemed to offer some simple precise  way of handling every situation that life could throw at a person.

“Ah,” I said to myself while sitting on the floor of the shower, “All this time I been sweating the small stuff.” Yep. I was sitting on the floor of a communal shower. What the heck?! Thirty-five year old me is totally grossed out. Anyway.

Something sad happened. A relationship that meant a lot to me ended. And I just flipped. Because it’s not small stuff. It’s NOT ALL SMALL STUFF.

It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to feel angry or afraid.

Being truthful with yourself brings freedom.

And when you are free you can open up to peace, love, and joy.

Sometimes, it seems like people (myself included!) confuse the difference between living a life that’s comfortable with a life that is meaningful.

There’s more here….but I need some shut-eye 🙂

Hugs!

Terra

Again with the Saturday work!

I get into these loops trying to make the best possible choices for my family and other important people in my life.

Despite my best efforts, I’m looking at 4 hours of paperwork/assessment/treatment plan creation on a Saturday.

I feel like a bad mom for spending even less time with my children!

But its all about perspective, right? Maybe I’m not using my time efficiently during the week. In-between each therapy session is a 7 minute time to write notes. Sometimes, I can make that happen.

Other times, I feel like a radio that is not tuned in. It’s like CKCKCCCCCCSSSSHHHHHHHHH, this fuzzy, foggy, noise.

I just stare off and 7 minutes rapidly evaporates.

I’ve been trying to use “Solution Focused” techniques on myself, but its pretty challenging.

Still, I believe that getting this done, between now and 4pm will give me tonight and all day tomorrow to given my family my calm, undivided attention 🙂

The picture below is one Ariel, age 4, took of me and Fiona. Hugs! Terra

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

– Theodore Roosevelt