Tag: Anxiety

u-turn

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A temperamental sense of balance and an overly sensitive inner ear don’t make the best flight companions. Fortunately, the only moments of the journey that we tend to be at odds occur during takeoff as the plane climbs in altitude. My brain and my ear cannot seem to resolve their past communication issues and as such, are a bit  fluttery when presented with a challenge beyond navigating the balance challenges of a typical day. Each flight and airport present a unique set of circumstances, but discomfort of some kind reveals itself regardless of place or direction. Last night’s flight home brought forth one of the most courageous conversations my brain and my ear have had to flesh out in a long time.

At first, I was relieved. We seemed to be climbing in altitude slowly which always eases tension by allowing my head to adjust to the pressure changes gradually rather than all at once. And then we made a sort of u-turn. Planes turn all the time. No big deal. I sit just in front of the wing and by a window so my eyes can use the visual to explain the discomfort my head feels.

Last night felt different.

The turn was steeper and tighter and incredibly disorienting. There wasn’t a window that I could look through that could grant a stable visual. There seemed to be no steady point on which to focus, to center myself. Gorgeous pink clouds reflecting the beauty of the setting sun should have been distraction enough, but I simply couldn’t get my bearings and it equated to a terrifying minute or so during which the panic of the vertigo days flooded my system. My mind reeled toward flashes of the worst moments from that time swifter than I could stop it. Before I realized what was happening, my hands were shaking and my breath became shallow. Treacherous, sneaky fast, pervasive. Panic acts without notice and I wasn’t prepared to prevent it from persisting. My guard was down.

Eventually, after the plane leveled out, the pressure in my head did as well. I closed my eyes, inhaled deeply, and reminded myself that, despite the painful memories this u-turn invoked, the discomfort was limited, temporary. Despite that feeling of helplessness in mid air, I was okay–safe, balanced, headed home.  Another inhale, a breath of gratitude. The exhale, a prayer of peace.

I have these u-turn moments from time to time-I feel like in some strange way, in our own ways, we all do. A moment when something triggers my vertigo panic button or rips the stitches that contain my grief and suddenly I am swallowed up. Whether fleeting or lingering, the emotion is disorienting and even when I am surrounded by goodness and love, it can be hard to see it clearly enough…even when I know the feeling will be temporary and I am in charge of its dismantling, it can be hard to find my balance long enough to wait it out.

Yet, inevitably, the moment always levels out, the pressure of the panic subsides, I realize that I am held in love unconditionally-that I am safe, and I breathe. Will the vertigo come back some day? Almost definitely. Will that be awful? Um, probably… I can live with that aspect of my life, I have to. I don’t have to like it and from time to time, I’ll be caught in a bit of a u-turn moment, but this is my lot and with it, I can still do so much.

Inhale, gratitude…exhale, peace.

(Entry 29 in the king cake writing challenge!)

ominous beauty

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The lavender morning sky betrays the tenderness of the sunrise and the wind whispers of dangerous weather not so far off. Its beauty all at once admired and unsettling.

Thunderstorms and my inability to have any control over them have hastened my heart rate and knotted my stomach since I was a child. Certainly, anxiety over bad weather isn’t terribly uncommon-especially in kids-but growing up in Southeast Louisiana, where afternoon thundershowers populate summer days and hurricane season seems to be ever extending its stay, should have presented me with plenty of opportunities to face it and to manage a peaceful coexistence.

And yet, even though I can control and mask my anxious reaction to impending severe weather far better than I used to, the not knowing and the unpredictability still unsettles me.

My oldest son (who somehow inherited only my anxiety and is otherwise 100% a replica of his father) has yet to learn to mask his weather worry in any sort of meaningful way and so instead of waking him to appreciate the beauty of this early morning sky, he remains snuggled safely unaware in his bed in an effort to shrink the window of his worry.

Growing up, my dad always felt far differently about these events than I did. When a thunderstorm brewed and I wanted to hide my eyes from any evidence of it, he would lift every shade in the house, welcoming the brilliance of the illuminated sky. On summer vacations at the beach, he would wish for an evening thunderstorm to arrive and when that wish was granted would steady his camera on the tripod in an effort to capture the fleeting electrical display as it webbed through the dark expanse above the waves.

In the grand list of all the things I love about my dad, this is certainly one of them. However, in those moments years ago, his joy in the thing that terrified me, also perplexed and probably frustrated me, and I’m sure in an anxious moment (or many) I said some things about it that weren’t so friendly.

It’s confounding to me because I typically welcome the unknown as an opportunity to learn, to grow. I teach teenagers for goodness’ sake! There are no creatures in the world more unpredictable than they are and so many people misunderstand that and question my choice to spend my days with them–and yet my kids, my students, teach me something about myself and this world everyday. They push me to be a better human and I cannot imagine my life without those 143 young people.

But I guess when I think about my urge to run and hide from the force that is ominous weather as opposed to my dad’s desire to witness its power as beauty unbound, it feels sort of like the difference between hiding from acceptance of the truth of anything/anyone we don’t fully understand and opening ourselves to envision the potential beauty rather than the seeming disaster. Ironically, when it comes to my dad and I, I’m the optimistic one and he’s the cynical one.

Funny how those one word titles don’t encompass the whole. Bet that happens a lot in this life.

(Day five courtesy of my dog waking me up too early which allowed me to witness the early morning sky)

inhale, exhale

Featured Amy Clark3 Comments

Breath.

Invisible (well, for now anyway, it is still September and still, it seems, endlessly summer).

Invisible except in the rise and fall of the chest; except in the fatigued surrender of a sigh.

Invisible (for the healthy and the privileged) because it is easily ignored…a state of being, an elemental piece of existence. Mundane. Prosaic. A promise fulfilled that has become a promise expected and so the gratitude that might create awareness…

Dwindles.                   Subsides.                  Withers.

Invisible until we are gasping or labored or until the air around us runs rancid and it becomes hard to find clean air to fill us up to propel us forward to allow life

to swirl,                      to swell,                    to scintillate.

(metaphorical? yes–and–no)

Invisible until we are breathless and then it is all we see, all we feel–the ache, the burn resounds as our breath seems to have abandoned us and our quality of life (its abundance and intensity and brilliance) seems to have shifted and that shift, even if minuscule, stings.

~~~~~~~~~~

Breathless: I have been feeling breathless. I have unwittingly been attempting to fill my lungs with the air of stress that has become polluted by fumes of negativity and the entirety of my being has suffered as a result. I am exhausted, heavy, impatient. While exhaustion comes with parenting and “principalling” and teaching…heaviness and impatience are not familiar territory…and they frustrate me, creating even thinner air…leaving me jealous for any life, any day, any moment removed from the needs of others and the anxiety of not meeting them as effectively as I would like. I don’t consider myself a perfectionist (I am far too disorganized for that), but I don’t like letting people down either.

Triage: I needed to stop. To step back. To assess. What was missing? Why couldn’t I catch my breath and extract myself from this quicksand of worry? Why couldn’t I take back the narrative of positivity and rewrite the negativity…spin a new story? (I am, after all, the most annoyingly optimistic person I’ve ever known…ask my students, they will tell you) Why couldn’t I see a glimmer in this wilderness that seemed to be closing in around me?

Diagnosis: Writing. I wasn’t writing. (I mean, there was the lack of exercise too, but, you know…) I wasn’t granting myself permission to do one of the few things that make me feel most myself. I was using the time excuse again. But, seriously, chasing time was part of the reason I was so breathless and I wasn’t getting any closer to catching him. The rock was at the bottom of the hill again everyday and my Sisyphean struggle only seemed to intensify. So, I had to make a determination. I needed to challenge myself. I needed to fight my way out and that fight was going to have to include putting words on the page (digital or otherwise).

Prescribed: “the positivity project” (which I am sure is not some new brand of ingenuity–rather a remake) became my road map. Writing on this blog, 30 minutes a day, everyday, for as long as I can make myself, with the purpose of promoting positivity in each entry. It just seems that if I needed to be dug out of negativity, other people might benefit from reading something positive as well.

And maybe this way I will move forward in greater gratitude for the freedom of clean, easy air. A plentitude of it. Instead of searching for breath, I will just

Breathe.

pointless

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Somewhere around age 8 or 9, I developed a pretty intense phobia. This fear defied conventionality (or at least it felt that way). It was no fear of heights or dogs that others could relate to (though, let’s be real here, I was afraid of those things too). No, this was something that no one else seemed to get–including myself. My fear rooted itself in an aversion to any kind of stomach illness. Sure, lots of people (almost proudly) proclaim “germophobia” but this was more specific and for some reason that baffled others. Or maybe it wasn’t so much the fear that was the issue as much as the way it revealed itself (in panic attacks at absurd moments, in selectively eating only food that felt safe, in doing any number of evidently ridiculous things that felt entirely necessary).

The great humor of my life…and I do believe God sees the irony in this situation as much as I do…is that I spent decades (literal decades) actively working to never feel nauseous…actively worried on the daily that I might be sick or that I might have been exposed to illness…actively avoiding events, people, places where sickness might be present (and I don’t just mean the obvious places…my fear of flying had less to do with the act of flying in a plane and everything to do with the possibility of people getting airsick…) only to find myself at age 36 coping with an invisible illness that brought with it episodic bouts with severe vertigo and regular imbalance and with that came nausea beyond my control (important to note here that even on the days when I wasn’t struggling with violent spinning, I sort of always felt like I was rocking on a boat…sort of like those movies with a shaky camera that make you feel a little seasick by the end…that sensation represented a good day for far too many years). There is no medicine, by the way, that will make vertigo stop…only medicine to abate the side effects of it (and then, only if you are lucky). You are at the complete mercy of your body. You just have to wait it out.

Situations like this provide clarity if nothing else, really. What I came to realize through this joke my body has played on me was that all those days and weeks and months and years of worrying, all that wasted effort, in the end, turned out to be really quite pointless. It didn’t matter how much I worried or how much care I took to avoid, this was always going to happen…and germs really have nothing to do with it (in all seriousness, you have to know, the comedy of this hasn’t escaped me).

This is sort of how life is though, right? People told me for years that I was squandering perfectly healthy moments with worry, but I couldn’t feel the truth of that in any real way until my life handed me a series of whirling moments that brought with them new understanding…like the scales falling away from my eyes. We are experiential beings and sometimes we have to live through the difficult moments to learn the lessons we would have been better off learning far sooner. But the important part is that we are ready to accept the understanding and move forward from there. I suppose that is growing up? And I suppose that process of forming and re-forming the people we have the potential to become is a life long one. And I kind of love that gift…of lessons learned no matter our age…because no matter how unpleasant the wrapping may seem, what is inside delivers insight that makes each day a better one than the one before.

(Day 43…this one feels maybe a little too revelatory…but here it is…is it king cake time yet??)

empowerment

Amy Clark1 Comment

Words, language, have become a means of survival.

Air, water, food, shelter, words. Sincerely, their necessity has reached this level.

The easy answer here in uncovering the meaning behind this dramatic assertion is that books have saved me…allowed me an escape…or that writing has…but it isn’t that simple or that obvious, because for a long time, when I was sick and dizzy, reading and writing were not the friendliest options. However, there are realizations in life that shine a light to burn off the fog that has settled in around you…the fog that hinders your vision…not allowing you to see anything else until you recognize first the truth of what has blinded you. Sometimes you get lost and can’t see up from down or details of the world around you.  Then the moment arrives when understanding clarifies the rest and the fog becomes mist which becomes transparency.

So, I have come to learn that when my language portrays victimization (whether resulting from life long struggles with anxiety or my more recent struggles with inner ear disability), that I sink swiftly into a self induced chasm of resignation. When my language falters under the weight of whatever ordeal I am suffering, I surrender any power or control I have in the situation and I become nothing more than a sacrifice to my circumstances. However, when I shift the syntax…when I choose words that reflect the strength of a survivor…suddenly, I repossess my strength, my courage, my vibrance. When I look at a situation through the lens of accomplishment rather than through the fog of defeat, it may not change my circumstances, but it certainly alters my perception of them. This isn’t simple stuff. The words, this “survivor speak” may feel hollow at first…futile, for they are just words after all. Eventually, with diligence, the moment arrives when they aren’t just words any more because what once felt empty has not only  become your reality, but transformed your experience of it.

In the same way that words can be employed to tear down and demean or to reconstruct and elevate others in our lives, they can be engaged the same way in our own.

mindset

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My 11 year old has had some rough mornings this week. He is stressed and tired and a bit under the weather…and, you know, as human beings tend to do, is taking it out on the rest of us. Yesterday, he texted me at work that he had been having a difficult time.

(I have to interrupt here to note that I am optimistic to a faulty degree. I can see a silver lining in just about any moment of difficulty and if you come to me hoping that I will get angry about something with you, chances are I will end up pointing out how we can make it better instead. People don’t always love this about me. I get it.)

So, when he texted, I immediately replied that his day would get better. Being the anxiety ridden realist that he is, he texted back “How do you know it will get better? It doesn’t feel like it will.” Ouch. It is hard enough making this transition to being at work and not at home in the mornings with my boys most days of the week. But on a day like this, when he really just needs a hug from his mom, and I’m not there to give him one, it is even tougher. All I could do was text back “I don’t know but I am hopeful that it will. You can make it better—just decide.”

His thoughts on that advice? “That doesn’t help.”

Double ouch.

Except not so much because I am a deep believer in that advice. I honestly trust that no matter how bad the day is, how we react to it is always within our control. Sure, some days are harder than others, but you know what makes that worse? Sinking in to the difficulty and suffering, languishing beneath the weight of it. I just can’t do that. It feels like a waste–of time, energy, life. Does that mean that all my days are glorious meadows of joy? Of course not, that would be ridiculous. It simply means that my mindset gazes above the negativity with a hopeful heart rather than one resigned to mere misery. This focus is a conscious effort and I often have to remind myself to see beyond the moment, but doing so allows me to more fully participate in the world around me, in my own life.

So, much to his dismay, I will continue to preach this message to him–that he can make it better if he just decides to–because I think it applies in this situation and in so many others. When we feel out of control in situations like this, we become victims of our own selves and our own mentality and anxiety. We become helpless. That is the last thing I want for him or for anyone, really. I want him to know that he has the power to improve his own frame of mind–his own heart, the power to improve the world around him. He needs to know that he can make a difference, but if he can’t make a difference in his own day, how will he ever be able to come to the aid of others?  He needs to own the power of a positive mindset, and he needs to fight for it.

Because all that negativity will only doom him to frustration and stagnation, and that is no way to truly live this life he has been given.

(Day 26!)

 

reminder

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Since the surgery that mostly resolved my inner ear struggles, I have worked diligently to move beyond the trauma of the seven months of nearly constant hearing and balance issues. Trauma is a heavy word, one that implies lingering physical and mental damage. Anyone who has never spun with vertigo might think my use of “trauma” here is hyperbolic. Anyone, though, who has suffered even momentary vertigo can relate to the terror it invokes. It is hard to explain the confusion of not knowing up from down, the disorientation of constant movement despite sitting still, a statue frozen in time, the fear of not knowing…how long will this last? am I falling? how sick will I be? is this the rest of my life? It is hard to explain the heart racing, sweating, shivering, stomach twisting fury that a vertigo spell induces. No medicine can calm the spinning; it can only quell the nausea…and even that salve isn’t guaranteed. No medicine could promise me that I wouldn’t suddenly become dizzy in the middle of a day, in the middle of the grocery store, in the middle of playing with my kids.

That not knowing stalked me endlessly; I became guarded and began to withdraw. By May of last year, 6 months into this journey, I was nearly incapacitated and could no longer envision the possibility of a “normal” life. I questioned my every move, my every decision. I lost hope of ever being well. Honestly, before this moment, I don’t think I could have even written this much about how frightening the episodes during those months were (and there were more than I can count) in this kind of detail without inducing panic.

I have spent much of the seven months since the surgery unlearning all of that fear. I have spent much of that time working past episodes of absolute panic set off by a too vivid memory or by a simple trip to a movie theater. I have spent much of that time trying not to be in a constant state of waiting for my good health to disintegrate…for the surgery to fail…for the moment when once again I am fighting, clawing, scratching to maintain some sort of quality of life….for the smiles to once again be false and the moments to become hazy and vague.

I have done a great deal of really hard work moving on and I finally felt entirely successful there. So, why? Why when a colleague looks at me and says, “What are you going to do when your health fails again” am I suddenly thrown back into the shuddery shaky shroud of worry and concern. I am no closer to being unwell again just because she asked a question of me, yet my brain and my body now stand on guard…proving there is more work to be done than I realized.  Maybe I had only put a patch, a band aid on a wound that required more time, more cleaning, more attention and maybe some stitches? Maybe I let myself get comfortable and neglected completing the process of healing? Maybe I just wanted to be well so badly that I chose to ignore the depth of the concern in order to focus on life instead (though, is that really so bad?) Maybe this process will be a lot longer than I wanted it to be…maybe it’s forever?

But also, maybe it is a reminder of what it truly takes to be resilient. Maybe it is proof that even in the fear and concern, I still survive, thrive, live. Maybe revisiting my concern will simply grant me a gratitude I didn’t feel as deeply yesterday.  Maybe I am stronger than I realized and accepting that as my truth, even when I am tired of having to be so strong, defines and develops the steps I take into my future.

It’s all about the lens we choose to view the world through, I guess. And, truly, we are the ones who choose that lens. The work of that choice isn’t easy, but its significance hasn’t been lost on me today.

(Day 24…almost skipped today. A timely and unexpected power outage was going to be a great excuse to not write and to go to bed early. So glad the power came back in time for me to get this out. It was needed tonight!)

need

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I’ve written a good bit this week about where I turn for healing and rest: gratitude, exercise, poetry. My heart is heavy today though, in spite of all of this. Life is tumultuous, you know, and right now the upheaval is pervasive, weakening my spirit, dulling my optimism. I tend to describe this feeling as “heart-achey”…which really just signifies a moment or several where my metaphorical heart (the one that holds the weight of this empathic life), feels as though the stitching is coming loose and that it is about to empty itself. I’m not a meltdown kind of girl. I endure in the face of gale force tempestuous winds. But today, my guard is down and I need a powerful healer.

Today I need music.

~~~“I Am In Need of Music” by Elizabeth Bishop~~~

In this poem, Bishop writes, “Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,/ Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,/A song to fall like water on my head,/And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!” This is what I need today. The overwhelming harmonious rush of sound washing over me, renewing me in the baptism of its waters and bringing me new life. I need the escape offered in each measure, the fulfillment of the attention my senses have been longing for as they are too frequently muted in the mundane actions of day to day life–dulled by my distraction.

Tonight, I will sit in a church full of people, and musicians will work their alchemy and transform the ache in my heart into the beat of perseverance and the light of hope–their craft, a sustaining force. Tonight, I will allow myself to be engulfed in the beauty of the work of these artists; I will allow myself to escape the world outside that sanctuary (what a perfect word) to be transported elsewhere. I will share this experience with pews full of strangers and friends and we will become a community in that communion…we will become one.

Tonight, I will be intentional. I will close my eyes and feel myself breathe in the joy carried in the air–a gift of the music in the room. And as I exhale, I will release the exhaustion and frustration. And if only for a few minutes, I will be healed.

The respite is going to be spectacular.

(Day 21–three whole weeks!!! This one is short but I like it anyway:) And also, it has been  busy day–just glad I had the time for this!)

answer

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Stress has stolen my sleep, or at least its quality, in recent days. I am incessantly exhausted, running solely on a combination of adrenaline and sugar, as my sleep has been interrupted, disturbed, upset. Stress is a clever thief, often lurking quietly in the shadows until just the moment when I attempt to rest, until just the moment when I am seeking the solace of slumber, the peace and healing offered in sleep. Those are the moments when my stress furtively tiptoes into the forefront of my mind and my brain begins to work harder, ideas and worries and concerns flood in, my heart rate picks up and my eyes open…staring at the ceiling. I don’t want to give in and get up; however, the longer I lay there, the more the stress intensifies. Until I suddenly realize that since I’ve been up worried for so long, I’ll never get enough sleep and then my stress is compounded.

Despite the seeming routine of these events, I never see it coming. Instead, it is just all of a sudden present, and once that occurs, reason and relaxation are out of mind and the swiftness of their eventuality is called into question.

Regular exercise was my greatest outlet for relieving this kind of stress and for deepening my sleep. But since last November when my inner ear decided to throw its own kind of wild party, regular exercise has become more of an intermittent affair. I am just not feeling well enough regularly enough to make a habit of it–to be able to maintain the discipline. That is a true frustration point because I honestly enjoy working out–I honestly enjoy pushing myself and my body to the outer limits of my fitness ability and my body has essentially told me, “Um, no thank you. That time is done.” I am trying to convince myself that walking is a viable fitness plan until more healing has taken place and I am ready to do more. But this all or nothing mentality that I am apt to adopt sees that remedy as circumspect. I don’t  want to just have to walk–I want to be able to do push ups and box jumps and to lift weights. I don’t want to be restricted anymore. I want to be well. I want to be and feel like myself…my best self.

And in that frustration, guilt is born. I know I should just be grateful for being mostly well and not be greedy about what workout I am relegated to. Honestly, I should be grateful for a great many things.

And that has become my newest remedy for stress–I turn in toward my gratitude. When I focus on what I am thankful for, I make a conscious turn away from stress. As I focus on the positivity specific to my life with intentionality, my brain slows down and my heart rate calms. My breathing is more methodical and my gratitude list suddenly becomes a prayer of sorts lulling me into a calm and escorting me toward peaceful sleep.

It doesn’t work every time, this gratitude journey of mine. Sometimes, I just have to work through the stress without avoidance. Sometimes, I have to face it. But sometimes, most often, I can extend myself the grace of recentering my thinking.  And when I am able to do so, I am a better human…and not just because of better sleep, but also because learning to see the world through the lens of a grateful heart is a mind shift that heals and offers hope. And hope, when we work to find it, not only changes our hearts for the better, but also our actions. Where there is hope and gratitude, stress cannot reside.

(Day 19 of this king cake season writing challenge…I for real almost quit tonight after starting three different blogs and getting nowhere with them. Nothing to show for them other than some unfinished saved ramblings. And I was so exhausted and had so many other things to do…but I just felt compelled to prove this one to myself…that I wouldn’t give into the temptation of quitting…that I would honor myself and remain dedicated)

Hope

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Someone asked me just before the New Year announced its arrival with colorful displays and cacophonous litanies, what word I would choose as sort of a mantra for the year. I had to pause (it felt like a rather weighty decision after all, I should be thoughtful).

I considered the previous year, 2018. This was a year that tested me in ways I’ve never been tested. My health decided to forsake me and as desperately as I tried to swim up through the mayhem of new and damaging symptoms, I only seemed to sink deeper. I was committed to not giving up my life and livelihood even though its quality had been diminished. I fought fiercely to put on a smile and to tell people not to worry because I was fine when that was the farthest thing from the truth. I made jokes. I taught my students. I cooked meals. I attended soccer games and plays where my own kids were competing and performing.

Well, a shadow of me did anyway.

I realized this Christmas that other than remembering how distinctly terrible I felt and the anxiety that swallowed me up as a result, last Christmas was a vast black hole. Because you see, while every picture reveals a woman smiling and being active and grateful for her life and those in it, every picture also hid what was happening on the inside.

On any typical day, I am without fail annoyingly optimistic. I own this trait–and while it can be less than realistic at times, it is also the only way I care to look at this world and my place in it. But in the days between November 2017 and June 2018, not only did my optimism fade, but so did my hope that I would ever be well or whole again…that I would ever hear normally, that I would ever have a non-dizzy day. And as my hope withered slowly, so did my spirit. And as my spirit dwindled I no longer recognized the person I had become and quite honestly, this terrified me.

And then, as though a gift from above, I was offered and received the surgery that fixed most of the physical issues with my inner ear. It was overwhelmingly successful–I couldn’t have ever imagined I would feel this good again and while incredibly grateful, at some point I realized that even though my body was seemingly “cured” (even if only temporarily), I wasn’t healed. There was damage that no surgery could repair. The rebuilding of my trust and my hope and my optimism was going to take time–it was going to take effort…so. much. effort.

I began to think of Emily Dickinson and how she described hope–

“‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers-

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all -”

So I knew hope had to be there…maybe I hadn’t listened carefully enough in the furious “Gale” of those sick days to hear it singing (or maybe I was simply too tired to make the effort to try). But that’s the thing about hope–I don’t doubt that it was always waiting for me to seize it up enthusiastically and allow it to carry me forward. I don’t doubt the power of its force and I don’t doubt that it is there for every single human in this world who seeks it out despite hardship–hope is certainly not biased in who gets to partake. I also don’t doubt that hope, as powerful as it is, lacks the ability to swoop up an unwilling passenger–hope is not for the bystanders, it is an active state of being.

I lost hope because I grew too weary to fight harder to seek and to maintain and to nurture and to treasure it. I lost hope because I thought hope had forsaken me–I removed myself from the equation and I was too blind to even realize my role in this. And once I felt betrayed, once I felt abandoned by hope, all I could feel was sorry for myself. And this was new territory. It took me realizing that I needed to seek hope out for it to sing loudly enough for me to hear.

So, in my pausing to consider what word should define my new year, it was hope that reverberated in my mind and in my heart. This is a world that commands hope for survival. Even when you are not sick, sometimes the world seems to be. It can feel easier to give in to the pessimism, to the rancor, to the weight than to fight to see the goodness humanity still possesses and creates. But it is our job to see that light in others and in the world, to amplify the good, to sing the song of hope so loudly that everyone else cannot help but listen to its melody (and hopefully hum along). And for this year, and beyond, Hope (seeking it, singing it, living into it) is my word, my guide, my path back to myself and who I truly wish to be.

(This podcast is a really great listen for everyone but especially if you are suffering without cure in sight but might benefit from understanding the difference between being “fixed” and being “healed”. It has been an integral part of my understanding on this journey.)

Day 2 of Carnival Season writing challenge complete!