On Steps

There's this movie What About Bob? it was a pretty big hit-Bill Murray and all.  Well there's this idea..."baby steps." If you break down a harrowing journey into single, tiny, baby steps. I've found myself whispering "baby steps" all week to myself like...well a crazy person...please no comments.  Ha! Well anyway it's gone something like this:

Bob Wiley: ...baby step onto the elevator... baby step into the elevator...I'm *in* the elevator.

[doors close]

Bob Wiley: AHHHHHHHHHHH

This week has been like surfing a sea turtle in a hurricane, but I'm trying to see what I need to learn from it (aside from not giving up and jumping shell).  Sunday I found my answer at church in three ways.

1. One of our speakers was giving a beautiful talk about and the light I gleaned from it was the importance of CHOOSING to be forgiving.  To family members, to friends, to anyone who may have extenuating circumstances leading to an "offense" against me.  To myself for not being more readily forgiving.

2. D teaches Sunday School and always does a spectacular job. I had a good hour to ponder and meditate to myself about what a gift it is to have CHOICES.  We have to outstanding opportunity to make decisions; eggs or cereal, ham or turkey, chocolate or vanilla. Anger or peace.  We do not, however have the opportunity to choose the consequences (good or bad) of these choices, which is a very important truth.

3. When the women all met together later, we had a most heartwarming discussion group, again about CHOICE. The choice to love and be loved in particular; by each other, by God, by ourself! How deserving are we all of choosing to love us, exactly as we are in this very instant.

I'm reminded of a quote by the well beloved Dr. Seuss 

Somedays you can baby step a whole treck of steps in the right direction for you. Other days, you can take a couple baby steps.  And thats a-okay, friends. 

xo, Hannie

On Cyclothymia

Cyclothymia, it sounds scarier than it is. Well...sometimes it's as scary as it sounds. And I have it.

I don't remember the exact date or the exact way I was told and honestly neither of those things are very important.  I do believe, however, that it is important to help illuminate this lesser-known "mental illness."

Like many of it's kind, Cyclothymia is invisible in a lot of ways.  It creeps up on you and unsettles just about everything in your life. Your job, your appetites, and even, terrifyingly your relationships and sense of self.  It is sudden, subtle and severe mood swings that take near total control. It brings on anxiety and a host of other symptoms. It wrecked my world. For about five hours.

At first I cried and cried and cried and did the whole cliched "why me" bit, and then I found my power.  I don't claim to be perfect, a pillar, a shining beacon of living a successful and completely well balanced life.  All I knew and all I know is that I can do the best I can with what I am given. It is my belief that I will never be handed a card too difficult to play.  I AM strong enough.

My journey is just starting and frankly has been so hard on my long-suffering D. I thank God for him every single day. And yes I still cry from time to time but I listen to some good music, color some mandalas and deal with it.  I've never in my life surfed, but I imagine my life as one long surf (I really don't know surfing terminology ha). The waves go up and then they go down, sometimes there are a bunch of rad people shredding with me. Sometimes I am alone. Sometimes the sea is pitch black and I wonder why I'm surfing in the first place. Sometimes all I can do is paddle. But that's life.

I can be strong so long as all that means is trying a little harder to be a little better each day.  If yesterday was a little difficult, good news! "Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it yet."

And now, dear friends I'll leave you with a lovely, little poem by my very first favorite poet whom I met once in the fifth grade and convinced me to become a poet.

xo   Hannie

Prayer in my Boot

For the wind no one expected

For the boy who does not know the answer

For the graceful handle I found in a field
attached to nothing
pray it is universally applicable

For our tracks which disappear
the moment we leave them

For the face peering through the cafe window
as we sip our soup

For cheerful American classrooms sparkling
with crisp colored alphabets
happy cat posters
the cage of the guinea pig
the dog with division flying out of his tail
and the classrooms of our cousins
on the other side of the earth
how solemn they are
how gray or green or plain
how there is nothing dangling
nothing striped or polka-dotted or cheery
no self-portraits or visions of cupids
and in these rooms the students raise their hands
and learn the stories of the world

For library books in alphabetical order
and family businesses that failed
and the house with the boarded windows
and the gap in the middle of a sentence
and the envelope we keep mailing ourselves

For every hopeful morning given and given
and every future rough edge
and every afternoon
turning over in its sleep

-Naomi Shihab Nye 

On Re-Vamping My Blog!

Since starting this little blogie my life has changed, a lot, a little and not at all. And so I think it is overdue for a good revamping! I'm not sure what I will write about nor why, I know it will be funny and sad. I know it will have an obscene number of pictures of my dog and inspirational quotes from my favorite literature and the beginning of Criminal Mind's episodes. Hopefully it'll put a little good out into the world, or at least help me appreciate how good my world is. At any rate, life's a hell of a thing to happen to a person, but at least we're all in it together!

xo Hannie

p.s. Meet D and Shirley

On The Music Man: A Confession

"Oh, my dear little librarian. You pile up enough tomorrows, and you'll find you are left with nothing but a lot of empty yesterdays. I don't know about you, but I'd like to make today worth remembering."

And ever since I was a little girl this was the main reason I always picked this movie when we went to rent one. This quote. I'm not sure why it has stuck with me, perhaps because Harold Hill is such a suave, debonaire con man. I mean who could resist his velvet voice and clever repartee? Or perhaps it is his charmingly stubborn counterpart Marian Paroo. Perhaps it is simply a mixture of both. So, I admit it. I'm obsessed. But can you blame me? All I know is that there are two major lessons the music man has taught me.
1. Someday I will feel like this...

and
2. until then I am content with this...

and that is all I have to say on the subject.

On Saber's Beads

If you want an actual explanation of Saber's Beads you can find it here.  I find that the best definition is that Saber's Beads are a "necklace of staggered brightness."  I think life is full of staggered brightness-es.  For example feeling the beat of a bass at your favorite band's tour launch, a perfect breeze on a Sunday, a little brother.  Eventhough I don't have much to say or a very big voice at all I would like to think that my life is full of staggered brightness.  If I'm going to blog, I think I will blog about them; brightness-es shown to or observed by me.  And that is all for now, I think.