Tag: life

From Broken to Owning Happiness

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I think it was sometime early in college when I first got the label “borderline depression.” I wonder if there’s anything worse healthcare can do so simply and in such an offhand way for someone who’s dealing with feeling down than giving them labels like that? It took a long time to get over the labeling. Sometimes I still feel its hurt. The label told me I was broken and unfixable. It echoed what I was feeling at the time, that I was less than and unworthy.

There is much that I have to be thankful for that got me past that label western medicine dropped on me and brought me to this point where I own my happiness and can take on things like the happiness project that I’m doing this year. Back in my teens and twenties I went through some tough times when I could find no reason in myself to keep going. I had to look outside. I’m alive today because of my nieces and nephews. They were all kids back then. As someone who’d lost people in my life as a child, I knew how much it hurt. No matter how much living hurt for me then I couldn’t die because it would hurt them even more. I couldn’t do that to them. I say this because I know there are others out there who are going through what I went through then. When we’re hurting and can’t see the beauty and joy in ourselves sometimes it’s okay to let the beauty and joy of others be our safety net to support us as we rebuild and find our balance. It is good to recognize our interconnection. It’s good to remember that in hurting ourselves we hurt those who truly love us. In healing ourselves we bring joy to those who love us too.

I share my story too because it’s not over. People have good times and lousy times. Stress impacts us all and sometimes we get worn. In recent months I’ve been noticing that the combination of middle-age, a stressful career in special education in a high needs community, the political situation in the US, and the impacts of epilepsy and epilepsy treatment have all been wrapping me up and some days wearing me down.

I’m really appreciating my 2025 Happiness Project. I think it’s been key to keeping me going. I’ve noticed that I’m not angry as much. I calm quicker. I can empathize more often. I’ll be making some changes to it in April. Meditation and daily stretching seem to be becoming a regular habit that don’t need to be listed as goals anymore. I will keep doing at least 15 minutes of meditation and a few minutes of qi gong or other stretching daily, but will give myself space for some new goals. I will keep creative time as a goal. Right now I’m deciding if I might increase the amount of time I’ll commit daily. I started with 15 minutes daily, but often find myself doing more. I’ll also keep a goal of cutting out television at least two days a week.

I’ll add one or two new goals in April. I’m still deciding what those might be. Will I focus on getting out and connecting more? Maybe I should commit to singing every day? Would I like to commit to other writing projects, daily reading, or maybe something else? There are many ideas floating about. We’ll see what comes to fruition. In any case, I think I can be proud. I’ve come a long way from those days of not finding any joy in myself to seeing the many options for growing joy.

How are you growing your joy? You are worthy. Joy is there. What do you want to do to feed it and grow it and bring it to your life?

New Life

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The pandemic has provided its challenges and gifts. A lot of people seem to be looking at this past year as having been all about struggle and loss. A year that we’ll look back on with horror or at least deep sadness. I’m not so sure, at least not for myself.

Sure, there has been sadness. My Dad died last July. He was 92 years old. I miss him. I’ll always miss him. But, sadness at the passing of someone who is elderly and in the grips of dementia is always mixed. I will miss him, but I am also joyful that he could let go, move on, and no longer be held by the pain and fear that had become his life. Yeah, I got laid off. But, I got laid off from a job in Minnesota at a really unhealthy workplace where rumors, put downs, lying, and just generally disrespectful behaviors were the norm and wound up through a series of events finding myself working for a good friend on an incredible creative project and back home in Wisconsin.

It’s been a year for being open to possibilities. Last January a severe allergic reaction to a new medication for my epilepsy led to my doctor and I pursuing options beyond medications. In July I found myself at Mayo in the epilepsy monitoring unit. I started my visit on the anniversary of my Mom’s passing. I ended it a week later just after my Dad died by making the decision to honor them both by getting a vagus nerve stimulator implanted. I came back a week later and had the little device that is changing my life implanted close to my heart, reminding me of them. Now, it sends a stimulus through my vagus nerve every three minutes and, along with my medication, is controlling my seizures and making life normal again. My energy is back. It’s been months since I’ve woken up in the morning to a headache and sore tongue, and best of all my doctors and the state of Wisconsin agree that it’s safe for me to drive and live with the independence that a car provides when one lives in a small town.

A lot of people have gone on about boredom and loneliness because of the pandemic and I confess that I’ve had some moments of wanting to get out too, but mostly I have to admit I’ve appreciated this time alone. I’ve been reminded of the joy in slowness and the importance of creative space. I took guitar lesson for awhile, long enough to give me some basics to work with and to continue to teach myself. I’ve started to work on becoming an author of children’s books. Now that it’s spring I just started doing a little volunteering at Taliesin. I’ve been reading a lot more, continuing to write here, doing a little drawing too. How could I be bored or seeking something else when I am given the opportunity to find the creative space? The world runs us too fast and I am thankful that we’ve slowed down for the moment. It is sad that it took a pandemic to slow us, but I can only hope that we find some lessons about caring for our creative selves from this experience.

It’s not been all bad. It’s been a year for staying home and eating home cooking, a year for being creative, a year for relaxing and getting to know ourselves, a year for embarking on a new stage of life in so many ways. What lessons have we learned? What will we carry forth? What possibilities have we opened ourselves to? What is this new life that we are embarking on as this pandemic, hopefully, begins to draw to a close?