Tag: intimacy

Loss and change

by Jacqueline, posted in addiction, faith, family, god, Grandchildren, grief, hope, life, loss, love, recovery, selflove, spirituality, transformation, Uncategorized

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I was talking to my son this morning about his to-do list for the day in regards to the move that his family is making in less than a week.  In the middle of all the last minute preparations his sons are processing the reality of what is happening, as their toys, clothes and home are being packed up and put into boxes. Sammy, his five year old, is feeling sad about moving. Sammy said, “Daddy I like our house and my friends and our town. I don’t want to move to Nashville”. What a heartbreaking moment for father and son, as Sammy cannot feel or imagine anything beyond the safety and familiarity of his home. The loss is too substantial to embrace the adventure that lies ahead.

Moving is not new to me, as I spent most of my childhood and adult life relocating. It is challenging and requires resilience, patience and time to adjust, make friends and feel settled once again in a place one can call “home”. One would assume that my moving history and experience would be sufficient in preparing me for my most recent move into an apartment in the middle of a popular middle-class location in Chicago. However, I feel like my grandson about this move because, it is the final step out of a 30 year marriage and the family traditions and memories we developed over three decades.  I am sad about moving. I loved my house, my town, my neighborhood and the familiarity of hosting dinners, hearing delighted voices of grandchildren as they play at Nana’s house, enjoying the position of matriarch, like the nobility of the carved oak of the living room, I loved intentionally passing on traditions to the next generation within the walls of that sturdy house. I miss my dogs. My faithful comforters and witnesses, one in heaven and the other left behind, have left a lonely place in me that no one, or thing can fill.

My to-do list, which has kept my attention for five months, has also caused me to ignore these losses along the way and unbeknownst to me they  have been waiting to be acknowledged. Finally willing to wait no longer, I am flat on my back, sick in bed, with no energy to resist and left staring at this neglected part of me, forcing me to pay attention. As I stop and see what has happened in the last five months and the last five years, it is like a release of emotion, which has been held up by a dam of acceptance of all the choices I have made. I have chosen to accept the “unmaking” of my life in order to see and know the life of freedom, love, and self-discovery. I am already benefiting from these choices in ways that are unexpected and surprising. I am making decisions everyday that honor myself and the values I hold dear. However, in this moment of time, I do not want to be resilient, patient, adjust and move on. I do not feel like looking at the possibilities and benefits of this new adventure in my life. I  just want to lie here for a bit in the rubble and experience the loss.  Yes, I know that the great unknown lies ahead but, I just need to cry for awhile. I need to tend to myself, be still, trust, rest and grieve. I need to honor what has happened for what it is. The losses are integral to the unmaking. I cannot pass by the brokenness of this life and treat them like mistakes or ignore their role in story. They have equal, if not more value than the new pathway I have found myself taking. So I say to myself, “this is good and it will pass”. I choose to be grateful for these tears and the grief as they make me a better person and are necessary for this moment and whatever lies ahead.

I already know I will need to add to my list of losses, the fact that my son, his wife and my babies are moving away from me for a short while, but I also know that they will be okay and I will be okay, in spite of it all. Ernest Hemingway’s quote comes to mind…”The world breaks everyone, and afterward some are strong in the broken places”.

 

Come

by Jacqueline, posted in addiction, faith, god, hope, love, poetry, recovery, spirituality

broken heart

Come to the table just as you are,

addicted, grieving, broken, hopeless, traumatized, with mental illness, lonely and isolated,

come to the table.

Hearts of compassion and acceptance meet you,

Ears hear the depths of your pain,

Eyes see who you are,

Bread of community is shared and what was once hidden,

is illuminated, embraced, and gently felt.

Come to the table of love, where hope is restored and brothers and sisters bear the load.

scooter buddy

by Jacqueline, posted in life, love, selflove, transformation

I have attempted and accomplished many projects, the majority for little people under the age of seven. My latest is a scooter buddy, a small bag that attaches with velcro to a child’s scooter. It has a pocket for a water bottle or favorite stuffed animal and a zipper for even smaller treasures. The scooter buddy tutorial on Pinterest came with step-by-step instructions, including pictures. I decided that even the most inexperienced seamstress like myself, could successfully make a scooter buddy.

I arrived at the fabric store with my list and the bold confidence of an amateur ready to take on the task ahead of me. My detailed list however, did not prepare me for the countless bolts of fabric of various textures and colors, that were labeled incorrectly. Not one of them said medium weight fabric or heavy weight fabric like tutorial shopping list called for. After walking many times through each aisle, I started feeling like I was lost in a forest and was walking in circles. At this point I started to have a reaction in my body.  I felt my heart start to race, my confidence was replace with panic, and I started talking to myself. “I’m in a fabric store! People who shop in a fabric store know how to choose fabric! What were you thinking? Turn around and walk out. You do not want any further humiliation than what you are already experiencing, at least no one else knows.” Then I thought about how happy it would make me and my grandson to see his Perry the platypus riding in his scooter buddy down the street. I swallowed, walked to the counter, and courageously asked for suggestions. It was a short exchange between me and the fabric guru and I hid my incompetence up until the point of choosing the interfacing. She laid three choices before me. I broke out in a sweat and thought, what is interfacing?! Well what was I to do? I asked her which one she thought would be best. The choices were made, she expertly calculated and cut the exact measurements from my list and I thanked her and started breathing again and had a renewed excitement and conviction that the hardest step was behind me.

I awoke the next morning, laid out all of my supplies, dusted off my sewing machine and opened my computer to the bookmarked page, Scooter Buddy Tutorial.  With the determination of a grandmother longing to see the eyes of her grandson light up, I began my task. My journey in creating the scooter buddy did not look like the step-by-step pictures on my computer. I found myself following directions and yet had several instances where I laid the fabric incorrectly and had to do it over. My seam ripper and I became very close in the next two days. How did I find myself in this predicament when the tutorial was so clear? I don’t know how to “finish” an edge. Where is that zigzag stitch? Do I have to use a different foot to install a zipper? And for heaven sake how did I end up with a inch wider piece of fabric than I should have?! I was becoming overwhelmed and had a sense of dread that my scooter buddy might end up looking like a scooter disaster or worse than that, I might need to go back to the fabric store. I pushed through the setbacks and mistakes to the final step in the project, with a deep breath I turned it inside out to reveal the truth. Much to my amazement it was perfect! I couldn’t be happier.

I have been reflecting on the process of creating my scooter buddy and I realize that the journey of love has been very similar for me. I feel safe and courageous with my specific list of ideas of what love looks like and am confident that all of my loving traits will make me quite a catch. I am kind, gentle, forgiving, empathetic, caring, patient, and of course, a good listener. I am confident I am ready to love! That theory has been tested recently in a new relationship. Like the trip to the fabric store, I feel lost, overwhelmed, scared, panicked and humiliated, as I enter my later years and realize that I am an amateur at love. I like to be right. I don’t like to make mistakes. I am impatient when my lover doesn’t understand me. I keep making the same mistakes over and over again, with greater consequences than using a seam ripper. Many tears have been shed by my beloved, because I’m more concerned about my own needs. I want to run away and quit. I find myself frustrated at how little I know about being in a loving relationship. I’m often afraid of a love disaster.  I have had many moments where I just want to have a chat with the love guru so that I have all I need to make sure all is perfect, especially me.

I am a student. Love is my teacher. I am committed to experience the pain and pleasure that co-exist in the journey. I am learning about myself and that love is hard. It takes work and time.  I do not have a detailed  instruction manual. As much as that scares me, it also has freed me to be human. I can make mistakes and  cut away the unhealthy parts of me that keep me from receiving and giving love. It’s okay to not have the answers. I am more beautiful when I have questions.  Love is a lot like my scooter buddy project, there are do-overs, mistakes, adjustments along the way. It takes humility and courage to love, and the truth that is unfolding is how perfect and incompetent I am. One day I hope to walk into the fabric store accepting that I will never be an expert and applauding myself for my courage.