Status Update

Reevah (my longtime clinical supervisor and mentor) always said, "we feel ambivalent about everything" and "we have a right to our thoughts and feelings." With those sage assumptions in mind, I am feeling all my feelings right now. I am feeling confident and overwhelmed. Tired and stimulated. In control and out of control. I am so grateful to be having this experience and cranky that it is kicking my butt. Dr. Susan Crimmins might call this noticing, without judgment, tracking, orienting and pendulating. Asking for help and leaning on my support system is helping. Now I am planning the rounds with all my healers - chiropractor, accupuncturist, massage therapist, pedicurist, colorist, etc. I am tackling self-care in a way that is tested and true - through the body (especially, when going to the gym for a sauna & steam bath after a work out sounds like too much work).

Thank goodness for my primary resiliency factor, spirituality. Thank goodness for the humanistic-existentialist approach that I learned by reading and listening to Irvin Yalom and Carl Rogers. Also, thank goodness for buddhism and mindfulness. They have saved my life more than once. The self-awareness and self-acceptance espoused by these approaches allows me to face my challenging new experiences full-on in order to integrate them and come out whole. Stoicism is over-rated and inauthentic. Who needs it? There's nothing weak about being real - in fact, it takes a whole lot of courage and confidence to be vulnerable and lift the veil on the horribly beautiful truth that there is a lot we don't know, we are imperfect. And isn't that grand? Where does striving to reach "perfection," internally or in polite company, lead to anyway? What a relief to be human and just as we are. The sign that the revolution took hold is being able to say (quoting Wanda Sykes) "I'ma be Me."