Life After Tampons

Last week was the first week in the history of Life After Tampons that I didn’t publish a blog post.  I had one ready.  Actually, I have about six of them ready.  But I just didn’t like any of them and – more importantly – I just didn’t feel like it.

I hit the wall.  Hard.

I am in a deeply creative field for the first time in my life, and I just haven’t figured out the balance between caring for myself and caring for my business.  In working through the “problem,” I just spent a bit of time with my own coach and heard myself say,

“I forgot to eat an orange.”

My whole life I have had a super-secret resentment that I have an actual body that needs caring for.  I used to joke (except I wasn’t really joking at all) that my body was simply a transportation vehicle to take my brain from one interesting thing to another.

When I was in the 7^th grade, I actually calculated how much of my life would be “wasted” on bodily functions — if you live to 75, you spend over 30 years of it just keeping yourself alive.

When I was in my twenties I remember actually crying at the bookstore because I figured out that, no matter how hard I studied, I could never know all the things I wanted to know because the whole time I was learning, someone else was out there writing stuff I was going to need to add to my list of things to do and learn.

I LOVE learning – all kinds.  I collect ideas and love to take them out of different compartments of my brain and mix them up in new and exciting ways. I LOVE these ideas.  I LOVE your ideas.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE writing for you, speaking for you, coaching you.

BUT, every now and then, I need to eat an orange.

And drink water.  And get sunshine, and work out, and make a drawing, and sit in the hot tub, and get together in some meaningful way with other creative folks.

I’m among friends, I know.  A continual commitment to self-care is problematic for many women.  I don’t know that I could or would have done anything differently these past few months.

Many of you know that we moved last December.  This was my first move in 23 years and, while I am absolutely in love with our new life in the Magical Enchanted Unicorn Sherwood Forest (Each week, I add a fairy tale adjective to the description just to annoy my darkly practical husband), I also need to honor the place I came from.

I moved from my very first “grown up” home.  It was the first home to all my babies.  It was the place we came after our daughter died.  When we moved, I left her memorial tree planted in the front yard.  The back room was where I lay on my left side for FOUR MONTHS so that my eldest son could be born safely (he’ll be twenty tomorrow).

This was the home where I had all my memories with my boys and their dad.  It was the home where we had great hopes, and it was the home where some of those hopes died.  My friends are still “back home.”  I miss them all dearly and it will just take time to grow and nurture similar friendships here.

Everything new is work.  When you are working to change your life, don’t forget not to remember to acknowledge that it is hard to move into a new and beautiful space.  There is loss in everything new.  You can be thrilled with your new life, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be sad to see the other one go.

All beauty coexists with loss.  Without loss, you couldn’t conceive of Grace.

And so, just for today, I will eat an orange.  I will take a long walk in the woods with The Italian.  I will get out my flute and play for myself.  I will make lovely meals for my family and pay exquisite attention to the moments that make up the days that are slipping by in the lives of my last two children.

I will restore my soul.

Thank you for being here with me.  I am so very grateful.

Jen

Photo: Flickr, nattu

When I get stuck about what to write about, I’ll often ask a friend to give me a word and then just jam on that.  This morning’s word was “resurrection” and, of course, the first thing I thought about was “insurrection.”

A quick on-line dictionary check, gave me these definitions:

Insurrection:  A violent uprising against an authority or government: “opposition to the new regime led to armed insurrection”.

Resurrection:  a rising again, as from decay, disuse, etc.; revival.

It’s interesting that both words speak of “rising.”  Just a couple of weeks ago, it occurred to me that, if we LATvians had one common connection, it would be this:

Life After Tampons is a community of “Women Who Rise.” (click to tweet)

The difference between the two lies in the energy and community behind the rising.  If you are part of an INSURRECTION, you are part of a GROUP of people who are rising up in anger at the status quo.  You are rising up AGAINST something.

When you have been resurrected, it is a very private thing.  It is a quiet rebirth.  You alone are being born anew, freed from decay, death (here I mean emotional and spiritual death) and disuse.

If you are proactive about your life, you can have a gentler awakening to transformation.  But, if you let things go, if you abdicate your responsibility to your own happiness again and again and again, eventually you are likely to get very pi$$ed indeed.

Thus, the INSURRECTION – think How Stella Got Her Groove Back or The First Wives’ Club.

When I first got sober all those years ago, I remember saying to one of the women who was helping me that, often I didn’t drink because I was too proud to come back to my friends and tell them I had failed, to which she replied,

“Jennifer, there’s no wrong reason to stay sober today.”

Of course, in my grandiosity, I wanted to be more spiritual than that.  My friend had a way of cutting right to the quick of my ego, and using it to help me help myself.  Change agents will do that; they will use any tool at their disposal to call attention to the path of transformation.

As your “midlife midwife” here’s what I’m delivering today:  You can rise up in anger against the status quo OR you can simply awaken to what’s already calling to you from within.

And NEITHER is a wrong approach.  Eventually, though, the anger will hurt you.  It will eat at you in a way that puts you at risk of becoming embittered.  And nobody wants to hang out with an angry harpy.

However, if you need to get a little outraged today to get going, so be it.  Just remember this:  EVERYTHING that STAYS in your life is there at your own invitation.  Not everything that happens to you, but everything you allow to continue to hurt you.

And remember, you don’t have to leave something to be free of it.  Nope.  Instead of running away, consider running TOWARD . . .

. . . Yourself.

Your own beautiful heart.

Your own beautiful dream.

Your own beautiful possibility.

Your joy is waiting for you.  In fact, you’ve even got a place all ready in your heart to receive it.  Right now that place is holding resentment.  As soon as you put that aside, you’ll have a place for the joy to dwell.

Insurrection.  Resurrection.  Either will work.  One is more sustainable.  But, if you’re stuck you don’t need to worry about that.

Simply.  Begin.

Love, Jen

P.S.  Here at Life After Tampons, we begin with the Breakthrough.  So get your free copy (of my book) here.  After that, though, you’re going to need a strong strategic plan for your comeback.  I’ve created a Comeback QuickStart Guide for you.  Let me know where to send your copy below.

photo: flickr, widerbergs

A wise woman once told me that the past was good for two things:  to learn from and to enjoy.

In general, I don’t believe we should spend too much time wandering around in the past.  Unless you’ve done your clean-up work on it, the past can be a very dangerous neighborhood.  We ought not go there unescorted.

Guilt, shame, regret, and sorrow are all indicators that we have unfinished business that we need to address.  The most important thing that I hope you realize is that your pain is a gift.  It is telling you that you have missed something important.

When thinking of our past, we want to transform more of our memories from “learn from” to “enjoy.”  And that is easier to do than you might think.

To separate and neutralize the pain from your past, you simply go back to where you (or others) “dropped a stitch,” see what spiritual lessons you missed, make that correction, and MOVE ON.

Here’s how:

Do you feel guilty about something?  Okay, let’s fix that.  Think about what you think you did wrong and consider this:  What could you have done differently?  Great.  Now resolve to try that better approach the next time.  And, if you’ve wronged someone, please make amends.

If you can’t think of anything that you would or could have done differently, then I have to ask you why you refuse to let go of that situation.  When you choose to feel guilty about things over which you had no control, you are acting the martyr.

Please stop that now.  No one likes it and it doesn’t serve either you or them.  Let’s see if we can’t find a better way to get attention.  Better yet, let’s see if we can’t skip that “attention needing part” and simply put our attention where it is better used — on loving our present lives and helping others.

Do you feel ashamed of something?  Perfect.  The way to heal shame is to bring it into the Light of Truth.  Shame is a smarmy insidious feeling, it can only thrive in the dank hidden places of your heart.  Since you are as sick as your secrets, the way you heal shame is to tell on yourself.

Meet with your most trusted (and reasonably healthy girlfriend) and say this:  “I feel ashamed about . . . .”  You don’t need her to absolve you of anything, though I imagine she’ll give you a fresh perspective that you are sorely lacking.  All you really need is to be rid of the secret.

To me, shame is a particularly horrible and destructive feeling.  While Guilt says ‘I’ve DONE something bad,’  Shame says, ‘I AM something bad.’   Very few people are, by the way.  Bad, I mean.

Most of us just aren’t that important (and yes, if you are wallowing in shame it’s likely that you are getting some feeling of importance by being the “best at being the worst” thus and such you know.)

Stop it now, please!

Do you regret something?  Awesome!  Remember, the past is good for two things: to learn from and to enjoy.  What you learn from your regrets is to be a better risk-taker.  Think about your present situation.  Pick something that you know you need and want to try but fear just a little bit.  Now, GO DO THAT THING.

Go ahead.  I’ll wait.

Um, I sort of meant NOW, love.

The antidote to regret is to stop allowing yourself to miss out on living TODAY.  (click to tweet)

Regret is LITERALLY a waste of time.  That means that to the EXACT extent that you allow yourself the luxury of regret – to just that extent  – you SQUANDER your Precious Present.

Do you feel sorrow about something?  Well, then, my love, you have learned to love rightly!  Sorrow is the bill that comes due when love changes.  Do not feel surprised by sorrow, then.  Sooner or later, one of us is going to the other one’s funeral.  Why does this surprise you?

The antidote for sorrow is – you guessed it – to live more fully today.  Love more fully TODAY.  Make your life an unbroken stream of thoughts, words, and deeds that are your personal expression of love.  And service.

If you are held back by your unhealed feelings of your past, do something about it.  And remember:  Your beautiful past is good for two things – to learn from and to enjoy.

Enjoy your memories.  Clean up your mistakes.  And then, as you go through the Beautiful Present, consciously create THIS DAY as a gift of love and service to all you meet.

Love, Jen

P.S.  For further help getting unstuck from your past, make sure you have read our new book Breakthrough.  Download your free copy here.

Photo:  Flickr, Samuel Sharpe