Wild Flowers Lori

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I was chatting with my sister on my way home from work this afternoon. As I was pulling into the driveway the older neighbor couple was walking on the sidewalk toward my driveway. They are such a lovely couple as she always has treats for Phoebe (my dad’s mini schnauzer) and her husband is a kind as can be. They always have a kind word and beautiful smiles to share. After showering Phoebe with treats, Phoebe and I went inside. I hung up my keys, kicked off my shoes and took a long hot shower.

After getting out of the shower I put on some music. I was listening to Sturgill Simpson as I was doing my facial routine. I love his music because I believe he writes from the feelings of his life and he isn’t afraid to share them. I don’t know this artist personally but I have to say there is something about a man who is able to freely share his feelings whether they are good, bad or insecure. In my eyes it is a sign of being whole, of not being afraid to be human and not being afraid to be vulnerable. To be able to be vulnerable is a sign of maturity and growth. Who are we if we stay stagnant in our feelings? We are the same story, different day. But to be able to grow, share, express, feel and acknowledge our feelings to our own self is beautiful and to be able to do all that with someone else is life changing.

I was listening to Sturgill I found myself dancing around my bathroom as I was cleansing and moisturizing. I have not done that in a long time. I got a sense of carefreeness and I really haven’t felt that in a very much longer time. To sing and dance and take care of my skin was fun and it made me smile. I haven’t smiled in the mirror since my sweet momma passed away in February. Her and I have the same mouth and same slightly crooked smile. When I look in the mirror I see her and it has been too painful. Today I smiled, danced and sang. It felt really good, I felt a little more like myself this afternoon.

I have been meditating a little everyday, a couple of times a day since my last post a few days ago. Taking the time to sit, be still, listen and let go has been so helpful. I find myself more peaceful through out my day and happier as well because I cultivated some time for myself.

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To the people who are caregivers out there, the ones who set aside their own life for a little or a long while to give to, take care of and encourage others…I understand and love you. No one knows what it is like to be you. No one knows the conflicting thoughts you have about wanting to live your own life and being there for loved ones like you do. All our thoughts are different yet connected. I can only act on my own conscious. I never wanted to give up on nor stop encouraging my momma. I told my dad I would stay for a year and that year is almost up. Life is not the same. Hopefully the future will hold love and memories and be open for new adventures of love and exploration.

~L

“Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.”

~Mother Teresa

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Today is Christmas. I am not going to get into the mood of the day or emotions of this past year. I just want to figure out something.

I stress around the holidays a little more than usual. My mind goes awry with all that needs to be done with gifts, family logistics and a grieving dad (that I am living with for two more months) and job that has crazy hours. EVERY single day I feel my body tense up in a way that is screaming for help. My neck is stiff, my upper back is like a wall of stone, my lower back is begging to be stretched, my legs are not too bad but my hip flexors are NOT flexible! My body is a wreck and on top of all that I have Let. It. Go. I mean seriously let it go. Sometimes when I look in the mirror I cannot even recognize the person looking back at me. She has to be someone else because when she looks back at me she says, “Ummmm, who the hell are you?!” The only thing that still looks good and is still the same as a few years ago is my hair and that is because I pay someone else to take care of it! Lol….

Getting back to tonight and the reason for this post. I came into the spare bedroom that I made into a yoga/meditation room. When one walks into this room they see long flowy pieces of driftwood that go from floor to ceiling in the far corners. Curtains that fall whimsically to the floor have softs corals and beautiful flowers. The little nightstand in the corner hugging one of the pieces of driftwood is a soft white and has a drawer with seahorse pulls. On top of the nightstand sits an aroma therapy candle, a beautiful cedar box with yoga toes, essential oils, smaller pieces of driftwood, a singing bowl, sand grains from India that a former lover gave me, a rock in the shape of a heart and plate with sage to burn. In the middle of the rooms lays a yoga mat, a meditation pillow and a foam roller. This room has all that is needed to relax, unwind and move my body.

I have always wanted a room like this and I feel amazing when I am in here. I feel most at peace when I am sitting upon my meditation pillow and letting the cares just roll off my shoulders. When I am in this room I often bring in a hot cup of tea and just sit in silent giddiness because I am so happy to be there in that moment.

When I do yoga in here I am grateful that I have the space to spread out and move my body freely.

So what I need to figure out is:

WHY DON’T I USE THIS ROOM MORE OFTEN ON A REGULAR BASIS?!?!?!?!

More importantly, why am I not doing what makes me feel good more often? Granted these past few years have been stresssssful and when I am stressed I’d rather just go to bed or go sit in the park with a bean burrito and a bean soft taco supreme! I know, I know…it is easier to run and hide with comfort food. But running and hiding with comfort food is a temporary feel good thing and I regret it later because of weight gain and indigestion. Meditation and yoga is long lasting, so why again don’t I choose long lasting over temporary?

I am going to do an experiment starting tonight. I am going to log and track when my stressful mood and feelings hit and why. Then I am going to log and track which path I take in dealing with said feelings. Run and hide or flow and meditate.

(side bar: this is why I buy a daily planner with the month AND the individual days so I can write stuff out day by day.)

I would like to say that I am going to do this for a solid month but who knows. Really I just want to figure out some things and if that takes a week, 3 weeks or a month than so be it.

In two months I know my stress will dissipate dramatically. I know I will have ample amount of time to let feelings of these past few years rise and fall. But I also know that I cannot carry on for two more months like I am now. It is not working.

~L

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
― Mary Oliver

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My dad’s pocket knife.

A piece of small branch.

Me sitting on a small boulder in the middle of a low gently flowing river whittling away.

I couldn’t have been more than 6 or 7. That is my fondest childhood memory. Something simple, peaceful and out in nature. I am my best person when I am outside. So how at this point in my life am I still in a job I don’t love or really like and I live in a house that isn’t mine?

My smart, beautiful, amazing and loving momma passed away on February 2 of this year. She passed with her husband and children all around her, loving her. No matter how surrounded by love my momma was at the end…it still sucks. I can barely type these words because they still seem so unreal.

I was fortunate enough to have my momma Gina for almost 44 years. Life is now totally messed up.

I don’t know how to move forward. My dad is lost. I am lost. I am ready to move out of my parents house. It’s been almost 6 months since she has passed. My mom would say to move out and move forward. My dad on the other hand wants me to stay. I worry about him being alone. Is six months long enough to leave a grieving parent after the other one passes? My siblings say to move out as I need privacy and dad needs to get used to life with out someone in the house all the time. But they are not here at all hours of the day seeing the look of confusion and loss on his face. It is heartbreaking.

For my own good I need to move on from this house. I look in the mirror and do not even recognize myself.

I miss the outdoors. I don’t go hiking much these days. I have been backpacking once since February and was so grossly out of shape that it was embarrassing.

I have to find my way back to my passions. I am bushwhacking through life right now. I have all the gear to forge a path but no motivation to do it. The grief/depression has a grip that I cannot wrestle myself from underneath. Maybe it will leave me when I leave this house.

I need a home that is mine. A place to work on, cultivate and make a home.

This is my dad’s home and my mom is still here. I love that she is still here.

I miss my mother.

~Lori

“Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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Duuuuuuuuuudes…..  I am totally at an impasse!  I have been wracking my brain for the past several weeks about what to do come June 19.  I have this cozy, sometimes air conditioned, sometimes not air conditioned, Airbnb until then.  What comes next is either buy the van which will take 12-16 weeks for the factory to build because of certain things I want, or rent a place for a year to give myself some much needed stability and structure.

See this past year and half was wonderfully stressful.  Make sense?  Yeah, probably not so let me explain.  lol…

On the evening of December 31, 2018 I was having fun with friends at Sky Bridge Station down in the Red River Gorge in Kentucky when I received a phone call from my dad that started out, “Don’t rush home but I had to take your mom to the E.R. tonight.”  What?!?!?!  So I of course rush home the next morning.  What turned out to be bronchitis quickly turned to pneumonia and then almost 4 months of hospitalizations, cardiac rehab and back to the hospital and then back again to cardiac rehab.  My momma is doing fine now but it was a long road when she finally did make it home and then it was months of in home care.  I stayed with them to help out which was my pleasure for two reasons.  1.  I had foot surgery that February so they let me convalesce there and 2. They are my parents and there isn’t anything I would not do for them.

So my mom gets to a point where she is healing up pretty well so I decided to take a big ol’ trip out west for three weeks.  Upon return my dad, yet again the bearer of great news, tells me that he didn’t want to tell me while I was on the road but he has to have a heart catheterization literally the day after I get home.   Turns out my dad needed triple bypass surgery!  Duuuude…really?!?!?!  So he asks me to stay and I of course said yes because I am the only one out of their four children that sent my mom into labor, they wiped my butt, put up with my oh so pleasant teenage boy crazy attitude and I pretty much blew out the 4×4 on their Ford Bronco (the massive one where I could barely see over the dash board) because I was in a hurry.  I was sixteen years old, my boyfriend was coming home from college and I couldn’t wait to leave my lifeguard post for the day.  When I hopped in the Bronco at the end of my shift and threw it into drive I crashed because I didn’t see the cement light post (sans light post) in front of the hood I could barely see over.  Soooooo I figured I owed them ANOTHER round of daily in home care taking.

And for the record it was NOT just me taking care of my parents.  My siblings and I pulled together like soldiers to make sure that everything and I mean everything was taken care of.

My sister Lisa is an ICU nurse and kept everyone abreast of what was going on in calm yet “let’s cut out the bullshit” way of a nurse she is.  I am sure she is nicer at explaining things to her patients than she is to her family.  But she was literally the cats a$$ and that is why I made her my Healthcare POA.  Plus I know she wouldn’t pull the plug on me too early nor too late.  ;D

My sister Lana was the comic relief.  No one can do a slutty Russian accent better than her and she continuously boosted our spirits with her humor and need to keep the peace attitude.  Plus she is a pretty decent baker so that came in handy!

Our brother Donnie (the oldest) and most likely to have a plaque on his desk that says, “I’m kind of a big deal”, talked to every doctor, nurse, social worker and beyond.  He seems to have endless connections because, he was kind of a big deal, at a hospital where he once worked.  Although his three sisters do keep his ego in check. 🙂  So he made sure that our parents received the absolute best care where they were being treated.

Now we are back.  It is now mid January, my mom is doing better and my dad recovered in the utmost text book way.  Three cheers for them and their not wanting to kick the bucket before I get married!  No I am not getting married but hopefully I’ll meet the man of my dreams and they’ll be around hanging on beyond their time when I do get married!  Probably screaming Holy crap it’s about time!!!  Hahaha…

Along comes February and I am looking for a van. I will stay with my folks the few months it’ll take to build out and then be on my merry way!

Then COVID-19 strikes and sends everything into chaos.  Next thing I know I have to quarantine myself from my parents because I work in an ICU that was housing COVID patients.  Now the van is a distant memory for the foreseeable future.

This all leads me to where I am now, sitting in this rented Airbnb typing away trying to figure out what to do next while sweating my butt off. 

Do I buy a van and hope COVID doesn’t have a massive resurgence with everything reopening or get a nice place for a year to regroup, breathe, get in better shape, don’t be stressed and sleep like an effing rock!?

To be continued…

~L

“Give what you have.  To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.”

~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

 

 

Light is shining through the front windows casting slatted shadows on the hardwood floor.  Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgeralds’ voices are filling the air of this cute space I rented for a short time.  Frida Kahlo is staring at me with a cup of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other.  She is probably wondering what I am going to do with the next five days off, praying I am not just another boring guest in this home.  I filled the front of the house with bushy beautiful bouquets of flowers to make this place feel a little more soft and homey while I am here.  Momma Earth is coming out of hibernation and her gift of a renewed earth every spring is the loveliest time of the year.

I am sitting at the bottom of a hill that is filled with so much history.  Normally the streets are filled with people darting in and out of shops and cafes.  But during this pandemic most are holed up in their homes making the best of it and hopefully becoming inspired by free time and imagination.

Morning Poem by Mary Oliver

Every morning 

the world

is created.

Under the orange

 

sticks of the sun

the heaped

ashes of the night

turn into leaves again

 

and fasten themselves to the high branches –

and the ponds appear

like black cloth

on which are painted islands

 

of summer lilies.

If it is your nature 

to be happy

you will swim away along the soft trails

 

for hours, your imagination

alighting everywhere.

And if your spirit

carries in it

 

the thorn

that is heavier than lead –

if it’s all you can do

 to keep on trudging    –

 

there is still

somewhere deep within you

a beast shouting that the earth

is exactly what it wanted –

 

each pond with its blazing lilies

is a prayer heard and answered

lavishly,

every morning,

 

whether or not

you have ever dared to be happy,

whether or not

you have ever dared to pray.

 

 

~Much love and health,

Lori

“Give what you have.  To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Be brave.

Hold steady.

Trust your visions.

~Lori

“Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.”

~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I was just introduced to this poet. Now I’m not much into poetry but this gal was truly a luscious flower in the field. Mary Oliver I wish I would have been introduced to you sooner ✌🏻🌱🌎

~L

“Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I never thought I’d find a spiritual guru, well I never thought I needed one man. But several years ago I found myself in a life crisis. I was stuck between a breakup and a geographical WTH moment! I’ve written about that before so I won’t go into details of that but you can find the posts here –> Hello God? Part one and here–> Hello God?? Part two

Deepak Chopra has a book called the Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. One of the laws is the Law of Detachment. It states: “…that in order to acquire anything in the physical universe, you have to relinquish your attachment to it. This doesn’t mean you give up the intention, and you don’t give up the desire. You give up your attachment to the result.”

I’m telling you guys that this law is the bomb diggity of all the laws! It is the most liberating feeling to be able to put this law into effect!

Deepak Chopra also goes on to say that “attachment is based on fear and insecurity and the need for security is based on not knowing the true Self.”

Um..word to your momma on that one! I was unknowingly adrift in a ocean trying to find myself. But the crazy part was that I thought I knew myself inside and out. Looking back I realize that who I thought I knew was really the perception of what everyone else thought of me and expected me to be.

That’s some crazy shiznit! I learned to detach myself spiritually from everyone else’s thoughts, feelings, expectations, desires and most of all emotions that I LET negatively affect me. I learned that the outcome was not what I should be concerned with. My intentions could remain true while letting go.

I say to people that ya gotta let it go and let it flow. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not perfect when it comes to practicing this all the time but I have to say that I am not the same emotionally reactive person I was five or six years ago. All we have is this moment and then it’s gone, not to resurface again. What happens if you dwell on something that you have no control over?

But first let’s ask ourselves what we actually do have control over. I have control over how I choose to respond and what I choose to let take hold of me.

So maybe someone says to me, “Hey Lori! Uh.. looks like you enjoyed a few too many holiday cookies.” I could respond with snarky disdain or I could be be like, “But darn they were tasty!” Or maybe I could (and should) just let it go and say nothing at all because their words are looking for a response and their words speak of the hurt they are feeling somewhere and they decided to direct it towards me. I know my true self and choose to let the remark go and let it flow AND my intention for this person could be positive and I don’t have to let go of said positive intention but I do need to let go of what I think they’ll say the next time we meet.

In practicing the Law of Detachment I have found more and more security and comfort. Being secure in the unknown gives me a sense of peace. I don’t have to wonder, analyze, worry or try to figure out the unknown because I am completely comfortable in not knowing.

The Law of Detachment also helps me mind my own business. One can wax poetic philosophies all day but in the end I don’t feel the need to impose my beliefs on anyone. Not to say that listening and learning is bad but I won’t thump my views until I get a follower/believer.

I used to like to be involved in people’s problems. I’d be like, “I can help! I’m a nurturer, fixer and a warm loving blanket to wrap around you. Ask me to help you! Let me be the one to listen! Let me be the one you go to!!!!” Ugh… that was freakin exhausting! I LET people suck my energy because I wanted to be the emotional martyr! Why? Because I was insecure and wanted to be needed.

I no longer trespass on people. (Although sometimes if I’ve had a little too much to drink the old me comes out and I despise my poor decisions in the morning.). I say that my give a s@#% factor is zero and I don’t say that to be mean, not at all. But, unless someone seeks me out then my give s@#% is zero because it’s based on not knowing and quite frankly the less I’m know sometimes the better off I am. Also I say it because other people’s opinions of me are none of my business and I don’t give a s@#%. I know my truth. I know I am a good person and I live a mostly good life.

The Law of Detachment also helps me detach from my ego. And my ego needs regular detaching. Lol…

~L

“Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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Lunacy man, gosh darn lunacy.  The sky is various shades of blue, the grass various shades of green and my life is various shades of gray.  Well my favorite color is green but that doesn’t seem to get my point across.  Oh wait dude, how about my life is like the time of day when the night sky fades into the sunrise and there are sooooo many colors.  😀  Blues, purples, pinks, reds, oranges, white (<— the stars or morning clouds) and yes there is gray and you don’t know which ones to look at first or for how long.  For the love of all things people this analogy is perfect!  Ooorrrr maybe my life is like a Jackson Pollock painting, colorful, messy, not remotely as pretty as the analogy above and you don’t know what the heck is going on.  Um…I am going for the night fading into day scenario.

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“Wyyyyyyyattt!”, I call out to him the morning as we are leaving for our big cross-country camping/backpacking extravaganza of a road trip.   “Are we absolutely sure that we packed all of our stuff?!”  “Duuude”, he yells back.  “I know dude but I am just stupid excited and I am just trying to save us time and money by not having to purchase a bunch of stuff once we get to our first destination.  Whereeeever that may be.”  I cannot stop smiling as I drink my coffee and prance around the house in last minute excitement!  We have been dreaming of this road trip for so long and it has finally come to fruition!  A couple years of planning and trying to get the same amount vacation time, a month, from each of our jobs have made this a difficult but a fun time of planning.  I use the term planning very loosely.  Basically we decided to go on this adventure without a specific destination in mind but we did put a lot of time and thought into what gear we’d want to bring.

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The second paragraph is what I imagine in my head.  That one day I will be at that point with an amazing man and an amazing cross-country vacation planned.

Until then my life is like the first paragraph and I will continue to plug away at a dream where I am currently driving solo.

Co-pilot wanted.

~L

“Give what you have.  To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.”

~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Sitting in a bar solo while waiting to go see Free Solo. Being solo and doing things solo isn’t so bad. Good things come to those with patience 😉. Be confident and flow with life.

~L

“Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.”

~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow