The final week of 2016 is proving to be quite challenging as everything decided to run amok and go awry all at the same time. I woke up Tuesday morning feeling like the desperate sailors on the ship Jonah was on, and my endless stream of phone calls, lists, budgets, and text messages is my own version of casting lots, a tool proving as useful as other forms of divination. Most of the answers are still blowing in the wind. Basically, all I want to do is curl up on the couch under a blanket and watch Roseanne reruns for days. I turned to the sitcom following my mother's death, and it's the one thing I crave when I need comfort. You know the yule log video of a fireplace that gives you the feeling of sitting in front of an open flame? Having the Connors on my television is like sitting in their living room, and it all feels so familiar to me. I guess that's the point of comfort, huh? It's a piece of familiarity that grounds us in the midst of the unknown. For me, ri...

I've been feeling rather reflective these last few days as I've watched life and death work its wonder. I'm sad. I've been sad for a while, but I've been afraid to admit it to myself. Admitting this means so much more than fessing up to the emotion underlying all the complaining and hiding I've been doing. Admitting to the sadness means letting go of something that I let define me...something I've let define me for more than 20 years. Yeah, we go way back, and letting go of something that's been part of your life for so long is really tough. Yet, I've been in enough therapy to know that until I acknowledge and deal with the emotions that connect me to this...this...thing, moving forward will be difficult. Honestly, I think my failure to deal (whatever that means) with this is the reason so much of my life feels stagnant. My thyroid. My weight. My creativity. But today is Christmas. I ran out last night to return a shirt, and the clerk asked me if...

The elevator door opened to a simply furnished lobby, and a kind man greeted us. I explained that we had a 4 p.m. appointment, to which he replied that the appointment was for 3. As soon as I could, I checked my phone to see the text message I sent immediately after making the appointment. It was for 4. I knew it was for 4 because there was no way we could have made it there in time for a 3:00 appointment. This was an interesting experience for me because I didn't feel the need to prove I was right. I didn't berate myself or question myself. I know the time of the appointment I set. End of story. Unfortunately, this isn't always easy to do when someone presents information different from what you know to be true, In fact, sometimes it's really difficult. There is a term in the therapy world called gaslighting. Named for a movie in which a husband keeps a gas light burning all night yet tells his wife that it's not on. He essentially convinces her that she's ...

Last week NPR interviewed one of the writers from Amy Schumer's show. I have never seen the show, and I know little about the woman apart from her appearance on Saturday Night Live. I did, however, hear the clip played during that interview. It involved a group of pregnant women talking (and on-upping each other) about their birth plans. The punch line was that everything was "better for the baby," and I laughed loudly at comments about giving birth as far away from medical intervention as possible and opting for a sand birth like the sea turtles do. As I finished driving home, I thought a lot about that sketch, and it amplified my sadness at the way we interact with each other. It bothers me greatly the way we compare ourselves with others, especially out of a need to feel okay with ourselves--our lives and our choices. Quite honestly, I'm tired of it and by it and the way these little shaming techniques strike at us. Ten years ago when I was working with a therapi...

I read this blog this morning as I searched for answers to how to set boundaries with a spouse. The idea of boundaries is not new to me. I still remember my aunt telling me YEARS ago about her favorite part in This Present Darkness, when the lead character is running through a field looking for the fences. She told me that this scene is symbolic of the fences in our lives, and that as long as we know where the boundaries are, we free to act as we wish within them. Setting Boundaries with a Cheating Ex: My Story We need to know the limits of what we can say and how we can act toward other people. Sometimes this is very easy to do. Sometimes it seems impossible to do. Yet, the issue, I've found, is not in setting the boundary or knowing when someone has crossed it. It's following through. When my first husband had a friendship with his secretary that was troublesome to me, I told him. I said that to me, it was not appropriate for a married man to talk to a married woman at al...

I decided to peruse some of my friends' dormant blogs tonight, and one post resonated with me. It was an open letter to anyone going through a difficult time in life, and the advice was to remember a time when you felt like you were awesome instead of sucky. I needed that message tonight. I've needed that message for the last year, and that is why I decided to post something new here. A few years ago I felt awesome. I felt like life was a journey of opportunity. I was going places and doing things and celebrating the things that I love. I do love going back and reliving those moments here, and I want to start recording all the busy-ness of my life right now because one day I hope to go back and fine a few awesome moments here. I'm a little tired right now and still have a disaster in the kitchen to clean, a ton of writing to do to pay for some surprise car repairs and want to get a little sleep before I wake up to start a new day at my summer job. Good enough? Let's...

With tears in my eyes, I just closed the browser I had open to Facebook after looking at a few pictures and memes and reading a debate about transgender bathrooms and the formerly shamed dancing man. It just seems to me that social media has turned into a giant playground in cyberspace populated by meanness. I'm so tired about reading comments detailing how poor spelling and very common grammar mistakes completely negate an argument. I'm over the name calling and poor judgment and shaming that makes up the posts people share and laugh about. I'm just so disgusted with the people who think it's okay to make fun of others and the mean-spirited things people say and get offended by. I read these comments and write a thousand responses in my head that never make it to the screen. I've tried my hand at it and been bashed and shamed in the process, even by people who were actually on the same side as me because I didn't use the "right" terminology. I dec...

I went for my Sunday morning run this morning, and it turned into a walk as I talked with a friend. She let me ramble a bit about my current situation, and I eventually worked my way out of the circle of words and landed on the cycle that I'm stuck in. I'm treading water right now in a sea of chaos. Let's ignore the pathological side of this for a minute and focus on the aspects of the chaos that are bothering me. Here's the deal: 1. My house is a mess. 2. When my house is a mess, I cannot concentrate. 3. When I cannot concentrate, I am not productive. 4. When I'm not productive, I cannot work. 5. When I cannot work, I cannot pay my bills. 6. When I cannot pay my bills, I worry. 7. When I worry, I waste time. There's where I'm stuck. My house is a mess because I live with someone who leaves items on tables, the floors, and counters. I live with someone who does not wash dishes and thinks it's okay to pile them on top of said tables, floors,...

No longer what we were before, but not all that we will be. Forgive me for doing the unforgivable--using a quote out of context. That line from a Pam Mark Hall song certainly sums up what's on my mind today, but the message of the song is about more than the mundane issues I'm struggling with today. This struggle is not new, and I've written about it plenty of times in the nine years I've had this blog. Present day life rarely measures up to the way our past selves imagined it. My thirteen-year-old self wanted to be married before 20 and give birth to my four children before I was 25. We would all live on a farm where I would spend my days doing laundry, playing with my children, cooking meals, and writing poetry and music. (It was a grand plan for using the degree in classical languages or philosophy that I wanted.) Working as an English teacher with a psychology degree, divorced at 32, remarried at 36, and nearly going bankrupt thanks to immigration issues and l...

One of my co-workers stopped me in the hall this week and said, "You're just glowing. Will you tell me what's going on?" I think she hoped I would tell her I am pregnant, and as much as I wish that is the reason behind my current countenance, I'm fairly confident I'm not. Instead, what she's seeing is the result of some new changes I'm implementing in my life. Anyone who knows me understands that I live with a certain degree of chaos, and while I'm perfectly okay without what most people consider normal, the absolute lack of structure was taking its toll on me. Ok, so the worst birthday ever was a contributing factor. So here goes... 1. Work. When I calculated my earnings in preparation for my tax return, I was shocked to see how much money I made as a freelancer. Even worse was the realization that I was stuck in more debt than ever before with all my credit cards completely maxed out. Now, I'm not afraid to hustle when I have to to...

Like anyone else, I have certain years that stand out in my life as being far more challenging than others. For me, those years include 1994 and 2004. In all honesty, I'd have to rank 2015 right up there, even though it breaks that lovely 10 year time span. Or perhaps I'm not remembering 2014 clearly after everything that happened in the last year. Of course, there were some wonderful highlights, including the end of the immigration nightmare and finally being able to start life as a permanent family. I continued to grow in my new position at work. I saw my freelance career begin to bloom. I took up running again. I bought a new car. I started getting control over my finances. Winnipeg went to the beach for the first time. I got flowers from my dear one for the first time. I think my thyroid is finally under control. There were some unbelievable lows, including some rather vicious and violent fights and enough doubt and mistrust to suffocate the most faithful of people. T...