Tag Archives: Struggle

The Well of Strength

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I have to admit I am struggling, more than I could have ever thought possible.  We haven’t had power in 24 hours and I was sick for about 8 of those hours, I slept for over 12 of the rest.  We haven’t had internet all week. I am so used to being connected to my family, it just feels like a huge loss not to have them there every day even just virtually. 

Physical strength requires exercise.  When we exercise, it can hurt or be difficult but it is what will make our muscles strong.  I believe emotional strength and resilience is similar.  It doesn’t get stronger when everything is perfect all the time.  Emotional strength is gained through struggle.  Somewhere, down deep inside myself, is a well of strength that I have cultivated over the last years that I need to draw on. When I was going through my divorce, that was my mantra:  The pain I go through today will become the well of strength I will draw on tomorrow.  I need to reach inside myself and draw on that well right now.  I am made of sterner stuff than I am demonstrating.   

I don’t remember ever crying as much as I have in the past week.  I will not just turn tail and run away because things are a little challenging.  I have to give it enough time.  Usually, when I write this blog, I find the act of typing out whatever I am whining about helps me turn things around so that I can see the good side of the situation.  I need that ability right now.   June seems so far away.

So, what am I whining about?  Lack of power, lack of internet connection, the inability to communicate, and just the enormity of being in this strange place where hyenas howl at night, roads are rivers of mud, and I have no sense of connection to anyone here.  I am trying to build relationships at the same time as juggling the strangeness of the land and the environment.  I just have to figure it out and get in a routine and it will be better.  Having regular times for internet usage, routines for going to the store, etc all will help normalize things.  Right now it is almost overwhelming with all the differences.  Not almost, it IS overwhelming.  

I wish I had a bike.  Riding my bike would give me a way to find my center.  

A Sense of Community

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There can be no vulnerability without risk; there can be no community without vulnerability; there can be no peace, and ultimately no life, without community. ~ M. Scott Peck

Village house

Village house

Ethiopia is not what I expected.  The truth is, I am not sure that anyone could ever imagine what it is like until you experience it with your own senses. The sounds, the smells, the absolute essence of stepping back in time to the birthplace of humanity, none of that can be understood until you experience it. It is truly an amazing place.

The street near my school

The street near my school

Ethiopia is a contrasts in opposites. New, modern houses are built next to shanties.  Horses, donkeys, goats, etc share the road with cars.  Farmers growing teff to make injera and using wooden plows next to a modern university of stone and glass. Barefoot beggars share the street with men in Armani suits.  People precariously cross the highway, dodging between buses, taxis and livestock. Beautiful new buildings are constructed with scaffolding made from eucalyptus branches. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to any of it.  Some would call it chaos.  I call it humanity.

Church on the hill

Church on the hill

The sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of Ethiopia are like seeing, hearing, smelling, and tasting time itself.  It is the oldest culture in the world.  Time is started at daylight, when the sun comes up, so dawn is 1 o’clock…a new day.   Every morning at dawn, the monks from a nearby church greet the day with chanting and drums.  I lay in bed and listen to the sounds as well as the oxen lowing in a nearby field. The smells of sewage are offset by the smell of freshly cut grass.  The sour taste of injera, spicy wot, and the most amazing coffee I have ever had in my life make all my taste buds come alive.

Eucalyptus scaffolding

Eucalyptus scaffolding

Having always traveled as a tourist, I am realizing that visiting in a foreign country is very different from living in one.  It is strange and foreign land after spending my life in the sterile environment of the U.S., a place where everything seems so orderly by comparison.  In the US, I turn on a faucet and have clean drinking water.  I flick a switch and have dependable electricity.  I pay a bill and have reliable internet access. I want groceries and supplies for my home, I can get it all at one store. Life is easy in the U.S.

Shanties

Shanties

In Ethiopia, life is harder. The internet hasn’t worked in 3 weeks at my school (I came to am American hotel and had to pay $15 for a day of wifi), the power goes out on a daily basis, shopping requires several stops to different stores and paying the ferengi [foreigner] price, and then there are the daily difficulties of acquiring clean water.  For me it is difficult but still easier than it is for most Ethiopians, because I have money and resources.  For the average Ethiopian, it is much harder. To offset the hardships, people here depend on each other.

Modern housing

Modern housing

There is a sense of community, history, and belonging that I rarely see in the U.S. where we don’t need each other for basic survival.  But in our isolation from each other, Americans also lose a sense of emotional connection that many (including myself) continually search for.  Connection and community are two things go hand in hand.  But to be connected, we have to be vulnerable to people.  We have to open up and show others what we need and we have to meet those needs in other people in our community. For many of us, this kind of vulnerability is hard.

Brooklyn

Brooklyn

Charlotte

Charlotte

So I begin this year of renewal and transformation.  I am not convinced yet that I can do it, either the job I am being asked to do or just staying so long outside the U.S.  I am already missing my family terribly.  Spending the last week with Charlotte and Brooklyn has made me long for more time with them.   I long for a sense of community of my own.

NOTE: I had a lot of trouble with pictures today.  I forgot the cord to the camera that I had the majority of my photo on back at my apartment. So here is link to the ones I already uploaded to my drive. I will try to put the rest up later when I get back to an internet connection.  http://sdrv.ms/1dxhsFh

A Birth, A Death, and a Wedding

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Yesterday was a day of a lot of shifting emotions, not for me, but for my son.  One of his best friends became a new father, another best friend died unexpectedly, and his wife’s best friend got married…all of which happened in the same day.  I have empathy for him and my daughter-in-law. They are dealing with the up and down emotions of balancing two joyous events with a tragic one and trying to be happy for their friends while mourning the death of the other.  Life doesn’t happen when it is convenient. Yesterday for my son, daughter-in-law and all their friends, life was divided by zero.

I sit here and listen to my son and his wife process their grief by telling stories of their friend and sharing pictures with their social group.  I am reminded that our lives consist of our stories.  They don’t consist of how much money we have, what things we own, or even what our jobs are.  Our lives are about our experiences.  At the end, the people who we have touched will tell our stories and share our photos. It is our legacy and reminds me to always treat people well. Life is about caring about other human beings. The most important gift we can give another person is the gift of our time.

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” ~Maya Angelou

“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends. To appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is all about perspective…

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robin

One morning when I was newly single and still very emotionally fragile, I was walking in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood in search of breakfast early on a sunny Sunday morning.  It was one of those rare mornings after a bad breakup that I was optimistic about being able to move on and carve a new life out for myself. A smile on my face, feeling confident, healthy and beautiful, curly red hair all askew, strolling down the street and all of a sudden, a man gave me the best spontaneous complement I have ever had.  He said  “top of the morning to you.  Wow, the redder the hair, the hotter the woman.”  It was unfortunate that he happened to be jumping out of a dumpster at the time and wearing a woman’s skirt and a pair of black pantyhose with a run in them, but hey, at that point in my life I was going to be thankful for a complement wherever I could get it. It is really just a matter of perspective.

I was reminded again this week that all my “realities” of life are a matter of perspective.  The lens I am looking through, colored by my experiences, beliefs and emotion, distorts reality as I see it.  Every single human being on the planet has a distorted view of their reality. It is only through communication that we can understand how others are seeing the same situation and realize the fallacies in our own perception of events. That is why communication is imperative in misunderstandings.  If we refuse to communicate, we can never understand any but our own distorted reality of things.

b&c

Pure joy

My reality was distorted enough that I was having a pity party earlier this week.  I am staying with my son and his wife, enjoying their company and the pure joy that radiates from my two beautiful granddaughters.  Given that scenario, the true reality is, there is absolutely no reason I should have been feeling sorry for myself, but I was.  My reality was colored by the fact that my son lives in my former home and every time I visit it brings back memories of my marriage.  Added to the emotion of that was an unexpected visit from my ex, who is happily ensconced in a new relationship and I was just flooded with the “all that could have been, all that isn’t now” perspective instead of seeing the reality that is before me.  After a virtual slap from my friend Jonathan, I decided enough was enough of that.  I needed a big perspective shift to remind myself that my life is my own.  I am not in competition with my ex.  I am happy that he is doing well. That was the end of that whole line of thought.  That was perspective shift #1.

My reality has also been distorted by not having a place to call my own or any personal space.  It makes me cranky.  Although I am an extroverted person, I need time to myself to recharge. This summer, even though I have had great friends to rely on that have taken me into their homes, having no space that is my own has played havoc with my whole emotional system. By emotional system, I am referring to more than just feelings.  I am speaking of the hard-wired physiological, psychological and social mechanisms that human beings have evolved as a matter of survival within a family unit. Our emotional system includes the internal and external interactions and reactions associated with our basic human needs for food, water, sleep, shelter, territory, protection from harm, mating, and nurturing of young.

Living on the road and off the charity of others after a lifetime of having a home of my own, when I was always the person who others turned to for help, has definitely been a challenge for me. There have been many times that I didn’t think I was going to make it, that I was ready to go back to Seattle and start looking for an apartment. But with each challenge I have faced and overcome, I have grown emotionally stronger.  I am learning to rely on people and to listen to my body’s needs and to convey those needs to others.

One of the hardest things I have ever done is to tell my children that I was going to get a hotel room this week.  It has nothing to do with them and certainly nothing to do with my beautiful granddaughters. I would spend every possible minute with them.  But I have realized that I have to take care of myself too or I won’t be any good to anyone.  What I need right now, on this last week before I head to Africa, is some time to myself where I can go through my things once again and do a last packing. I need to have a place to spread out all my stuff and pack up the few things that I have with me that are staying in the States while organizing and purchasing enough supplies for my classroom and my personal life (shampoo, mosquito net, etc) that will last me until I get back to the States during the holidays.  Unfortunately, I can’t do that with my beautiful children and grandchildren around because I love them so much I just want to focus on them when I am with them.  I need a few days to focus on myself to get all those last minute things done.

So I have been stressing all week until I came clean and admitted to my children what I need.  As I would expect from them, they are wonderful and they understand.  Why did I ever think they wouldn’t? I really have the most amazing children ever. Telling them gave me the perspective shift that I don’t always have to fix everything for them, that I can rely on them to help me also. It made me realize that I can tell them about being scared and unsure of myself as I embark on this journey.  I can tell them how much I am going to miss them and how worried I am to be leaving them.

The truth is I wonder if I have made the right choice and whether I have what it takes to do the job I am being asked to do. Do I have what it takes to live in a place that is so different from everything I have ever known?  Am I a good enough teacher to teach math in a place where many of my students don’t speak English while I speak no Amharic? Will I have the courage to explore this new country I am going to or will I stay in the safety of the school area I will teach in?

My perspective right now is being colored by my fears and insecurities about where my life is heading in the next year.  I need my family and friends to help me with that perspective shift, this week more than any other. The closer the time comes for leaving the more excited I get and at the same time, the more insecure I get.  I think that is probably a very normal and human reaction.  I just have to breathe, stay present, and be aware and remember to keep communicating to keep a good grasp on true reality not just the reality colored by my experiences and emotions. It really is a matter of perspective.

First Class

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I fly often enough to be in premier class. That means that I get upgraded from coach to first class whenever there is an open seat but I only pay coach fares.  Out of the last 20 legs of trips I have taken, I have been upgraded 15 times. I like boarding early, comfy seats, and larger overhead bins, but the rest of the first class experience feels odd to me.   One thing that always surprises me is how quickly the crew is there to meet your needs. That level of service is one huge difference between first class and coach.  One of my friends calls first class “princess class”.  I guess I am not used to a level of service that makes me feel like a princess.

I also have first class friends. Through their words, time, and care, they make me believe I have value to them.  They consistently demonstrate that they believe I am worthy of love and belonging even with all my imperfections.  They go on vacation with me, support me emotionally when I have difficult issues to deal with, come to my rescue when I have done something foolish, and believe that I can accomplish great things.  But the real key is that they are simply there for me.  I am convinced that is what it takes to be a first class friend, just being there for people.

I was thinking that everyone should feel treated like they are first class by someone.  Everyone should have someone who is there for them, who meets their needs on some level.  But as I allowed myself to think through it, I realized that what I need (and maybe everyone does) is rather than focus on how others treat me, I have to treat myself like I am first class and be that person who is there for  me. I should meet my own needs first before I expend all my energy on others.

When I was newly single and trying to redefine my life, I instituted “Friday night date night for one”. I would come home from work, get something special to make for dinner (including dessert) and a nice bottle of wine.  I would put some music on, light candles, have a lovely meal and then dance around the living room by myself.  I would treat myself like first class all the way on Friday nights.  But it was always something “extra”.

Unfortunately, the first class treatment never transferred beyond Friday night.   I am not sure why.  I guess I got busy with life, trying to be a first class mother, grandmother, colleague, friend, and there just wasn’t any time to treat myself the same way. Maybe I didn’t think I deserved the same treatment I gave everyone else.  Whatever the reason, I think that is something I need to change.  The next time I am cutting corners on self-care and not striving to meet my own needs before the needs of others, I need to remind myself to upgrade to first class.   I need to be first to recognize my value and to demonstrate that I am worthy of love and belonging.  I am worthy of being treated as first class.

Today as I sit in my third airport on the way home to visit my kids and granddaughters, when I have only had 2 hours sleep, I realize I am exhausted and without patience.  It might be time to practice some of that first class treatment right now.

Loons, Ladders, and Funny Fish

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tony and robinMy friend Tony is ending his sabbatical year as I am starting mine. We decided to have one last hurrah together and go on vacation.  Since I am leaving for Africa in two weeks and wanted to visit my extended family, Tony came to visit them with me.  It has been quite an adventure hiking and kayaking with no internet or cell service at a lakeside cabin deep in the woods of Maine.

One of the things I love the most when I am visiting Maine is the sound of loons.  Their haunting call has affected me ever since I was little girl.  There is something so poignant and ethereal about the sound that it calls to the most unreachable places in my soul. It always makes me stop and reflect, to slow down and consider what is important in life.  There is a loon that is living near my brother’s cabin that believes the local float plane is another loon and a threat to his well-being.  So every day, when this particular float plane goes out, the loon will charge toward it in an attempt to get it to go away.  So far, the loon hasn’t been successful. When loons feel threatened, either for themselves or their family, they definitely make a ruckus and will do everything they can to fight for survival, including charging at float planes.  The phrase “crazy as a loon” comes from their erratic behavior as they ward off potential threats to their well-being.  In that, maybe they aren’t so crazy after all.   Protecting ourselves and the ones we love is the nature of all beings and many of our choices for survival stem from those very basic instincts.

Our vacation hasn’t just been filled with sleepy little Maine towns, hiking, kayaking, and loon calls. It has also been fraught with danger in the most unexpected places, like inside the cabin.  I have been sleeping in the loft.  Years ago, the permanent ladder that was constructed for the loft was taken down when the loft was closed in with a ceiling.  My brother and sister-in-law took out the ceiling and reverted the space back to a loft.  The original loft ladder is no longer there, so my brother uses a regular step-ladder.   Unfortunately, that ladder is about a foot and a half short of the actual loft floor.  Going up isn’t so bad, but the descent can be treacherous as I found out yesterday morning when I came down with one hand full of a computer and an iPad and only had one hand on the ladder.  Sure enough, one rung from the top, the ladder tips to the left as my body goes to the right and I land on the floor after bruising several extremities.  Tony, in moment of deep concern for my well-being, says “well at least you landed on your butt so didn’t hurt anything serious”.    This morning, my brother hung a sign on the ladder saying “you must be this tall to operate”…haha, very funny guys… I swear between Tony and my brother Rod picking on me, I will be “crazy as a loon” by next week.   I can’t blame anyone but myself for the ladder however.  I know better than to come down ladder holding an armful of stuff in my hands.

The other big event that happened yesterday was visiting my mother who lives in an assisted living facility that actually was repurposed from the old high school in the town where I grew up.  Just walking into that building brought back all the memories of that time in my life and of all the really bad things I did when I was in high school. It felt almost like being assaulted with memories of things I wished I didn’t ever have to remember.

As I was lying in bed last night thinking about all that, my sister-in-law showed me this funny fish that lights up with dots on the inside. It is great night light, very unique and original, just like my sister-in-law herself.  I loved it.  My brother and sister-in-law are two people who are happy and content with the choices they have made for their lives. They love where they live and are very aware of the world around them and the people in it.  I have met so many people in life that are unhappy with their choices.   People who constantly complain about where they live, what they do, who they are with…nothing is ever right for them.  At times, I have been like that myself.  I tend to be unhappy when I think that things have “happened” to me without my having any choice, when I want to blame my misfortune on others without taking personal responsibility for my own actions.   I am happy when I believe I have  power in my choices and own up to my responsibility for the decisions I make, good and bad.   All of those decisions got me to where I am at this moment.  If I don’t like where I am, if I am not happy with my relationships, job, city I live…it is in my power to change it.

This action cannot be undone. Are you sure you want to continue?

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kerry park

View of downtown Seattle from Kerry Park

I woke up this morning to the quintessential Seattle summer day.  Temperatures in the mid 60s F, no humidity, beautiful blue sky. It is the exact same kind of day as the day I moved here 6 years ago.  I spent some time this morning reflecting on that move.  Reflecting on what it felt like to leave my (adult) children and family back on the east coast, a job in which I excelled, a community of friends, a beautiful home, a life that I had thought was perfect, and the ruins of my marriage. I didn’t think I would ever be happy again.

northern cascades

Northern Cascades

When I first got to Seattle, all I wanted to do was go back home to a place where I understood the culture, job, everything…I just wanted my old life back, but that couldn’t happen.  I couldn’t go back in time, no matter how much I wished things were different. So I struggled to create a life here. I made friends, had some career success, explored new hobbies, and discovered the beauty and majesty of the PNW.   I carved a life for myself here and I didn’t realize it until recently when I gave everything up and now am on the precipice of changing it all again.

liberty bell

Liberty Bell Peak

When I woke up this morning, all I could think of is that I don’t want to leave.  I want my old apartment back, to go on daily walks with Tony, have coffee with my beautiful daughter, ride my bike, ski with my friends, write papers, go camping, and enjoy the place I live. For the last 6 years, I have only thought of this place as a temporary stopping point, and it has taken giving up everything and getting ready to leave to make me realize how much I actually love it here.  I don’t think I would have come to that understanding without having gone through the exercise of leaving.

Commitments have been made however, so there is no backing out now, nor would I want to.  I need to finish the “reboot” of my life which has only just begun. Right now, I have deleted the hard drive, now it is time to reinstall and update the software. That is an analogy to the changes that I need to be made so that I can come back to this place from a position of strength and continue the identity formation to become the woman I want to be.  I think Africa is going to do that for me.  At the very least, it is going to change me.

IMG_9597So leaving today is bittersweet.  I will miss this place but at the same time will have a great adventure. The learning, growth, and change that has happened to me in Seattle will happen again in Africa.  I have a feeling at the end of next year, when I get ready to leave Africa, I am going to feel the same as I do right now, I won’t want to leave.

IMG_9594Seattle, farewell for now.  I leave you with a cheesy movie line… I’ll be back.

All changes are more or less tinged with melancholy, for what we are leaving behind is part of ourselves. ~Amelia Barr

“I stuck” ~Brooklyn

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spring-17

That is my two year old granddaughter’s favorite thing to say, “I stuck”.  She will say it whether she is really stuck or not.

Sabbatical…a whole year off from work to stretch my creativity, travel, and explore some of the things I have never had time to do in life. A grand adventure, giving up all your worldly goods and just going with no agenda, no plans, just going wherever the whim strikes you.  Everyone tells me they are jealous and that they wish they could do it.  So why aren’t they?

Because it is damn hard that is why.

Amazingly, I am handling the fear of the unknown pretty well and the ambiguity of it all.  My struggle has come in feelings of worthiness.  What did I do to earn this amazing opportunity?  And it seems like daily, some other wonderful thing is heaped onto me…adding to my guilt about it all and miring me in my inability to embrace it fully.

I am a person who has spent my whole life fighting for everything I have. From being on welfare as an unwed teenage mother to putting myself through college and becoming a tax-paying member of society, I have fought this uphill battle from a place of never having or “being” enough.  My whole life has been focused toward overcoming obstacles.  So now that there aren’t any obstacles, I am stuck.

I guess it is about abundance.  All my life has been life from a deficit and all of a sudden, I have an abundance of everything.  My life is mine to choose what to do and where to go.  I was blessed with intelligence, tenacity, a small amount of courage, and compassion. I have my health, a great job, and people who love me. I can do anything I want.  And that is why I am stuck.

For me, I know how to live a life of scarcity, it is easy to walk that road, it is harder to accept that I have these opportunities and to not feel guilty like I haven’t done anything to deserve them. Or even worse, that I am not worthy of having things work out well for me.  I am struggling with accepting a life of abundance and embracing it.  “I stuck”.