Accept it all

Positively Positive 
Accept everything about yourself - I mean everything. You are you and that is the beginning and the end -- no apologies, no regrets. — Henry Kissinger

Too many years of my life I spent hiding from myself.  For over 40 years, I functioned in a way that always kept 4/5 of myself hidden.  In counseling, I wanted to reject all the sludge and keep only the good stuff.  I wanted to prune my life of all the damaged ugliness so I would be beautiful.  Photography to the rescue.  I started a project in my early years of counseling taking pictures of damaged plants.  The images turned out beautifully.  I called the project flawed beauty.  It actually started with my trying to accept that I had cancer and that my body is now scarred from that surgery.  I can hide it but it is always there.  I didn't feel pretty.  I felt less.  In my mind, my scar was becoming who I was.  But I am not my scar.  I am not just a cancer survivor.  I am me and I had cancer.  Emotional abuse is cancer to the soul.  For years, I have focused on feeling and repairing the damage from years of neglect and abuse.  (Neglect is a form of abuse but I list it separately since many people forget how damaging it is.)  Then I started working at accepting the good, the bad and the ugly.  All the parts to myself.  All the fears.  All the anger.  All the history that made me who I was.  I admired Dave Pelzer when he said, "I like the man I am today.  I would not be that man without the experiences that I had."  I was astounded by this.  I read his books.  I knew that his childhood was brutal.  What did he do to reach this point?  I kept reading his books until I understood that he accepted himself completely.  Nothing left behind.  Looking back at integration, a vital part to the change was total acceptance of all myself.  Integration for me meant nothing left behind.  I am not a product of my abuse.  I am a person that was abused and chose to change how I treated others differently than I was treated.  I am also discovering that as I accept my past hurts, I own them, then I can let them go because they are mine to do with what I choose.  Seemed like as long as I denied past events, the more they clamored to be heard.  I notice the same thing with emotions.  As long as I attempted to depress my emotions, the stronger they fought to be felt.  I stop trying to depress them, I feel them and found that they were less extreme.  The emotion seemed to become stronger trying to fight past my efforts to stop it.  Yesterday, I had a situation over food that usually sends me into a tail spin.  Instead I acknowledged my anxiety, found a solution, and moved on with the day.  Accepting it all does not make me less of a person no more than having cancer made me less of a person.

Disguised Blessings

What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.          ~ Oscar Wilde 

Several posts seem to be buzzing around in my head.  I tried to stay focused enough to get one of them written.  I am also starting back to the new school year as an instructional assistant in Early Childhood Education.  This week was meeting and arranging the classroom.  I rearranged one section of the room 3 times.  Teacher observed that a lot of the stuff was still messy.  I couldn't agree more but I set the healthy boundary that I am not responsible for how she decide to utilize my efforts.  The blessing is I am learning to set emotional boundaries.  I am letting go of the feeling that I am responsible to have the room ready for Monday when the students arrive.  I do not need to spend my Saturday correcting her choice to have me move furniture around instead of preparing for classes to start.  Fairly minor stuff but interesting to see how I have improved in boundary setting.  

Thinking about Oscar Wilde's quote the experience that comes to mind first was having cancer.  I actually passed out the first time I said the words, "I have cancer."  When I did my photography show about cancer with the gratitude quilt, I realized that all though having cancer is lousy, it turned out to be a blessing to me.  I am also reading about others that have awful experiences in their lives.  I am coming to the conclusion that everyone has trials.  Everyone suffers.  Everyone experiences pain.  Everyone is a very big group.  (Tiny quote from KavinCoach.)  Some trials are minor annoyances, others hit horrific proportions.  The trials is not the deciding factor in people's lives.  I am learning that what people do in reaction to those experiences might turn a bitter trial into a blessing or it can just turn bitter.  Most of my life I have felt powerless.  Cancer showed me how little power I had about choosing what happened to me.  Looking back, I realized my power was in what I chose to do about it.  Looking back almost 11 years ago the disguise fell away, I see the blessing of cancer. I don't wish cancer on anyone, I do hope that those struggling will find the blessings disguised in the bitterness.     

 

Impossibilities

IMPOSSIBILITIES IN THE WORLD

1.   YOU can't count your hair
2.   YOU can't wash your eyes with soap        
3.   YOU can't breathe when your tongue is out

Put your tongue back in, silly. 

10 Things I know about you... 

1)  YOU are reading this 

2)  YOU are human        

3)  YOU can't say the letter ''P'' without separating your lips
4)  YOU just attempted to do it
6)  YOU are laughing inwardly at yourself 

7)  YOU have a smile on your face and you skipped No. 5
8)  YOU just checked to see if there is a No. 5
9)  YOU laugh at this but don't feel bad almost everyone else does too
10) YOU are probably going to send this to see who else falls for it 

The biggest impossibility in the world is getting anything constructive done while you sit and read this type of mail... so get back to work! 

A wonderful friend sent this to me.  It's so delightful I wanted to share.  Have Fun.

Sleep in

Since it's the early worm that gets eaten by the bird, sleep late.

Enjoyed today.  

Attempt impossible

"The young do not know enough to
be prudent, and therefore they attempt
the impossible -- and achieve it,
generation after generation."

- Pearl S. Buck

I first encountered PositivelyPositive on Facebook, other people would post their pictures, quotes and articles.  Then, I 'Liked' their page and I started getting their post myself.  Sometimes I feel discouraged because what they share seems so foreign to me, however this article intrigued me.
http://www.positivelypositive.com/2012/07/30/the-counterintuitive-ingredient-to-experiencing-success/
One of my favorite quotes from the article is "Embrace the suck. Enjoy the grit." Embrace the suck took me to another web page with another excellent article, 'What to Do When Bad Days Come.'  
http://www.colipera.com/what-to-do-when-bad-days-come/ This article follows a line of self questioning a bad day to see how much did I have control over a bad day.  If the bad day was external, what can I do tomorrow with the new problems on my plate. I appreciated their perspective. 

This brings to mind what KavinCoach shared with me, "That which does not kill you, makes you stronger."  I like Karen Salmansohn version: (Works if you have Facebook)
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=423014447736660&set=a.272099089494864.62950.153592064678901&type=1&theater
I was not happy with KavinCoach's statement but after a bit of thinking and distance from the problem I realized he was right.  I did gain strength from over coming the troubles I experienced. 

“Inside of a ring or out, ain't nothing wrong with going down. It's staying down that's wrong.” ― Muhammad Ali.

Something Remarkable

Don't live down to expectations.  Go out there and do something remarkable. 
~Wendy Wasserstein

Wow, I am blown away.  I posted yesterday about enthusiasm and today I was hit with a keynote speaker at our school that demonstrated exactly what I meant.  He was hooping and a hollering about how awesome it was that the students arrive in 6 more days.  His enthusiasm bubbled and boiled over for about 45 minutes.  I usually fall asleep in teachers meetings but not today.  He shared his excitement about turning a school around.  He was a principal at one of the tougher schools around Los Angeles, California. One of the stats used was a 0% improvement.  He bolstered his teachers by telling them that the only way they had to go was up.  He talked about having the elementary kids come to the high school graduation to show them what they had to look forward to.   The last year that he was principal they had 91% graduation, a very high percentage for any area.  By the end of his motivational speech, he had a room full of school employees excited and shouting "6 more days until the students come back."  I was impressed with how the enthusiasm spread through out the auditorium.  I cried, I laughed, I am excited about the new school year.  I felt encouraged when he put up on the big screen you are not "just" an instructional assistant.  He did this with teachers, custodians, office staff, and administrators.  Telling us that what we do makes the difference in the lives of the students we come in contact.  I am so excited for this new school year to start. 

Enthusiasm