Building Blocks

Autobiographies have always been my thing. At the core of what motivates me, you’ll find it’s figuring out what inspires others. This was part of the basis behind writing my newest book, Route 66 Dreams– in searching through the depths of figuring out who I am, I wondered how I arrived at the place I’m at. More specifically, what has motivated me to get here and what motivates me to keep going?

Last week, I mentioned that between my arriving at a new decade and effects of the pandemic, I’m finding some of those motivations and inspirations have changed. I still feel like I’m standing in a hallway of doors that have closed and waiting on some to still open (a few have opened, a few have cracked open leaving me hopeful, but not always sure what’s coming). I know that it’s up to me to open to new inspirations and motivations, yet I am still aware that it can take time to see them or become aware of them.

There is something else, however, that I’ve always understood from my own life experiences and reading those of others– we often look at someone and say, “Wow, look at all they accomplished!” But we also often don’t look close enough to see the places in their lives where– and I don’t want to use the word “failed” but instead say “things didn’t work out as planned.” While we are motivated when good things happen (it’s almost a relief for me to feel the movement under my feet, like standing on a surfboard and finally hitting the wave just right to ride it to shore). Yet sometimes the bigger motivation for us is when things don’t work out, when bad things happen, when life changes course in a way that we didn’t want or embrace. Yet it’s the way that led us to something bigger, to seeing we were capable of much more than maybe we even dreamed.

We must take time the time– and energy!– to be reflective. Yes, there is pain in reaching back to some things, maybe some things we thought we had pushed the door closed on, and yet maybe there’s still something to learn from them before we push them closed for good.

I was out running one morning last week when it occurred to me that things had changed, that I was going to have to forge a new way forward. And yet in that searching, I realized that there is a little side road through my past I need to take. I’m not really sure why, but I do know it’s one that keeps lingering, like where old Route 66 runs alongside the interstate. I’m hopeful that taking this journey another time will be a huge step forward.

A Reminder as Things Begin to Bloom Again

There is a myth, one I continue to hear thrown out there every December, that people are more likely to end their lives during the holiday season.

No no no. While depression might run more rampant during the holiday because of the disappointment with relationships, sadness over loss, or a variety of other reasons, digging into the numbers, one would see that more suicides happen in March than any other time of year.

March– when things start to bloom, when we get teased with warmer weather, when spring break usually takes place. Yes, that March. My tulips are beginning to sprout and this morning it felt much lighter than it has as I began my swim at 6:30.

For most of us, March is a time of hope and renewal; we begin to feel a surge of energy after the dark and cold of winter.

But for some people, including my sister who died 29 years ago this March, I quickly understood that while I saw hope in things blooming, for her it meant the pain of watching things bloom while her own pain felt inescapable.

Take a step back this month– many aspects of our lives are opening up (while we all step tentatively into them, afraid we might lose them again), but there is still much pain around us. That pain is exaggerated by the site of things turning green and then the first flowers beginning to bloom. As many people feel renewal from getting to switch out the winter coat to a spring one, many others can’t get there.

Check on your own mental wellness this month; make sure you’re doing okay. If you’re not, what can you do to help yourself? And check on those around you and whom you care about. Our pain doesn’t all look or feel the same. If something looks out of place to you, it probably is.

There is hope but sometimes people need a little help finding the color in the tulips and the lighter days.

Peace in the Continued Sort of Chaos

While things are much calmer than they were a year ago, we are still processing much change around us. And the grief of the life and ways that are no longer part of our routines. There have been many losses, not just deaths, but in the way we do things and, for some people, the loss of relationships with people who have chosen different routes.

We don’t grieve overnight, get up the next morning, and forget what once was. Grief is a process and it’s a journey. Some people are afraid to venture out after so much time alone or without having the responsibility to leave home. Other people are still afraid of what virus lurks among us.

We have all lost something, many things. While not to the virus, I’ve had quite a few deaths of people in the outside orbit of my life. My sense of time has changed in a way I can’t explain– for some reason it feels like the days are spinning faster. I even said to Greg yesterday, “How did an hour go by?” when I realized the tomatillos I was roasting in the oven had been in there an hour already.

But we all also have had the opportunity to find peace within ourselves. Our days are never perfect commercials on television where everyone is happy and having a great time. There is alway a bumble, a hiccup, and usually a person causing havoc.

One thing we should be taking away from this pandemic experience is how to find peace inside ourselves. Have you done that? We can’t control the outside world but we can control our reactions to it. Some people remain reactive to it, others have learned to step away from the world (or just their phone which in many ways can be one in the same).

I’m finding I don’t want to be on my phone, not because of the chaos of the world, but because it keeps me from being more creative. I want to write, to sew, to paint, to draw. I don’t need to keep looking things up, checking the newsfeed. It all will be there later when I’m ready to share what I’ve created.

This morning there was a road runner on my front porch ledge, definitely a reminder of the peaceful pace as he stood and looked around, not in a hurry to go anywhere. Instead, he stood and surveyed the scene as if to stop and smell the roses.

Easter Perspective

I had taken some time on Saturday morning to photograph the dogs– Hattie and Lilly– for Easter. Neither one was happy with me (although after they ran off when I told them we were finished, Lilly hurriedly pushing the bunny ears off her head, they were easily swayed back into happiness with treats) and later I told Greg about how obvious it would be when I posted the photo on social media Sunday morning.

"No one is ever happy on Easter," he said. When gave him a funny look, he added, "Everyone is uptight about something."

Then I remembered the Easter Sundays of my childhood: we were always late for mass. I have no idea why and I never asked my mom when she was alive because she always got upset and accused me of thinking she wasn't a good enough mother. But the church filled up early and it meant we were left standing in the entry way listening to mass. For an hour. 

In that hour I had little understanding of what Easter meant. Yes, I'd taken religion classes growing up, but honestly it didn't mean a lot to me.

Then about six years ago, the same time I had returned to going to mass weekly, I found myself leaving Easter mass wanting to sing, feeling the happiness of coming out of darkness into the light. And each year since then, Easter has come to mean more to me.

I'm sure that I could argue that I'm older now and I "get" it more than I used to but I believe it's just a sense of having traveled multiple journeys of finding myself in darkness and having to seek out light. Each year Lent reminds me that there is hope, that we can get to the light, to the sunshine, that we don't need to be scared.

And a beautiful, cloudless sky– like we had in Albuquerque yesterday– doesn't hurt. 

A Reminder as the Lenten Journey Ends

Sometimes I repeat myself in a blog. A year might go by but usually I find myself writing about something I had shared some aspect of in the past, mostly because I have realized something different about it. And I figure that if I am thinking about it, probably someone out there could use similar inspiration.

I still talk too much in my prayers.

I hadn't thought much about it in quite a while but suddenly at mass on Saturday I realized that I'm like a constant chatterbox when I pray. I'm that friend who gets you on the phone and you only have to say an occasional "Uh huh" (and you can probably put the phone down and make a sandwich without them knowing it) to keep up your end of the conversation.

Which makes me wonder if God is making sandwiches as I pray– or even keeping tabs on several prayers happening at the same time (more likely). 

The reality is that we were taught to say prayers, to ask for what we need/want/desire. There are unlimited numbers of prayer cards and prayers available to us. We were taught to memorize certain prayers growing up.

So how would we know the importance of silence during a prayer?

No one taught me that it's just as important to listen in our prayer as it is to ask. I'm too busy with my list that I forget to listen, too. And while I know that often the answers don't come during prayers, instead we usually find the answers present themselves to us at moments when we least expect them to. It can happen when we are in the middle of something unrelated (perhaps, cooking dinner) or when our minds have time to wander and we aren't thinking about anything in particular.

But if we don't listen– as difficult as that can be because our minds tend to wander when we "rest" during prayer– we'll never hear the answers. It might feel dry to listen during prayer, but remember that it's part of the give and take of the conversation. We don't give God a chance to give to us if all we do is keep asking.

Honoring Quietly

About fifteen years ago, I remember sitting in the local support group for the suicide bereaved, this several years after my book for sibling suicide had been published, and we were talking about ways to honor a loved one who had died. A man who had lost his mother to suicide said– as he shook his head– "I have no idea what to do."

I responded, "That's okay. You don't have to know right away." 

Many more losses later I am well versed in this. For me, figuring out how I will honor them is how I move forward, but I also realize that we don't have an answer to how to do that right away. 

However, what I choose to do today is much different than when I lost my younger sister nearly twenty-four years ago. While it wasn't instant, I knew I had some need to help other sibling survivors of suicide, mostly because the world was different (the internet was very limited and there was no social media); we couldn't connect to each other like we do today with a simple Google search. That turned into a book which launched a speaking career and traveling around the world, educating and helping people both with suicide grief and suicide prevention.

For my dad's death eleven years ago, I was still deep into suicide work and inching my way toward a doctorate. I didn't have the time– or energy– to figure out what else I might do. But after my mom's death in 2014, my perspective had already begun to shift and I saw where it tied me back (as I have written recently) to the person I wanted to be growing up.

But also in this time, I have watched people launch foundations in loved ones' names, hoping to raise funds to help people or causes, or where they do walks and run, with the goal of doing the same. 

Recently I saw something someone was doing in a loved one's name and a thought struck me– I don't have the need to be so public about saying, "I'm doing this because of my mom." And then  at a party last weekend a friend and I were discussing this, how my journey in that way has become more private: I don't need to share it all with the world.

And yet what I still share is what I create– my writing, my sewing, my painting. I know that pursuing a creative life is honoring the three family members I traveled with in the station wagon (long after my older brother and sister stopped taking family trips with us). I also know that getting my education (particularly before I married– per her instructions) was a way to honor my maternal grandmother who couldn't go to college because she had to help her brothers financially get college degrees. It was never something I talked about, more something I did. 

Today the journey is about doing without having to say why I'm doing it every minute of the day. Sure, there are aspects I share, especially when I particularly know how they inspired something, but mostly it's about taking time each day to pursue what makes me happy is what honors them and makes my life an authentic one.

My Identity

For so long I had such a need to identify myself as a first, a suicide survivor, and then as the language changed, a suicide loss survivor. It was clearly part of my grief road in the early parts of the past twenty-four years. But I have found myself not disconnected from it, but like the surface of the road beneath me has changed.

I know there are people who will read that and be dismayed that I'm saying that. However, it's a good thing that I say it. I have found that in the years since I have moved on from doing suicide-related work full time, that often people are upset that I am not doing it. But to me, I am showing that you can still have a great life despite all that happens to you.

Traditionally, parents who have lost children have been the ones who have been the loudest voices (and I say that with a  positive note to it!) making suicide prevention a prevention and organizing support groups for those left behind. What I have realized over the years is that they had many years of life before their children died. I was only twenty-one when my sister died and now, as I come up on twenty-four years since her death, I see that I didn't have much life before being hit with the loss. I find today that I don't want my life to be consumed by it. As a friend said to me recently, "You don't have a need to wear the black armband." For a long time, I did feel like I needed to– or wanted to. 

Instead, I see the road much differently today. As my life continues to be filled with losses and the world feels a bit challenging, I'm working to stay focused. Each day I pray that I continue to be creative, to write and sew, and that my sister and my parents help me to stay inspired.

What I couldn't see in all those years of helping others– which taught me so much– that there would come a day that it would swing back to me and remind me of the person I always wanted to be. It's as if I have traveled through the loss to be able to find my way back to my relationships with each of my deceased family members. Now they can help me– although not in the same way as if they were here– continue to create, to sew, and to write. There is only love where they are now, no pain of anything that happened here in life. But it was my journey to get where I could see beyond the pain so that the four of us could have a relationship without it causing a block on my end.

And they could remind me of who I always wanted to be. And help me make that happen.

The Love from our Parents

In the past few months, I've had a number of people I know lose their parents. There's been an ebb and flow, particularly in the last year, although none of my friends are the same age so it's not like we've reached "an age" where we our parents might die. It's just happening.

In the eleven years since my dad died and then the three years since my mom died, I've had some time to process and think about what their deaths mean to me and how I go forward, especially at an age when most people I know still have both their parents, or at least one. 

About fifteen months before my mom died, she told me something that has helped me, something that I believe all our parents want for us, particularly when they reach the afterlife where I believe there is no pain, no sadness, no hurt or anger over what has happened in life. In the afterlife, they want us to be happy, they want us to have the lives we're supposed to, and they want us to know we're still with them.

Mom told me that she knew I was different than the rest of the family and that I needed to go forward and be who I'm supposed to be. What Mom wanted for all her kids was happiness, to see them have the happiness she never had truly had in her life coping with polio, a not very great marriage, and all the sadness and insecurity that went with both of those. 

I didn't think much about what she said to me until after she died. In my sadness knowing that she, my dad, and my younger sister are all gone (the three people in my family I spent the most time with because my older brother and sister had moved out of the house by the time I entered junior high), I have clung to those words.

And I've also come to realize something else: she freed me from the past with her message. The memories are mine to keep but I don't have to hold onto the sadness of anything that was said, unsaid, happened, or didn't happen. I can forward without letting any of the past hold me back, instead using from my past what motivates and inspires me (much of what you see in my designs). 

It's painful to move forward in loss, especially that of our parents, because we fear we lose the past, of what defines us in some ways. But it's our choice to keep what works and helps us go forward. The rest we can leave behind. After all, that's what our parents wanted most for us: to know that we are happy and who we want to be.

The Hill

The hill in the photo might not look like much but if you're standing at the bottom of it, it's quite steep. And for the eight years that I've been visiting Sam and Lois Bloom, I was never able to run up the hill that leads to their house without stopping. 

It's silly because I'm a runner and I realize it's all mental. I attribute it to what I now call my running laziness because I'm older and I don't tend to push myself so hard.

However, six months ago when we were visiting Sam and Lois, I decided I needed to get up that hill in one swoop. And I did. And then I did it again.

But in August I had an accident with my German Shepherd, Lilly– as I was going up the stairs in the house, she was running down and her head ran right in my knee. It wasn't until a week later when I couldn't run at all did I realize what had happened. For two months I couldn't run, a severe bone bruise like nothing I'd ever had before

I'm back running but I'll admit it's not the same. I was getting into such a good place prior to the accident and now wham! I'm a slow poke again. When we went off to California last week to see the Blooms, I was a little nervous about the hill. I wanted to make it up there but I didn't feel physically or mentally I was in the same place as six months before.

As I ran up it, using my arms to help pull me, I wanted to stop. But I didn't because I knew if I did, it meant I'd have to try it again the next day. That meant for twenty-hours I'd been thinking about how I didn't make it up the hill. I'd have another chance but rather than becoming stronger by actually getting up the hill without stopping, it would be like being sent back to go again.

And so I didn't stop. Or the next day either. While I still don't feel as strong as I did back in the summer, I made it up the hill without stopping. Twice.

My life is filled with hills. No year is perfect or without challenges. But I'm working to tackles the hills one by one and I find that once I do, I move onto something else, stronger and better than before.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Guadalupe and Me

To be honest, a few weeks ago, I really wanted to skip my birthday. We had just put Chaco down, I was coming up on the anniversary of my dog Daisy's death seven years ago (or was it eight? I can never remember), and while I have a great life, my holidays aren't the same without my parents and my younger sister. Denise and I had all sorts of things we did at Christmas as kids: finding the gifts early (my Barbies had to know they were getting a new bathtub, I reasoned) and putting on "Christmas Shows" with our Barbies and Raggedy Anns. And Christmas will be followed by the anniversary of my dad's death and then the first anniversary of my dog Gidget dying. The losses don't seem to end in my life and no matter how far forward I go, they are there somewhere, stamped in my memory.

This is combined with the fact that I'm working to understand how much time has gone by. Chaco was with me almost fourteen years and a part of me can't believe that fourteen years have passed. Yes, I spent them living and a lot happened and a lot of great things and people are in my life now. But I have to do some processing to get there.

And yet as the day drew closer, something tugged at me: the reminder that my birthday falls on the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I find myself writing about this every year because until I moved to New Mexico, I had no idea who she was. My first birthday here I went to mass at noon and it was all about her although it would be another fifteen or so years before I would truly realize how lucky I am to share a day with her.

On Thursday before mass for the Immaculate Conception, I lit a candle for her, the same place where Greg and I left flowers at our wedding during the "Ave Maria." For the past year I have been working with a priest at the monastery here, a Norbertine Community, meeting monthly to help me draw closer to God. And really for me, it's about hearing the messages because I tend to talk too much in prayer (yes, it is possible!). 

As I stood there in prayer on Thursday and then as my friend Alicia and I left mass, a man was handing out Our Lady of Guadalupe novenas. When I told him my birthday fell on her feast day, he said, "You're special!"

On Saturday we had our mass at church to celebrate her day and the Immaculate Conception (the church's feast day) and Greg and I were asked to bring up the gifts. We had been asked recently so I didn't expect it– we get asked about once a month– but the usher looked desperate. And my friend Alicia gave me a rosary with Guadalupe on it and a book about Guadalupe in New Mexico. Everything was pushing me toward her and this day.

And so on this birthday as I write this (it's the afternoon of the 12th), I have enjoyed all the messages from people, but I find myself drawing inward with some work to do for the year ahead. At mass at noon, I again lit a candle and asked her in prayer that I spend the year getting to know her better, drawing closer. 

I think I know how this will pan out. Now to see next year what my birthday blog brings. In the meantime, here I go.