My Fearless and Fabulous Life

My Brother, My Hero

 

     One of the greatest influences in my life has always been my big brother, Shawn McCall. Shawn was only with us for twenty short years, but he was one of those people that made a profound impact on the people he loved in a short time.  I know that we have a tendency to glorify people when they leave this world, but Shawn really was one of those people that everyone loved. As brother and sister, our relationship wasn't always perfect. We had our fights, but at the end of the day he was always my best friend.

     Today Shawn would have been forty two and I wonder what he would be like.  Would he have children, be married, still be a diehard Dallas Cowboy fan ? Still love hunting, fishing, Louis L'amour books and everything in the outdoors ?  Would he have ever been any taller, men in our family seem to get taller between twenty and twenty five, and he always hated that from the time I was five I had been taller than him. Would he have disowned me when I bought a dodge, or our Dad  when he became a Chevy man ? I don't spend a lot of time dwelling in the what if, but always on your birthday I wonder who you'd be if you were still here with us.

     Shawn didn't leave us with any children that we could watch grow up with his smile or his face. Somehow though my children both are full of traits that belonged to him. My oldest daughter Ashton has his nose, his freckles, his smart ass smile,  and her favorite car is a Cobra. Alyssa shares his skills as a miser when it comes to money. I have been blessed to have him live on a little through his nieces.  I wish he would have known them.

     If I live to be a hundred there are things about my brother that I will never forget. His smile, his laugh, how irritated he used to get at me, and at the same time how he was one of the few people who understood me.  Today I pray you know how loved you were, and how much still you are missed. You were always my brother, always my friend, and greater than those you were my hero. I was and will always be proud to say that Shawn McCall was my big brother. Happy Birthday !! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Independence Day

 

     Today for me is many things beyond just the Independence Day of our country. It is my own little Independence Day, and the fourth seems to have become Independence Day for my family. In numerology four is the number of completion, so it stands to reason that even though we didn’t know it picking the number four for our Independence Day brought us completion.

     So what is this Independence day that I am talking about ? Today marks one year since I smoked my last cigarette. This is one of the changes that I have made that I am the most proud of. I was a smoker for twenty four years and stopped cold turkey last fourth of July, knowing that I was truly finished this time for good. Sure I’ve quit before, but this time was different. It wasn’t because someone was telling me to, or asking me to, it was because deep down it no longer matched the person that I was becoming.

     One of the reasons that I struggled for so long about quitting was because I was afraid that I would gain weight. I did. I know that this is a reason that a lot of people won’t stop smoking. To that all I have to say is at the end of the day I gained some weight and I survived. One year later it’s almost all off and I am so much healthier than I was this time last year. It was worth the extra pounds to gain my independence.

     For my oldest daughter Ashton, today marks her first six months off Heroin. I hope she knows how proud of her I am. It’s so good to have her back ! I can’t say that I know how hard it’s been, because I have no idea. I know how hard it was for me to stop smoking, and I don’t think the two compare. Watching her come back to life has been almost as amazing as it was watching her grow up in the first place. Keep moving forward girl, you got this.

     I took a class a couple years ago called The Psychology of Addiction. In that class I learned that we are all addicts. Everyone has something that they are a slave to in their lives, doesn’t have to be cigarettes, drugs or alcohol. Your vise could be gossip, drama, negativity or a multitude of other things. Whatever it is, that monkey on your back….today is a great day to declare your independence. Happy 4^th of July ! I hope you all have a fearless and fabulous day !! 

Embracing The Shadow

     In the book Eat, Pray, Love Elizabeth Gilbert writes, "When you're lost in the woods it sometimes takes you awhile to realize that you are lost. For the longest time you can convince yourself that you've just wandered a few feet off the path, that you'll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and it's time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don't even know from which direction the sun rises anymore." That is the perfect description of where I feel like we let our shadows take us. So far into the woods trying to hide the parts of us that we deem unacceptable, that we sometimes have to wonder if we will ever find our way out. Oh sure we see the light of day sometimes and think "We've arrived"..."Finally the moment that we have been waiting for." Just to come around one last corner and have our deepest darkest shadow pop out and confront us only to send us running back into the woods. After all the worst parts of ourselves are the ones we fight the hardest to hide. 

     Debbie Ford tells us the shadow is not a problem to be solved or an enemy to be conquered, but a fertile field to be cultivated. She says our most hated, feared or shamed qualities are the ones that hold the key to living the life of our dreams. That is the concept that keeps most of us lost in the woods. If the only way to the life of our dreams is by walking through a field of our mistakes and our judgements and proclaiming "I am that" (in a completely non judgemental, loving, self forgiving way of course) how many of us stand a chance of finding our way out of the 100 acre woods we wander ? How does one look at their shadow and love it unconditionally as part of us when it appears to be everything that we aspire not to be ? 

     The secret to the shadow work I am finding is the same as the secret to everything else, it is in the surrender. Finding my way out of the forest and into being who I am is in the moments that I am able to pick up my perceived mistakes, look at them, not see them as right or wrong and just be with the lessons that I learned from them. I have discovered since seeing Debbie Ford's movie, The Shadow Effect, that the reason that all of this letting go is such a struggle is because it's not always in the letting go that we find peace, it's in the integration of each and every aspect of ourselves. It's not about being different, or better, it's simply about being ourselves and embracing the gifts and the wisdom that our shadows bring into our world. At the end of the day if we can love ourselves despite any perceived imperfectons, or things we feel are mistakes, that is when we can arrive out of the forest and at the destination of our dreams. 

     

When The World Went Up In Flames....Where Was God ?

    I have been trying to understand the spirituality behind the natural disasters that are taking place around our world lately. Especially since one of them has caught up with me and is affecting my life personally. To be in that space of seeing places and things that you love destroyed, by what you can only imagine is God is a very hard thing to understand. To know that people that you love are hurting and in the disasters in the other parts of the world many lives have been lost really makes you wonder what it’s all about. How could God allow all of this to happen ? Where in all of this can I find a greater higher purpose ? When I wake up tomorrow and my life looks nothing like it did yesterday…where was the good , or better yet where was God ?      

     While many people are running around talking about how all of this is another reason to believe that the end of the world is fast approaching and it must be a sign that God is angry, all I see is love. I see communities and neighbors that were strangers yesterday reaching out to help one another. I see a society that is very much motivated by money and things, forgetting about all of that in favor not of what can I get, but what can I give. I see men and women out risking their lives to save the homes and lives of others. I see people literally giving the shirt off their back to those in need. Those things ring true from the fire fighters that are risking their lives for us here at home, all the way across the ocean to the engineers that are risking death trying to contain nuclear power plants. All around us in times of need if we are looking, that’s where God is.    

      I read a passage in the book The Shack , by WM Paul Young today that I want to share with all of you. It reads….”You try to make sense of the world in which you live based on a very small and incomplete picture of reality. It is like looking at a parade through the tiny knothole of hurt, pain, self centeredness, and power, and believing you are on your own and insignificant. All of these contain powerful lies. You see pain and death as ultimate evils and God as the ultimate betrayer, or perhaps, at best, as fundamentally untrustworthy. You dictate the terms and judge God’s actions and find him guilty. The real underlying flaw in your life, is that you don’t think that God is good. If you knew that God was good and that everything-the means, the ends, and all the processes of individual lives- is all covered by God’s goodness, then while you might not always understand what God is doing, you would trust him.” Tonight let’s trust that although the things going on around us are painful, that God’s goodness exists in all of them.      

     A few days ago I sent out an invitation to all of my friends to come together in group prayer, from where ever in the world you are. On Monday night over 300 people prayed together for the Arizona communities that are being affected by the wildfires. Tonight as we go to pray together for the second time we have the energy of over 1600 people that will all be praying at the same time. In things like this is where you know that God exists. Sixteen hundred people energetically coming together to pray, where yesterday we had never heard each other’s names. There is beauty in that. In the weeks to come as everyone will be allowed to return home I know that we will see God in many more places as these communities come together to help their neighbors that have seemingly lost everything. It’s in these moments of great loss that we can all come together and realize that we truly are all one, what affects you, affects me. I pray that as time goes by, when we are temped to shake our fists and cry out “why God why” we instead hold out our hands to someone in need and ask instead “how may I serve?”    

One Year Ago Today

    One year ago today my baby girl’s whole world changed. She learned the hard way about how harsh life can sometimes be. On May 17, 2010 her boyfriend shot and killed himself. Making her one of what they call “Survivors of Suicide”.  A survivor of suicide isn’t someone who tried and failed to kill themselves. It’s one of the mass amounts of people that are affected when someone kills themselves.      

     If there was anything that I wish I could have saved my daughter from this would have been the event. Death is always hard, but when someone chooses to leave I think that makes it that much harder to deal with their loss. I know in the end when we all look back there will be many lessons learned and somewhere in disguise there will be some hidden blessings…..there always is. Sometimes they are just so hard to see.    

 Dear Alyssa,    

      I hope that you are not to sad tonight. I hope the change of scenery is helping. I hope you know that you are stronger than you think you are. I know that this hasn’t been the easiest year for you, but you made it. I hope between now and the next anniversary that you feel a little lighter. I know that life’s not fair, and that is a hard lesson to learn…not just for you, but for all of us. Just don’t forget to look once more for the good in life and find the happy moments. We never know how much time we have here and I hope more than anything that Nick helped you to learn to not only appreciate life, but to live it.      

     I being biased as your mother believe that you have an amazing future ahead of you and I know that Nick is still with you. I hope you can learn to hold him in your heart and keep him as a beautiful memory of someone that you loved and let him lead you into your future instead of the weight of it all holding you back.      

     I hope that you know how much you are loved. 
     One year ago today Nick Lancaster transitioned from this world. I hope that you’ve found the peace that you so deserve. I wish you Love and Light Nick. I pray tonight that no one ever feels so lost that they think suicide is the answer. No one is unloved, not needed and none of us are extra. We are all supposed to be here, even during the bad times. Live may never be Fucking Perfect…..but it’s always worth living. 

 

 

Dear Mom

     For Mother’s Day this year I thought that I would dedicate my blog to you. I know that it took us a long time to be where we are today in our relationship, but the important thing is that we found our way. If you would have asked me many years ago if I could have imagined us being close like we are now I would have definitely said no. I guess our most important relationships take the most work so that we appreciate them more.      

     You are one of the strongest people that I know. I know I get my looks from you, but I am so grateful that I got my strength from you. I don’t know if I could have held myself up the last few years without having learned from you that it is possible to get through anything life throws at you.    

      I don’t know where I would be in my life if I didn’t have you for my Mom. There is nothing important that happens in my life that I don’t immediately want to share with you. When something bad happens, you are the person that I seek comfort from. I know that I don’t tell you often enough how much you mean to me, or how incredible that I think you are. So this Mother’s Day I am telling not just you, but the whole world.    

      I am proud to be the daughter of Sherry Jean Rogers. You are an amazing woman that I am proud to not only call my mother, but my best friend. I can’t imagine a life without you in it. I know that you and I don’t say it often, but Mom I hope you know how loved you are. You mean more to me that you will ever know.      

     Thank you for my love of flowers and plants. Thank you for my music addiction. Thank you for teaching me to be kind. Thank you for my love of old movies. Thank you for walking the path of self discovery with me. Thank you for always supporting me, and cheering me on. Thank you for always (even when you think I’m crazy or wrong) loving me. Thank you for being my Mom, so that I knew how to be one. Happy Mother’s Day.

 Love, 

Jeannie

Learning to Feel

     My daughter Ashton recently started a blog, to cronicle her recovery from heroin addiction. Last nights post was about how hard it is learning how to feel again. I think that eventually this is a lesson that most of us must learn. It doesn't matter if we hide our emotions with drugs, alcohol, food, cigarettes, other people, or just bury them deep down inside where we can't find them anymore, we all have a way of coping with all the things in life that we don't want to "feel".

    I never felt like I was one of those parents that actively told her children not to feel, but I know now that we learn so much more by watching than we do by what we are told. I have been one for many years to hide my feelings and if they did creep out of me it was usually when I was alone and no one else would see my vulnerability. One of the hardest things for me to learn has been that it's ok to feel. It's ok to cry, to get angry, to feel whatever emotion that we need to feel....it's ok. When I tell my clients to let go of the guilt and feel whatever it is that they are feeling, I see dramatic shifts happen. It's like it never occured to most people that they were allowed to feel their feelings. It's the most liberating idea in the world...it's ok to feel and I don't have to feel guilty about it. 

     Here is Ashton's blog for you all to read today, it's real, it's raw and it's part of her beautiful journey learning to feel: 

      Lately a real struggle for me has been the fact that I have to begin to feel emotions again. And I am definitely being tested lately. I have spent years perfecting that exact thing - NOT feeling. And now that I have done good for myself and I have begun to turn my life around and quit using heroin, I have to start feeling again too? I know I need to and I know I want to, but the road getting there is in no way being underestimated, its hard. And, inevitably that is what has led me back to the heroin every other time in the past when I have quit. 
     I am so grateful for my class that I took this weekend 5 Element Acupressure for Emotional Healing. This is definitely something that I am going to use not only for clients, but myself as well. In the class we worked with the Transverse Fascial Membranes, to help to release emotions being stored in certain places of the body. Also we worked with Aromatherapy, the 5 elements with Traditional Chinese Medicine, some reflexology, Cranial Sacral work, and Acupressure.
     Laying down in a dark room, on a massage table, smelling strong esential oils from all over - its hard to know what to expect when someone is about to open up the Fascial Membrane on my Diaphragm, Pelvic Bone, Clavicle, and Occipital Ridge. For me, my body reacts in a number of ways to therapeutic sessions. For one, I twitch... quit a bit, because my body wants that person working on me to get away because it is not use to all the feelings that are being stirred up inside. Another thing is that I got very tight like my body woudnt let anyone in, it was protecting me from all the times I have been hurt in the past.Lastly,  I was accompanied by mass amounts of heat and vibrations throughout my entire body which was pretty overwhelming some of the time.
     It took two sessions working with opening up the membranes for me to start to process just a sliver of some of my emotions. All day yesterday after class I found myself being extremely emotional. And the thing about it was, I didn't know why. I knew my body most likely released some emotions and was just working through them. But being sad and not knowing why has been familiar to me since the third grade and I've always wanted to do something to fix myself - as if I've always been broken. And although I know now that isn't true anymore, it is still extremely hard to get used to feeling anger, or extreme sadness. I can no longer turn to the drugs to hide my real feelings anymore. It's a really hard struggle for me. I have always been someone who wants to please others, play nice, and not get in the way. But it has made me this person who has so much pent up anger that I am afraid to let it out because of who might be in the way.. But I don't want to end up alone and bitter, which is what will likely happen if I don't.
     I didn't realize how void of emotion I really was until it started to come back to me and although some of it can be overwhelming, I have also been experiencing great joy as well. When addicted to drugs I had no energy, no happiness, I was constantly numb of anything happy or sad. I would look at people and envy them for their energy to be able to walk a half mile to the store, or get up and go to work everyday because I couldn't hold a routine with anything. I was just too sick all the time. But in the past four months I have started school again, my romantic relationship with Danny has been improving far more than I thought it could have in such a short amount of time, and I constantly soak up every second I can with my family and love it all. Being full of life is so worth the hard times, because it is those happy moments of pure bliss that make this life worth living. And I know I'm here for a reason, a big reason.

      Keep feeling, in the end life is better when we show up for it. The good, the bad, the ugly and all of our feelings. I have been blessed to have you as my daughter and I thank you for sending me on my own journey to learn how to feel. I love you. If anyone wants to keep up with Ashton's journey she can be found at her blog "Living Life in Pink" at  www.ashtonmuffin.blogspot.com  

     JJ Heller seems to be the girl who's singing my song lately......  

Conquering Death (just a little)

      A few months ago I took a class called Lifestyles and Diversity. The class is about many different things, but mostly it’s about judgment. Our judgment on everything from illegal immigrants, to homosexuals, to people who have been in prison, to addicts. Basically if it’s a subject that is regularly subject to judgment, it gets looked at.     

     One night that made me particularly uncomfortable was the night on death and dying. A woman that I judged to be completely crazy was brought in to help us take a journey that night. That journey was our own death, or at least the dramatic equivalent that left us all still breathing. Lets just say that my anger caused me to completely miss my own death, let alone the other person that I was supposed to be holding space for in this exercise. I even carried this night around with me for weeks, telling anyone who would listen about crazy death lady and what I had to endure in this class.     

     At one point I thought that I had actually moved past this experience and found a little good in it, but deep down inside there was something about it that still lingered in me. Then I started volunteering at the HIV center and every Wednesday I get to hang out with the (maybe not so crazy) death lady. I thought I was so far past the first night that I even spent one afternoon telling her how much I hated it and how over it I was. Needless to say, she didn’t buy it.     

     Today I walked into a room and death and dying night was being discussed, I ran the other way, because of course I’m so over it. On my way in the other direction “you should come” was yelled at me. I felt that all to familiar anger jump up inside me, but let it out with a laugh and a “whatever”. Every time I saw her for the rest of the day she kept saying come tonight, of course never imagining that I actually would. She isn’t the only one that couldn’t imagine me there, neither could I.                Today of all days someone asked me if when the time comes for them to leave this world if I would be willing to hold that space for them. The second the word yes came out of my mouth my mind kicked in with all of the “what are you thinking” and “are you crazy”, “you know you can’t do that .” I can’t even be present for a pretend death, how could I possibly have just agreed to show up for someone for the real thing. So after some pretty heated debates with myself, I decided that I should go to the class tonight and see if this time I could lose my anger and be present.     

     There are times when you go somewhere and you can’t wait for something to just be over. Then there are times when you are so unmistakably in the right place in the right moment that you could stay in the magic forever. As creepy as the whole pretending to die can sound, there is no place that I would have rather been tonight. I am often greeted by new dimensions of myself that I didn’t know existed and tonight I found one of those. I found out tonight that I do have the strength to not only hold that space for someone that I care about, but even for someone that I have never met. It’s not really a scary place to be, it’s one of the most loving and compassionate things that one could ever do for someone. To let yourself go so completely even for just a moment in order to share the experience, without all of our judgment about death…what a gift.     

     So thank you death lady, you bring a special kind of love to the world, thank you for bringing some of it into mine. Your gift is a gift that not all can handle, and I want to acknowledge you for that. Your light shines brighter in a space of death than most of us in the brightest parts of life. Thank you for the gifts that you gave to me tonight, I accept them with so much gratitude. I feel somehow tonight like I conquered death…just a little. 

 

What Might Have Been/What Can Never Be

     I meet people all the time that suffer from the syndrome of what might have been or what can never be in life. They are always the most unhappy people. Lost in the past, wishing they could see a different future, missing the right now. We were all born with tremendous gifts to give the world, but if we cant let go of the might have been/what can never be’s then we may never find them.     

     I know in my case I might have been a better student when I was young and a better daughter. I might have given in and married my oldest daughters Dad, or tried harder and stayed in either of my marriages. I might have gone to the church of my family and found God in a box that was always to small for me. I might have been a better parent and thought out some decisions that I had no idea were probably not the best at the time. I might have been a better friend probably more times than I can count. I might have been, I might have been, I might have been……….    

     Most of our list of the can never be’s come from the might have beens. Most of the things from my past that I can find to dwell on could easily all lead to something that can never be. For instance if I had married my oldest daughters Dad, then he would have never had his other daughter. If she would have never been born then she could have never died and if she had never died, then my daughter might not have ever got lost in her sadness and then a drug addiction. All of that is one long can never be and the reality is that no matter how long I spent dwelling on that scenario….it can never be. I know that there are relationships of all kinds and a multitude of other squandered opportunities that would also exist on that list if I cared to make it.     

     There comes a time in our lives when we have to make a choice, do we live in regret and wonder or do we LIVE ? I have made mistakes, probably more than I care to count, but from those mistakes I learned, I grew and I landed right in the middle of a wonderful life. For all of my mistakes I have so many more blessings, I have had more good days than bad. I have smiled so much more than I have cried. I have loved more than I have hated and been  loved more than I know. Sometimes when we stop being disappointed in ourselves long enough and embrace our individual journey (mistakes and all) we find out we are already exactly who we are supposed to be. 

Medicine Drum

     A drum is a voice, alive and feeling as with any voice. When it speaks then we must listen and honor the message with our best and noblest selves, for it is a voice with great power and it is a voice that is a gift to us from a greater being. If we do this then our lives will be full and happy…                                                                                                                      - Louis W. Ballard Quapaw-Cherokee 

     I spent this weekend in the most incredible workshop, making of all things, my own medicine drum. A couple of months ago I decided that I wanted to learn how to drum. Tribal  and healing type drumming, I won’t be joining any rock bands anytime soon or anything. Shortly after through a series of random things I found my first drum teacher Shyena Venice. With Shyena I have been learning to play the Djembe, which is an African tribal drum. It has been the most amazing experience. Drums have a way of taking you someplace else and melting all of your cares away. It’s been a very otherworldly and healing experience for me.         

     As much as I love what the Djembe is bringing into my life, I don’t think that any drumming experience will ever compare to the magic of making my own drum. I know that it was no accident that just as I was wishing for drumming to come into my life, one of my spiritual teachers Cliff Soloman decided to offer this class. Allowing us the experience of bringing the drum to life ourselves gave us all a great appreciation of what it takes to actually put a drum together. Not only will the medicine of the Elk that my drum is made from be a part of the healing experience, but my medicine and those in the wonderful group of souls that shared this experience with me will also be there with every beat of my drum.      

     For anyone out there who is interested in drumming or is already making drumming a part of their life, this is a highly recommended journey. Any of our healing tools that we take the time to put a part of ourselves into will always be the most powerful things that we possess. I know that this drum will be loved and cared for as long as it walks with me. This whole weekend was such a blessing in my life. It was an honor to have taken this spiritual journey with such a magical group of people. Thank you all for coming together to make this a once in a lifetime experience, that I for one will never forget.  

Measuring the skins
Soaking the skins
The frames
My finished drum
The back