Treatment

stay clean and sober;

eat no meat, only lean; cow

jumped over the moon

conundrum

how does this play out

abstinence, moderation?

40 days and nights

 

April 8 – One Year, One Day at a Time – Anxiety Free

Whew, I have been on a tear since last Friday.  Scurrying about asking why and what if and how, trying to figure out my cancer, how to plan to deal with it, what caused it, why I have it again.  Asking over and over, “Why do I have cancer again?”  Looking for an explanation that would help me deal with this life reality.  No luck.  I finally gave up.  I got tired of being miserable, anxious and upset.  So yesterday I decided to practice gratitude for the life I have.

I made arrangements for Amelia, my grand-daughter to spend the night on Sunday.  I was still pretty much wallowing in self-pity when I awoke Monday morning.  I had a fitful few hours, taught a private lesson the entire time watching my mind tell me how messed up I was and asking, “Why don’t you want to be here?”  Then on the way home, I woke up.  I looked out the window and saw spring exploding in the trees and the grass and in the dark cloudy rain through which I was driving.  I returned to the present moment.  God only knows where I had been for the past three days….in some phantasmagorical world similar to Dante’s Inferno stuck on one side of the River Styx convincing myself of any worse case scenario I could imagine.

I came back.  I came back to the view out my car window and somehow managed to keep waking up again and again all day.

Day 3…two days without alcohol, 38 to go.

Love you Sarla.  We will get through this.  We will.

Processing

Okay good.  Went to a yoga class.  Did pranayama and meditation.  Feel better.  Glad I will not be drinking for 40 days.  All good.  Amelia is coming to spend the night tonight.  Our friend and yoga teacher, Chris Coniaris, and his girlfriend, Bridgette from Cincinnati are here to spend a couple of nights with us.  Jordan gets home from LA at 5:45 pm.  So we will have a full house.  I’m glad.

I really got myself worked up about the cancer over the past few days.  Really started on Friday and just went right on through last night.  I just wanted to get drunk and forget about it.  Pretend it isn’t happening.  Well it is happening and I am going to deal with it.  I guess I just had to get pissed off.  It really did very little good.  I do not have to go there again.  Grasping, avoidance, dulling the senses, none of these strategies really helps me to cope with a second round of cancer.

I also need to admit that I have catastrophized about it, it being cancer, attacking other parts of my body.  I know, don’t go there.  Well all I can do is watch my mind and try to maintain witness perspective.  I will play the part of the observer.  Here is what I see…..

 Mind in action:  Do I have cancer in my bones?  Is that why my shoulder hurts all the time.   What about the chronic back pain I have had for the past year.  Should I tell the oncologist about that?  Yes, I should.  I want him to know everything that is going on with me.  Even if I want to ignore it, I believe it is important to practice full disclosure when going to see an oncologist I have cancer in my bones?  Is that why my shoulder hurts all the time.   What about the chronic back pain I have had for the past year?  Should I tell the oncologist about that?   Mind taking over again:  What if he, he being the doctor, wants me to have an MRI?  I cannot do that.  Just thinking about it gives me an anxiety attack.  I have such terrible claustrophobia.  They will have to knock me out.  Do you think I am getting just a little ahead of myself?  

Enjoy this moment.  Breathe in and out and emphasize the exhale, the letting go.

I love you Sarla.  We will get through this.  We will.

 

April 6 -One Year, One Day at a Time – No Alcohol for Forty Days and Forty Nights.

I need to take a  break from drinking.  I do not want to have cancer.  I hate how much money it costs to have cancer.  My victim mentality is trying to take over my life.  I will not let that happen.  As much as I loath the fact that I must make decisions about my treatment options, I will do it.  Having said that I know from experience the clearer I am the easier this process will be.  Drinking is no way to cope with cancer.  My old pattern of turning to a glass of wine and then another is up and running and it is my job to shut it down.  So as much as I do not want to do this I am going to put a cork in the bottle for the next 40 days.

Giving up anything for 40 days is a good practice no matter what the circumstances, but I think it will be especially useful for me now because it will eliminate the one thing I use to hide from myself and from reality.  Of course alcohol is a poor substitute for clarity and it certainly does lead to peace of mind.  It’s just a habit so deeply ingrained in me that when times get tough it surfaces and takes over.  What they say in AA is so true.  Drinking alcohol is a slippery slope for someone for me.  I had years of practice using alcoholic beverages to deal with problems.  Alcohol only makes all things worse, but its allure is the false sense of relief you get when you take that first sip.  But one sip is never enough especially when there are big problems.

The sick thing about me turning to alcohol now is that  it has not been a problem for past several months.  A glass or two of wine here and there.  Nothing more.  No compulsion to get intoxicated.  I don’t even like being drunk.  It sucks.  Then why do it now?  Good question, but I do not have the time nor the energy to deal with that line of inquiry.  Who knows why I or anyone else chooses to get intoxicated.  What difference does it make?  Rather than wallowing in the problem I am going straight to the solution. Just stop.  Okay good.  For forty days, April 6 through May 16, I will not consume any alcohol.

I am sure this will make for interesting blogging.  Whatever feelings I’ve been trying to avoid will surely surface sooner or later.  Loving kindness and compassion.  Patience, gratitude, peace of mind and well-being.  I love you Sarla.  I do.  We will get through this.

clarity

find your way back now

practice body awareness

during addiction

 

‘No Big Deal Dharma: Notice, Relax & Let Go”

Growing up in an abusive home, I learned to skillfully abate pain and fear.  I simply disassociated.  If my father came into my room at night, which he did with some regularity, I closed my eyes and imagined myself elsewhere, anywhere away from the present moment.  When my father beat up my grandmother, I hid under the bed and refused to come out.  Determined to pretend it never happened, I closed my eyes and decided never to look back.  I only remembered the event after years of a reoccurring dream in which I saw myself in my bedroom cowering under the box springs.  With the help of hypnosis,  I relieved the that terrible night and in so doing we freed of another repressed past event.

In adolescents and early adult hood, I used sex, food, cigarettes and alcohol as strategies to avoid painful experiences and memories.  I stayed away from home as much as possible and finally moved to another city to get away from war-torn house in which I grew up.  Marrying at 21 seemed like a good idea.  What would be better than having someone to take care of me?  Well that did not work.  My first husband and I fought incessantly.  We drank to excess and smoked a lot of pot.  He was a good man.  I was a ticking  time bomb  waiting to detonate.

I left him and found another man, sexier, more exciting, dapper, and almost famous.  We lived the bohemian lifestyle, a ratty roach infested apartment, parties every night, sex, drugs and rock and roll.  We married but decided not to be monogamous.  Our motto was, If it feels good, do it.  After out first child, born at home, we bought a house. I got a real job at a law firm and we set about the business of growing up.  I never could get the hang of it.  Insecure, jealous, depressed, ridden with guilt and shame, I never believed that he loved me.  I was ill suited to be a parent and desperately wanted to die.  So I had multiple affairs, drank myself in to a stupor every night and blamed him for my woes.  He was never to blame.  The ghosts from my past were gaining on me.

I stopped drinking in 1990.  Something deep inside told me, “You must get sober if you ever hope to sort this out.”  I did.  I went to treatment for co-dependency, a real buzz word in the 90’s and for bulimia.  I left my second husband in 1997 for the fourth and last time.  We have both since remarried and are good friends.  We celebrate holidays together with our two children, present day spouses, our grand baby and another one on the way.  Life is good.

So what have I learned?  Go toward pain and suffering.  Do not attempt to run away from it.  You cannot hide from the past.  It will find you and f_ _ k you up until you deal with it.  “Wherever you go, there you are,” bigger than life, day in and day out.  This is it.  Why use all the resources we have to repress memories and hide from our fears? There is another way.  Joan Halifax Roshi explains:

In opening to living and dying without defending ourselves, we liberate a tremendous amount of energy. When we let go of our reference points, we open ourselves to a new way of being and perceiving. This is the realm of not-knowing. Although it can be frightening to be this transparent to life, we now have the resources with which to welcome fear, to be present for it, and to transform it through our awareness. In this way we break the habitual patterns that we have used to defend ourselves against feeling fear. This is how we heal.

Simplicity and directness are doorways to this open state. Rather than continuing to use concepts to distance and protect ourselves from our experience, we relax into the present moment.

She calls this ordinary state, “no big deal dharma.” It is simply everyday life. With no need to edit our reality, we can relax and sit with things just as they are, not good or bad.  We notice, relax and let go.  How, you say, can I do that?  Meditation.  Meditation teaches us to notice what is right in front of us.  We learn, as we sit, the longer we sit, to relax into the present moment whatever it brings. As we cultivate the ability to sit and see, we learn to relax into what is called, “not knowing.” Se begin to understand there is nothing special to realize.  We just are in this present moment. “There is nothing lacking, nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing extra.”  This moment and every moment is unique.  Wow.  So powerful and yet so simple.

Carry the Candle of Your Soul

“Being true to who we are means carrying our spirit like a candle in the center of our darkness.” – unknown

We must stay committed to our inner path.  I started yoga in 1985 because I was lost.  I had no path.  Married with two children, I was fumbling in the darkness without a light.  I needed help.  I had no tether, no hub in the wheel of my life, no place to call home.  Yes, I had a house, a husband, a job, all the trappings of a life well-lived.  But I was aimless.  I wandered from drink to drink, cigarette to cigarette, party to party, man to man, job to job, running as fast as a I could to find something, anything to grab onto.  I did not realize I was running away from myself.   The tougher things got, the more confused I became, the faster I ran.  I ran to AA where I managed to put together ten years of sobriety, but I was still lost.  I was separate from myself.  I saw myself as a project, a person who needed remodeling, a make-over, a face-lift, a personality-ectomy as I refer to it now.  What I needed was a commitment, a vow to love myself, as a partner, in sickness and health, til death do us part.

“It is interesting that the nautical definition of marry us ‘to join two ropes end to end by interweaving their strands.'” – Mark Nepo

I married others but never myself.  I never intended to weave a life tapestry that included me.  I wanted to be someone else.  l did not understand that to be whole I had to accept my faults and limitations.  I wanted no part of them.  I did not know that I could love myself no matter what others thought of me.  I saw myself only through the eyes of others, their judgements, their value systems.  Today I know that I must treat myself with the same compassion I treat my husband and my marriage.  I am learning to cherish my inner radiance.  Even when I feel bruised and battered, I manage to practice self-love.  I know my soul embodies truth, my truth.  So, I married my soul.  Isn’t that cool?

“Not too tight.  Not too loose.”  This Buddhist aphorism guides me home again and again.  I am not spirit alone.  I am life.  I have a heart and a mind that work together.  My doubt and my anxiety are inextricably intertwined with my faith and hope.  Yoga is the union of opposites, the tying together of all the ropes of duality to make a strand that is twice as strong as any one thing which stands alone in opposition to another.  We are all in this together.  Gather the parts of yourself together.  Have a meeting.  Join hands.

“To reach Accord, just say, “Not Two.”   — Seng-ts’an

Why I Write

I write for myself and for my friends.  I write to say things to my family I cannot speak aloud, to clear the clouds of misfortune.  I write to elevate my own thoughts and the minds of those around me.  I write to speak the truth.  I write to proclaim that each and every one of us has a right to be heard. I write because I want to be honest and clear.  I write with earnestness and joy knowing that sometimes, often, I do not make sense.  When I write I know I am alive. If I do not write, I feel like a failure.  I write so that I can hold a candle to the world as I see it and not as others depict it.  I write for my grandmother, who could not or would not speak.  I write to play.  I write for fun because it is like frolicking in a flower festooned valley.  I write because I dream and I know there is more.   I write when I don’t take my anti-depressant, out of fear and desperation.  I write to make sense of the world and to illuminate my world.  I write as if I were playing a fine violin, bowing my way across the pages of time and space.  I write to tell my story so that others may live.  I write of wonder and pain and fear and joy and confusion.  I write, when I write, because I believe it is what I have always been meant to do.  I write for all the survivors of sexual abuse, alcoholism, drug addiction, cancer and the like.  I write my pain in hopes of touching yours.  Writing is like playing with fire knowing that any moment I could go up in smoke. When I write I walk the tight rope between what I know to be real and what the world tells me is real.  Will I fall?  Is that why I do not write?  I write to love others and myself.  I write to express anger, hatred, revenge and loneliness. I write to become a dagger that will pierce my father’s heart. I write, screaming at my mother, demanding she tell me what really happened.  I write pleading for understanding and reconciliation. I write so that I will not forget that my son died and yet he lives.  I write to bring chaos into the world in hopes of restoring it to sanity.  I write to cry and laugh and joke.  I write to pretend I am someone who I am not and to be more of who I am.  I write for God, for the Divine mother in me and for the women of the world.   I write to spin a yarn.  I write like a wolf howling in the night hungry for love and companionship.  I write to be alone but not lonely.  I write because I am a writer and that is what we do.  It is our language.  It is my connection to my soul and to the universe.  Writing is my life.

January 1….One Year, One Day at a Time

Day one.  Of what I do not know.  What will each day bring?  Curiously, I write tonight of what and who I am now.  I am tired and hung over.   We stayed out late last night and I have absolutely no idea how much I had to drink.  I remember my glass always being full.  Yuck.  It was a terrific party.  Wonderful people, good food or at least I guess it was good.  I did not eat a bite..  Not true.  I did eat 2 deviled eggs, a pickle and a handful of chex mix. Part of writing, One year, One day at a Time, really the biggest part of it for me is honesty.  NO bull shit.  No little white lies about how much I did not did not drink, what I think or feel.  To the best of my ability I will report things as they are.

I did start my book today.  That sounds and looks so weird.  Do I have self-doubt?   You bet I do.  Who do I think I am to write a book?  Me, that’s who.  I am just going to do it.  Plain and simple.  The only failure is not trying.  I will write it, a novel.  I started today.  I really did and I will continue tomorrow and the next and the next because the second biggest part of One year, One day at Time is that I will work on this novel every day, no matter what.

Lastly, I will blog each day evening about my experiences during the day…like a journal, but with a little editing.  I got up at 7:30 am which is late for me.  I guess I slept in because we did not go to bed until after 1:00 am.  I took two Advil to relieve a lingering headache.  Drinking too much is definitely not fun.  Last night was the first time I have done that in as long as I can remember.  I just do not drink much anymore.  I prefer to be clear, level-headed, alert, to remember what I did and to feel good the next day.  I am sure I would have had just as much fun last night without the extra drinking.  Oh well, “Next.”  I use that word to remind myself when it is time to move on.  Like when your mother told you, “There is no use crying over spilled milk.”  Well, she was right.

I went to the Puja Ceremony at Midtown Yoga.  I started this tradition several years ago.  This was my first year to be a participant.  I did not want to go.  I wanted to see the yoga students and teachers whom I knew would be there, but I also wanted to avoid the pain I knew would accompany my gratitude.  The funniest thing happened.  Each time I started to get sad, I closed my eyes and breathed in the energy of the room and then I had this thought.  “I started this.  I made this possible.  I built Midtown Yoga from the ground up and I am proud of it.”  I have never had that thought before.  I honored myself and the work I did and I was grateful to myself.  Pretty cool.

Around three, my son Jordan, and his partner, Travis came over for a bowl of my famous black bean soup which I made earlier in the day.  They opened their Christmas presents.  We had a nice visit except Jordan kept his face in his phone a good part of the time.  So annoying.  After they left, we went to one more party.  What day is it anyway?  I keep thinking tomorrow is Monday, but it is Thursday.  And now it feels like 10:00 when it is only 7:45.  No alcohol today.  Lots of cranberry juice, ginger ale, water, and more water.

Oh and we watched Mean Girls.

Funny movie.  God we girls can be so catty and mean.  Today I commit not to “word vomit” (tell tales on, spread rumors, say nasty things about others.)  I will watch my tongue.

Day One.  One Year, One Day at a Time.