On my Netherlands trip, I mentioned that my relationship to pain changed after I had a huge knot in my neck disappear after the psilocybin trip.
I see a few doctors here and there, and they’d given me the gift of names for why I feel so crappy: Hashimoto’s, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Carpal Tunnel. Fatigue? Achy joints? Blame one of those pesky autoimmune things you’ve tested positive for.
Before the trip, I was wearing wrist braces to bed every night because of pain in my wrists and hands. It used to make me anxious when I had to launder the braces, that I wouldn’t get them washed, dried, and find them again before bedtime.
They’ve been in one of the four laundry baskets of unfolded laundry in my living room for days now and I’m totally cool with it.
I have never felt like teen parenting was an area of giftedness for me. I believe that parenting older kids requires a firm connection to our instincts, and I’m still learning to trust mine. It requires a long fuse, and a lot of wisdom – again, not really my natural strong suits.
Plus, I tend towards being critical first, compassionate later.
I came back from my retreat hoping that it would change the way I parented.
So far, I don’t think my younger kids have benefited a whole lot. I may be a tiny bit less flammable and impatient, but I don’t know if it’s enough for them to have noticed. I’m definitely a work in progress.
Today was a real Sabbath.
We finally got our first significant snowfall for the year, in the form of a huge winter snow that cancelled church services, and left us home with nothing to do on a Sunday.
It could have gone either way. Often, when all the kids are home on weekends, the noise and fighting increase. With no structure to their day other than quiet time, they can end up engaging in attention-seeking behaviors with both their siblings and their parents.
Today was different.
I found out about this lovely book by Jack Kornfield in the list of resources that was provided to us after my retreat. I got a library copy, then ended up getting a copy to keep because the book was so good. I gave it to the Chaplain to read and kept reading my library copy, which meant I couldn’t mark up the pages like I wanted to. This is another book I want to read more than once, so I will mark up our copy on the second read.
What made this book so good?
We’ve all experienced this phenomenon in large and small parts of our lives. We know it’s unreasonable, but we expect things to keep getting better. We want the stock market to keep trending up. We want to keep earning interest on our bank account. We want to keep getting better at our jobs. We want to improve our weaknesses, hone our parenting skills. We want to stay connected to friends. We want them to stay connected to us. We want our romantic relationships to flourish. We want our spiritual lives to be rich and rewarding.
Yet sometimes we won’t be measuring up in a category or two. And the people who care about us will ask, “How are you doing?” But what it feels like they want to hear is that you are doing great, things are getting better, everything is OK.
