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A New Year

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I look at my life as a spiral.

Round and round I go seeming to make the same mistakes and revisiting old patterns I thought I was through with.

But really.. when I really look.. that is not the case at all.

Experiences FEEL similar as I move into that area of the spiral but in reality I’m only coming near it; skirting the thing that feels so familiar but NOT revisiting it at all as it was.

Because I am new.

New cells, new thoughts, actions, values. New. With the overlay of the past, certainly, as a valued mentor.

I can tell I’m new because I value different things than I did at this time last year.

My mind travels different and foreign and intriguing roads.

Last year I wasn’t thinking or caring about the legacy we are leaving kids to deal with.

I wasn’t able to distinguish the ‘heart’ in someone’s eyes as well as I can now.

I didn’t use that as a litmus test for whether I wanted to invest time with a person.

I hadn’t yet felt the full-on love of my dog.

And hadn’t yet said a prayer of gratitude for the clarity I have worked hard for in myself and now count on as a reliable resource.

I hadn’t heard or heeded the call to begin writing beyond the question mark: “Who are you to think you have something to say so publicly?”

Last year I wouldn’t have gone beyond the fear.

Today, I have it in me to do it moment by moment with varying success, but I DO it.

New.

Somehow, in this last year, that spiral I spoke about became my friend instead of an: “Oh no.. not THAT again.”

The friend part came from finally feeling the grace of fluidity in it.

NO THING IS FOREVER.

I find such relief in that.

Except when I don’t.

And that, there, changes too..

The ride is the thing.

Curvy, butterflies in your stomach, full out ecstasy and let’s not forget the flat tires along the way.

I wish you a wide, open road opening into adventure that feeds you and always AAA within sight when the need arises.

Happy, healthy, richly textured New Year to each of you with gratitude for your companionship on the road.

Gift of Sorts

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Yesterday, I went to have my leg brace adjusted and to pick up shoes I had ordered two months ago that would give me the support I need.

The leg contraption is so wide that regular shoes won’t accommodate it so we ordered a custom extra- wide right shoe.

I’ve been walking around with unzipped boots that feel unsafe and ugly.

Lots of my attention has been geared toward staying vertical.

When the guy opened the shoe box and pulled out the custom wide shoe, it was HUGE because of the added width and REALLY SHINY BLACK LEATHER.

Totally different than the other matte black leather it was supposed to match.

Water started pouring out of the corner of my eyes..

I tried to contain it but it just insisted.

All the tiredness I have been feeling being so careful as I walk and the dashed hope of new and relatively normal looking shoes lending me support just crossed the threshold into a ‘scene.’

I knew the guy helping me felt terrible and helpless and I started to backpedal and take care of HIM…

He left the room.

I let it rip.

He came back in.

I said: “These tears are not about you. I am tired. And disappointed. And really tired. So, don’t take it personally and just let me see the shoe catalog to pick out something else.”

Often times I have this set to my face that is between taking the high road and the sorrow of seemingly unending loss.

I see it in the mirror and it ages me.

When I came home, I looked in the mirror and saw a woman with a slightly puffy face but it was real.

I looked soft.

And spent.

And beautiful, I think.

The more I get real, the more transparent I seem to become.

It could be the new and free alternative to plastic surgery.

Shed a tear..lose a year..

Well, you know what I mean….

Have a safe Eve of the New Year.  See you then..

Joy or Freedom?

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I would have to say that my number one value in life has been FREEDOM.

I know this because of the weeks I spent as a child messing around in the woods behind our house cleaning out the creek to make a better home for the fish.

…And how when my heart is murky and too full of other people’s business, I get in my car and drive. (For the time being..)

…And the curious fact I love silence more than changing it into something else; however beautiful, because it feels like a clean palette where anything could happen and often does.

Someone posed this question to me yesterday, that of: “Were you to be given the choice between JOY OR FREEDOM, which would you choose?”

It is a compelling question, is it not?

We, of the ‘less-than-fully-functional-physique-clan’ will likely take pause as we ponder this.

These two words may mean something quite different to us that the fully abled community.

I like it that the words feel almost from a different language to me.

Previous to the ‘PPMS visitation’, those words had a saccharine quality carrying the fragrance of our national identity as a land of plenty and more of it.

Now, as our world has changed and I have too, the words can be met again with a fresh heart.

They are worth revisiting, from my new body and new mind and reordered set of values.

But I’ll tell you a secret:

Freedom still tops the list for me.

But it wears different clothes.

Exposure

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It is a strange thing to expose one’s self as I have done in the video I just posted to this site.

I say strange because after I went very public with the film clip, I felt the big “V” word: VULNERABLE!!!

Oh, my God, she says.. people can see how I walk and almost cry and pull it together and don’t have it all figured out and the hardware I use and my home and my shiny skin and… and…….

One of the gifts I have been blessed with in this lifetime has been the ‘whatever-it-is’ that allows me to speak up in a way that helps others really have a better experience of a situation they may never face themselves but find it valuable to know something about.

I have been called up to the plate a number of times to speak when others couldn’t or wouldn’t or chose not to.

After I posted the video yesterday, the little girl in me starts in: “Well… who are you to think you have something of value to say?”

So, I told her that I am just a woman dealing with MS who is tired of hiding and wants to make a difference in some way and the way I think I can do that is to tell the truth.

I know people recognize the truth when it is on the table and I think it gives others permission to follow suit.

Away…away from the cultural template of ‘OK-ness.”

It is a messy, messy business..this living- a- life- thing we are doing.

And yet- how utterly riveting the drama is! The whole darn thing is just plain entertaining when you get your pesky self out of the way.

My New Video!

I have been working on a short (5 minute) video portrait in which I speak about the changes taking place in my life since I was diagnosed with MS.

This is my first effort toward my desire to begin speaking publicly to schools, hospitals, really any group interested in looking at disability in healthy and ‘non-victim’ ways.

My definition of disability is not just the kind I deal with which is readily visible to all.

I consider disability ANYTHING that keeps one from living a life of wholeness.

Is the MS I deal with that different from the effects of a learning disability or poor self worth or poverty or depression, acute shyness or addiction?

The list goes on and on.. those hidden fractures we cover up to look good.

A huge common denominator is the fact that in all of these examples of living separated from Source (however you define that) one’s mind is infected like a virus and thinks of little else beyond HOW TO MAKE IT GO AWAY.

There are ways to live on the razors’ edge, as I call it, where half of one’s attention is given to the hope of a return to what we considered ‘whole’ and  the remaining intention directed toward looking at ‘what IS’ and making peace.

I have the sort of weird blessing of not being able to hide my disability and the interest in articulating what possibilities exist that have helped to allow a thriving life.

I am a work in progress. A large part of my own healing is transparency.

The video is posted on You Tube as well as here on my blog (see Cathy’s video page).

Please let me know what you think…

I’d really like to know.

Clan

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I had Christmas dinner, yesterday, with new friends.

One, I had spent a total of maybe three hours with.

Her husband I had never met.

I thought it rather odd of me to accept their generous offer of taking me to dinner as I don’t REALLY know them and it was CHRISTMAS, after all..

But I did. And I am so very glad.

I keep wondering how it is that a very few times in life (in my case) an entire history of time spent together becomes moot as the ease of an unmistakable KNOWING of a person presents itself and the two of you just carry on in the heightened reality of: “what IS this?” but then again not wanting to dissect the gift.

So you carry on just enjoying the ride.

Occasionally cocking your head whispering to the ‘larger-than-ourselves’ , “THANK YOU.”

Building a friendship is hard work and a time consuming thing so when one gets the gift of a good one just dropped in ones’ lap, you have to take pause…

It has happened to me often enough so I don’t question it.

This ‘thing’ occurs in varying increments in life; sometimes a whollop of recognition and other times the reality of it sneaks in through a smile or written word or touch or kindness given.

Time means nothing.

It is reassuring in that way.

Sometimes, I have not been the best ‘chooser-of-theater-partners-in-life’ so I’m ssssssoooooooo grateful when it appears an outside force seems to orchestrate the meeting.

A gift of the highest order.

An arrival.

Christmas.

Snow Fort

When I grew up in Michigan the winters were longgggggggggg…

And grey.

The thing was that we had GIANT snowfalls of two feet, sometimes.

The drifts were spectacular.

When the wind died, I started carving those giant mounds of snow and eventually had an igloo kind of thing.

I created this snow architecture in the neighboring field.

Hidden.

Here, in Santa Fe, we’re having alot of snow but not the fort-building kind.

Those days are past, I’m afraid.

I miss the warm half-light inside my igloo.

It was so quiet yet all the natural sounds were amplified; branches cracking, bird calls, dripping icicles.

I thought I could hear my own blood.

I see now that those days were the beginning of my love of silence.

I seldom listen to music except some Motown in the car sometimes.

If I pick out a CD to play it never seems to match my mood and I don’t want to be drawn away into someone else’s world.

I remember when that’s ALL I wanted… to be taken.

So, these days at home, the most stimuli my taxed nervous system can tolerate is some Renaissance Lute.

It’s interesting how noisy even meditation can be.

So, on this snowy day, I am hungering for that little girl’s snow fort surrounded by yellow winter grasses and a still blue sky, big enough to stretch out in and listen.

Hmmmm….

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I was up a good deal of the night, last night, reading my favorite book, “A JOSEPH CAMPBELL COMPANION, Reflections on the Art of Living.”

It is a very little book but the one that speaks to me loudest after all these years.

The guy had it goin’ on, I tell you.

The real deal.

One thing he said: “It is all about finding that still point in your mind where commitment drops away” has me taking pause…

I am ssssssooooooooo commited to getting healthy.

I don’t think he means drop the commitment?

Rather live on the razor’s edge, maybe?

That place between surrendering completely to the course of this health challenge AND being ever alert and active in moving toward health, whatever that LOOKS like?

Well, with all the question marks I’m using this morning, clearly I don’t have this figured out..

And onward she goes, into a brand new day where possibility exists for answered questions, good chocolate, a surprise flirt or a smile from a dog.

Outside the Box

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I really had to take a pause when I looked at this photo of one of the menswear designs included in our company’s (“Betes’ de Colueurs”- beast of color..) offerings from our one season of production.

My partner designed the styles of the clothes and I hand-painted the fabrics.

This was in the 80′s in Boston.

I look at this and am quite sure it is my proclivity to swim in unconventional waters which has saved me.

By this, I mean that I am forever drawn to characters of all sorts; geniuses, cowboys, scientists, hermits and prophets along with those who want to remain quite hidden but I see them, there in the shadow.

It’s really just that I’m interested in life…

How awful and miraculous and changing it all is..

There are those living lives that seduce with the sheen of ‘togetherness.’

The mess is hidden.

The juice wiped clean.

God, I am tumbling awkwardly in the dropped and turning fruit under the mango tree..

The scent so rich it borders on putrid.

And yet…

And yet…

Perhaps the wine could turn out to be silken and smooth made from such fruit.

We shall see..

We shall see.

Compassion.. or something

 

My dog has taken to copying my movements by scooting across the floor while dragging her right leg behind her.

(I don’t actually do the scooting thing as I AM still upright… blessedly…)

When she first started doing this it stopped me in my tracks.

Was it a submissive ploy to get a treat?

No.

She actually picked her right leg (the choice from which she never wavers) to connect with me in this way.

My right side is my weak side; arm and leg.

When she does this, I am often spirited back to the playground in gradeschool when the bullys would make fun of my overbite or propensity to hit home runs when they weren’t.

A dorky friend would always make sure I knew I was great and good and perfect and not alone.

He would always do this with some private sort of non-verbal attempt at kindness.

He was awkward but did I care?

I was NOT alone out there on the playground!

Someone SAW my magnificence!

Or, at least a little courage.

Is there ANYTHING better than that? Really?

To be seen, truly?

I think not…

So, here in Santa Fe, New Mexico, there is a girl and a dog who ‘get’ each other.

And life is good.

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