Recent Lessons Learned Part 2

     

Humor amongst my sister's. Yet, hoping
 I'm moving away from this default
response to challenges in life.

      Oh my gosh do I need to keep moving, reading, learning to feel like I'm not just surviving in life. I blink and the week is over with not much to report or even have a conversation about. I fear I'm in the early steps of heading for one of my gray periods. Summer, with all the promise of sunshine and fun, brings forward complex initiators to anxiety mixed with expectations and loneliness. My physical soreness isn't helping, reminiscent of my sense of helplessness/ hopelessness pre- knee surgery. I'm trying hard to push through this current mood drop and irrational thoughts that my life is just leftovers and crumbs or another day figuring out yet another problem. 

    I recently got a lesson via a memorial, given by my friend in tribute to her dad. She summarized his life in three "rules" to live by, and I took them as a lesson from her dad.

1. Say Yes
2. Make yourself "taller" when you need to
3. Don't Complain

     I wasn't remembering the 2nd one, but that's the one I needed this past week. I needed to reach deep, find the grit, be taller to resolve a situation. It's a work in progress, but remembering the wise words, not playing the victim, and talking through options really helped. I'm trying hard not to complain, and I think being taller is what he meant to help with that; rise above the challenges as it were. Saying yes when it's so easy to hide away this summer in my own space will keep the connections I need. Saying yes is also a reminder not to regret things I've done the last year even if one result was unpleasantness that still feels like a blindside.

     Scrolling around Instagram, this little video jumped out at me too in terms of learning lessons to guide my life. It was posted under a "negating loneliness" account and it struck me as appropriate for my experience and observations about widowhood. So often in the last three years I've felt like support was waning, even non-existant. That's on me though. I fell in a trap of risking widowhood being my identity and further losing myself, and losing others in the process. I nearly let others define me, then when I pushed back a bit, exile me. I was allowing someone else's insecurity to forfeit my own growth and healing. Support between widows, online or other, can be tremendously helpful, but also can be forums for perpetual limbo and holding anger. Its not 100% spot on, but there definitely was resonation. Three Traits that Quietly Push People Away

1. Making everything about yourself
2. Living in a victim mindset
3. Chronic neediness

     I've done a lot of deep thinking the last week. Being sore and tired from poor sleep has made my outward attention span short, leaving me with my own thoughts. I go back to the last lessons post and expanding on the one about no one is coming to save me to add, no one is coming to fortify my life either. I am the driver of where the years ahead take me. Family, good family relationships, mean the world. Friends that are like family and friends that keep the joys on the fore front deserve yes, tallness, and not having to be my perpetual sounding board to each woe and complaint. It's an uphill challenge to put lessons in action, but act I must.