Monday, November 14, 2016

Trust your gut!

I waited a minute to post this blog because I didn't want to place it in the middle of all the hate and anger on social media.  Is this Election over?  Can we all stop yelling at each other  and hating on everyone who doesn't think the same as us?  Most importantly, can Good Morning America go back to talking about other things I find far more interesting than those two individuals and can "This is Us" PLEASE stop being cancelled for debates and election coverage.  I like very few things on TV and I like that and I swear to God- its the only show that is cancelled almost every week!   Hopefully we can all rise up and move forward today just like we did yesterday and the day before and tomorrow.  I do not believe the world is going to end this week and therefore we better all keep plunging ahead.

This election actually made me think about something:  Control.  Control is something we all desperately grasp onto.  Whether it be something as important as having our vote as a means to try and control the Election or whether it be to control what people are going to do and say.  I grew up knowing that I could not control my surroundings.  I couldn't control things in my house, in my school and honestly in my own life.  This led me down a very rough path of destructive behaviors because that lack of control- was intolerable to me.  I needed control of something.  Since I couldn't control outside influences- I controlled my eating.  I could control that.  In a big and scary place- I taught myself from a young age that I could in fact find something to satisfy that need to control.  Something to put that anxiety into and into a place that was all about me.

Here is an example:  If you have children- you have learned that you cannot control another human on a whole other level.  This is supposed to be your dependent.  This is your child.  Do you really think you can make them sleep at 3AM if they just don't feel like it?  Nope.  Have you ever tried to get your child to stop screaming in a public place by bribing them with everything in the Universe?  Did they stop?  Probs not.  Mine never did.  How about the weather?  Cannot control the weather.  I actually feel connected to the Sun Gods and feel I can worship them well- but sometimes it still rains on my parade.  Its the way of life.   There are in fact things we just can not control, no matter how bad we feel we need to.

 People cannot control people.  We cannot control circumstances.  We can take action and try to sway things or prevent things from happening but at the end of the day- we can really only control our own actions and reactions- and if I'm being honest here, I cannot always control myself.  I definitely have a way I would like to react or handle things but a lot of times my mouth is not connected to my brain in the exact moment and I just say what I think without the filter process.  Here is another thing we can't control:  feelings.  This one is hard.  This one is the worst for me.  I come across to many people as cold and unapproachable and whatever- I get it.  However, that is not really the case.  I'm empathetic to a fault. Whenever someone is in a situation that I observe to be hard or scary or sad, I immediately try to place myself in their shoes.  I want to try on that suffering or fear and see how I make sense of it.  Obviously- I'm not like "Hey, give me a minute to react to you while I attempt to take a stroll in your shoes," but it happens on its own.  It gives me a new perspective on situations and usually helps me come up with better words to offer.  That works out well when its someone else.  How about when its me?  How about when I actually have to feel and dissect and react to my own feelings?  How about when I know they aren't what they should be? How about when I want them to change?  Yeah- so this is a different story all together.  I'm working through some stuff right now.  I have mixed feelings on situations that are hard to get through. I want to feel a certain way and do certain things and its really hard.  My heart and mind are often not in the same body.  Like they could not be more disconnected.  Throw my gut in there and we are practically in three different continents.  Here is what I am learning to trust.  My brain is annoying.  It needs to be tossed out of the equation all together because it likes to mix things up and spin them and complicate them and just make a mess.  So brain- out.  My heart likes to lead me.   I'm more sensitive than you think and it leads me to places I can get stuck in.  My heart is big.  Its giant and I think it barely fits inside my body because it often beats so hard that I think it might break out.  So my heart- its good.  BUT, it also gets me stuck.  The gut….bingo.  My gut doesn't lie.  Its the FIRST thing I try to feel when dealing with Easton and any health situation.  Its what tells me I can handle him at home, its what tells me he needs to be hospitalized and its what tells me when its safe to sleep and when I need to be awake to watch him.  The gut doesn't lie.  My gut is also what I need to look at with feelings.  My heart gets mushy, my brain is always a bad spot but there is a feeling in my gut that either tells me I'm right or I'm wrong.   The tricky part is I usually have to try the wrong before I get to the right.  But, eventually there is a place where it settles and I know just what to do.

The way I see it is that feelings and control go hand in hand.  We often feel a certain way and don't want to so we need to control it or can't and then hell breaks loose.  We start comin' out hot just like a boss trying to tell someone this or that or start changing things.  Usually, nine times out of ten, I bet that lands you right back where you started.  Its just a really hard thing.  For me, its all about figuring out what the controllables are and dealing with those.  Making myself understand the things I can't control and focus that energy somewhere else.  This often is just too hard for me.  A person with severe anxiety can't just say "Oh, OK.  That's out of my control…no biggie."  No way.  Someone like me needs to find an outlet of control.  This is where my fitness comes in.  My obsession with fitness doesn't hurt anyone.  It is all about me.  It only takes one out of twenty four hours and its something better for me to think about.  I look forward to that hour and I give it everything I got.  I put an entire days worth of energy into it and am now focusing on a meal plan that is fueling that workout so that I can actually see results of my effort.  This is what I mean:  I feel out of control in so many areas.  I picked an area I can control and I let my mind run with that.  It gives me a landing spot to come back to and it doesn't affect anyone else in my world.  Its a win-win.  Fitness isn't who I am, its simply what I do as an outlet and tool to carry me through.  And, hopefully I come out of it as a really jacked mother of three and if not- it was a hell of a lot better than crying on my floor, right?   Winning.

Thanksgiving is coming up.  If you have read this blog or met me in person- you know its my nemesis. Worst day of the year.  Here is my normal schpeal…Yes, I am thankful for a lot.  I do not need one day to tell people and I never will.  That day doesn't have a good track record with me and last year was the absolute icing on the cake as it began my decline of where I spent the evening locked in my bathroom on the floor crying and really didn't emerge from my house unless it was to go to the gym.  Not a good place to be.  This year- I am really hoping it feels different.  I'm for sure not celebrating Thanksgiving on the actual day.  I'll make sure my kids think a random day next week is the actual day and I'll make sure they have Turkey and stuffing and rolls and whatever else you are supposed to have and I will also promise you that not one single bite will be taken.  They will hate it and yell and not eat.  I'll make them express some gratitude in their life and then we are all going to move on and let that holiday go…  Don't judge.  Its not our best day.  However, we do Christmas REALLY well. We make up for our lack of Thanksgiving cheer and we go all out for the Christmas Season!

I certainly hope your Holiday season has you excited and not stressed.  They are just days, like all the other ones and the good new is we may have no control over them but they end every 24 hours!

 Trust your gut!

Friday, November 4, 2016

On Meds, Hard Stuff, Pain and Glennon!

I did it.  I've been laying in my bed since I put the kids on the bus just trying to escape all that is happening. My bed is my sanctuary.  It's my spot.  Kind of like my robe- its my comfort.  It's my place to go to pretend the world isn't happening.  As I laid there and did exactly the opposite of what I said I was going to do- which was come here to the blog- I remembered what happened last night.  I went to Glennon.  My most favorite, truth-telling human who makes me feel less insane and listened to all she had to say on just about everything.  It was incredible.  However, that's not what I remembered that got me out of my bed.  After the show and after the meet and greet- I was headed outside to the car.  A woman, with blonde hair and whose name I do remember but will not disclose since I didn't ask permission came through the door outside to yell my name.  "Lindsay!  Are you Lindsay?  I read your blog.  And, I think its fantastic.  Thank you for putting it out there."   I shook her hand, personally introduced myself and I will never forget her.  Thank you, kind woman, for going out of your way- to make my day.  Thank you for caring what I have to say.   Today, I climbed out of my bed and came here just because of you.

The road to Glennon.


   Lord knows I take the road less traveled.  Every time.  We've all addressed this.  We know this.  Yada Yada.  Moving on.  Lets talk about my road to see Glennon.  Well, it started about a year ago.  I saw she was coming to a church in Michigan.  I got tickets, made my friends get tickets, was so excited about the day…and then I bailed.  Insert Crossfit competition.  Stupid Crossfit competition trumped my Glennon night because, well fitness.  Fitness trumps all.  Duh,  rule of life.  Still not happy about it.  Still was annoyed all day.  Whatever.  It passed.  About a year later I noticed she is coming again.  This time I buy a ticket.  Tell my friends to buy a ticket but guess what?  Sold out.  Perf.  Didn't care.  Going Alone.   As luck would have it my dear friend, Krista, scores a ticket about two weeks ago.  Fantastic.  Now I get a partner in my crime.  So, show starts at 7:00PM and we are over an hour away.  Obviously we are concerned about missing a meal so we decide to leave at 3:00 so we can drive there and eat an early dinner and still be there by doors opening at 5:30PM.  Perfect plan. All goes well on the way down.  We laugh, listen to music and find a bar to grab a drink and food at.  After we eat we come out to a parking ticket.  Who in Gods name put the meter there while we were eating?  Neither of us saw a damn meter when we went in to eat so it can hardly be our fault that we didn't put money in it.  Moving on.  So, we get to the venue and they serve drinks.  In Glass.  Because I think they think adults can handle that.  Haha.  Not I!  I sit down in my second row seat and promptly dump my entire drink all over Krista and myself and chair.  Mostly Krista.  And that's just because I love her so much that I must have been basically sitting on her lap for this to happen.  Her silk shirt loved it.  No problem.  Again.  Next, we are soaking wet and waiting 1.5 hours for it start and so we grab our phones to check out whats happening in the world.  Except our phones are in Canada.  We were  most definitely in Grosse Pointe Farms but somehow to annoy the shit out of me- my phone decided it was in Canada.  Yay.  Oh you know, just another day.  Anyways, Glennon was adorable and animated and fun and talked about all the important stuff.  Marriage, play dates that all Mom's hate, perfect children that really aren't perfect, love, anxiety, suffering and pain.






 Pain resonated with me the most.  I'm in pain.  Have been for a long time.  I can smile and put on clothes and go out into the world now where I couldn't a year ago but I give meds the credit for that.  And that's totally fine by me because clearly I need a little something to help.  She talked about running from pain and hiding.  That's me.  That's what I used to do and sometimes still do. I was Anorexic for so long.  So many years of changing the pain.  Not walking through the pain of what was hurting but changing it to the pain of hunger, the pain of illness, the pain of fear.  What she said was really true.  Pain demands to be felt.  Basically, I numbed myself out and passed that pain on to my family.  My parents, sister, friends- anyone who cared about me- I gave them that pain and I took the lesser pain of an eating disorder.  Guess what?  That didn't fix it.  I overcame and went on to fix my life and get married and have babies.  I stayed strong and dealt with the life that was handed to me in having a baby that might not live.  I did more than survive it- I rose to the occasion.  I took care of him, fought for him and got him into every specialist that I wanted.  I stayed up all night, held him all day.  For years.  And then- I gave back.  Over and Over- I gave back.  My point in this is that I have strength.  I can walk through the hard stuff.  I can rise to any occasion.  Its in there.  Its in all of us.  Its just if we allow ourselves to see it.  Lets not forget the most recent though.  Lets not forget that I've been hiding out in severe anxiety.  Debilitating anxiety that stole the last year of my life.  Life felt hard again and I went back into my old habits.  My habit of hiding out.  My habit of escaping the pain.  I'll take the sobbing, the loneliness, the anxiety attacks that cripple my body, the fear, all of it.  Because, once again the pain crept in and I crept out.  I forgot who I was.  I forgot that its in me.  I forgot to stand up.  This is where the change has to happen.  This where I have to get up.  I have to talk to people, stop hiding, answer texts, be me.  Even disheveled and messy and broken and hurting- I have to show up anyway.  I have to.  We all do.  Because, guess what?  Its going to hurt anyway.  Its still going to hurt.  Mask it, numb it, ignore it, run from it or walk your ass through it.  That's the difference.  That's what I'm gonna do.  I'm gonna walk directly through fire until the flame burns out and hopefully-maybe I can kill it.  For now.
This picture PERFECTLY captures my true self at this time.  Perfection.




I've got some serious things happening right now. I've got really hard stuff.   Things I'm not withholding from you but things I don't have words for yet.  I've told you that I'm a thinker.  I would never want to speak specifically about something until I've thought it completely through.  I don't really think details are ever that important. If you're suffering than you're suffering no matter what the cause.  Be kind to people.  Sometimes the people you expect the least have the most pain.  It takes zero effort or money or anything to just be kind.  

MEDS:  Here is some irony for you.  I went for my monthly med review on Wednesday.  Turns out I'm the most stable I have been and don't have to go back for 8 weeks.  Laugh.  Its OK. This- this human that is writing to you is deemed "stable."  That's fantastic.  Well, guess it goes to show you just how far I've come.  Good God help us all.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend and that your kids don't' make you insane and that you remember that you really have it in you to rise.  Its there.  Find it.