Cold weather factually is weather that just appears to not be warm. It can be quite cosy in fact. The judgement ensued upon it’s character in my history book began with the Donner party who stupidly thought they could cross the Rocky Mountains in wobbly wagons with a few snacks. Cold weather did not cause their demise, their gobbling each other up or their legacy which ended in a rather unsavoury fashion. I defend Mother Nature’s call, her warnings, her bell ringing from the roots beneath and above us. In Vermont they know how to prepare for the most part, again for the most part. In Sweden the old adage that there is “No bad weather, only bad clothing” is more or less true. Suffer or survive. Despite the dark winters and below zero temperatures or my severe arthritic flares in the cold weather I choose to embrace each flake that falls, remain poised in gratitude for it’s not my call to take cold weather personally. Firelit mornings and hot coffee spark my creativity and I write much more than in the summer. Not everyone can choose to flee to Florida or southern Spain to avoid being cold. I am bound to stick it out, add another sweater and refill my cup with awe.
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You came to me in subtle ways, from the heart of a small child to a broken teenage girl you’ve followed me. You stole my youth with untrue love, my trust was left in your dusty tracks. When I ran from you, you pursued and I tried to cast you away in young adulthood by avoiding my inner truths. Eventually my emotions brewed into a bubblingly froth and spilled over into every damn day, always soiling my hopes without LittleMe on my tail. Souring every chance I took for love and acceptance I grew cold, angry and put my tender heart into a well of dried up tears, abandoning my truest self.
I was not broken entirely for I always had dreams of love, being seen and kept. I lost my father to his ego, my mother to her internal pain, my trust to the unfaithful that’s true, yet I always kept a secret sense of divine Love that is, the belief that there was more than I could see unfolding. I would not say God as many people do, but sure, maybe that is an alright use of true love. I began my adult path of pain feeling breathless and broken without a child. Without guidance from my elders blood, I sought out mentors, always watching carefully the ways of other familial tribes. Jealousy overcame me as I too wanted the sense of togetherness, the traditions, the “every year we go to the coast of Maine”, or the Hamptons or in my case I would have settled for a motel 8 in Panama City. So, boohoo. I didn’t get that. People are dying from hunger and draught, floods and war so who cares. I got over it….kind of. I did have my baby, a failed marriage that should have never been in the first place and tried to recreate a sense of family with other loves. I never have and never will give up. The big slice taken out of me isn’t from any of my emotional grievances. It comes from my body in constant pain; never ever do I have freedom from physical pain. If it were not for my thwarted past of thorns, I couldn’t handle my life now. I have a young adult I longed for still not on their feet for a variety of reasons; I live in a perpetual state of home sickness for my friends back home and have never felt whole in my second country of residence. Without my young adult around me I truly feel incomplete and waves of fear roll over me tossing me into walls of sorrow when I think of her away from me. After years and decades of bereavement over my broken family the divine love gave me more. I sincerely want to believe there is a reason (it better be good) that your divine being put all of this on me. I factually can’t remember what a painfree day is. I continue to be mindful, aware that it all could be even worse, but I am allowed bad days; I can’t always keep everything together, much less keep anyone else together. Today was one of those days when I just felt broken. Done. Overbaked and raw simultaneously. If there is a divine being, karma or whatever, what the hell did I do in my last life to be given this trial. Oh, and my toe hurts. Signed Grumpy, Lumpy and Dumpy.
Nurture, Nature, and Embracing Womanhood Painting, Oil and mixed media by Andrea Polla In her own light she was conceived again and again as she grew into her truest self, following her own oath and quest to live life in tune with her deepest heart. She began with no knowledge of who she…
Cold weather factually is weather that just appears to not be warm. It can be quite cosy in fact. The judgement ensued upon it’s character in my history book began with the Donner party who stupidly thought they could cross the Rocky Mountains in wobbly wagons with a few snacks. Cold weather did not cause…
Have you ever broken a bone? For some unreasonable reason I continue to believe I am graceful; I was an awesome dancer and prancer in the not seemingly so long ago days. With my variety of ailments and chronic pain issues, including osteoporosis one would think I’d be crumbled up in a fragile porceline glop.…
Implementing change in any group from a small household to a village or town is not simplistic. Rock is adamant about what always improves one’s surroundings. Show genuine kindness and zip your mouth closed if you can’t be bothered with niceties. Communities involve humans who bounce energy off of one another; be polite and honest. If you leave an ill word in someone’s head it’s bound to repeat itself and reflect subconsciously onto another soul. The circle of love, peace and consideration grows when we all share the better parts of ourselves. If you can’t be good to others, shut up and stay home. You know Rock, he is always direct and solidifies his opinions much like you’d expect an old stoner to reply.
Spring doesn’t jump out at you in Sweden; sudden changes and abhorent weather shifts keep even the most stoic of us guessing. Rock doesn’t guess, speculate or ponder such uncontrolable forces as Mother Nature. He only has his eye on Lm. She is deep in her mind, remembering Easter egg hunts as a child in the United States with her cousins. She has one foot in the “Bible Belt” and another running with all her might north then to the edge of the Atlantic, fleeing to Sweden where everything yet nothing makes sense. In the southern states Easter meant a knew frock, white patten shoes and rejoicing after church in the sunshine with her cousins and family. Croquet and hunting colored eggs, jelly beans and fake green grass in her basket to stuff her findings in were just some of her fond recollections. Avoiding the ham with pineapple was her biggest challenge since she always won at croquet. Deviled eggs and chocolate pie can fill a belly and that’s what she loved. It was one of the only times of the year that everything went smooth. No fighting, no disasters and no face smacking for being a smarty pants, that is until she got a “D” in Algebra in eighth grade. Fearing her mother’s wrath she and a friend decided there was no way out and the holy week leading up to Easter they decided to run away. Hitch-hiking fifteen year olds in Nashville is not the safest choice. Two men in a pick-up stopped and let them sit in the middle. Rock slaps himself silly with astonishment as he has no clue how in the hell Lm and her friend, both with full make-up and cute little jeans and perms survived. An APB was put out notifying the state police. It just so happened Lm was not as stoic as she was behaving and asked to use the bathroom. The men in the pick-up obliged and pulled over at a gas station. When Lm got out a cop car pulled up and she was spotted pronto. The men were not charged, (huge question, eh?) and Lm and her friend were driven back to the suburbs where their parents met them at the one room police station. From that point they were forbidden from meeting outside of school which didn’t change their inner chaos and drama. That particular Easter Lm’s mother and step-father took her to an Easter buffet in a restaraunt. They slid their trays down metal railngs and picked out what they wanted from the massive amount of food in heated deep food bins. Lm only remembers the silence, the lack of extended family and her muteness which encompassed her early teenage years. She was not feeling particularly renewed, springy or at all joyful. Her mother looked sad in the way mother’s do when their kids totally screw up and they are in shock due to not having an inkling as to what to do next. Lm is sad because she, even now can’t replace that memory with a better one. Rock reminds her that curried eggs are her favorite and she shoves him and his new purple hat away. She wakes everyday wanting to try again to be better in every way; isn’t that what Easter is about? We get a fresh start if we are lucky; some of us sink into the past. Rock knows his job is to keep Lm in the now. Snow is falling in Sweden and there will not be an egg hunt outside or croquet, but maybe, just maybe she will shake off her dark past and embrace what she has now. Maybe. Rock wishes everyone a shot at reviving their inner beings. Peace and Happy Spring!
*New Readers Welcome!I recommend that you begin in October of 2021 to get to know Rock and Lm who pop in and out of my blog.Thank you
As followers of Lm’s journey through pain, both physical, mental and emotional you know by now she can be just one badass cocktail away from going astray. Rock has been summoned from his solitary berth to once again tail her, resurrect the fight within and teach her to trust her instincts and eventually others. The walls have been re-sealed in her dank, dark stairwell and Rock has kept the key to all the drawers aligned with every jagged step for sixty years. She has stolen the key in the past and reopened little boxes with big, ugly memories and he has had to talk her back to the present. Lm has been doing fairly well, working to grow stronger physically and clinging to the belief that she will beat the pain, outrun it, throw it over a cliff maybe. It’s still very much part of her and Rock knows when to step up his game. Diagnosis #1, Chronic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder often leads her to vivid and complex nightmares and she recently finished watching “How To Get Away with Murder” on Netflix; it starred and was produced by an American Actress, Viola Davis. Never had Lm connected with a woman as strongly as she has with the character “Anna Mae”, also known as “Annalise Keating”, a powerful attorney and professor of law who is cracked, just like Lm. Anna Mae reverted to her little self often, crawling within to comfort her inner child; she’d be all snotty nosed with her big brown eyes bloated from salt water tears and curl up in her bed for days. Despite these episodes wrought with mental and emotional struggles, her character carried her flashbacks around with her daily with a fierceness that sometimes spiraled out of control. When times got tough “Annalise” could be mean as hell yet so loveable that Lm wanted to jump into the series and hug her when her little Anna Mae’s real self revealed it was savagely broken, not once but repeatedly, just like Lm’s true stories. In real life, the actress experienced great trauma and triumph and was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey about her life and a book she has written. In the interview, which takes place in Hawaii her hair was soft and curly, her arms strong and her smile and appearance impeccable. Just like Lm she carries her own stories around with her, has tried to share them with the world to help others and hopefully herself. The moment Lm believes she has healed from the relentlessly depressing traumas from her own life they pop out like a deer jumping across the road in front of a car, the driver and deer are both startled for a moment, then grateful they dodged a would be tragedy, they both continue on slightly shaken. Rock propels Lm to read about CPTSD and to be an advocate for mental health and she sometimes actually feels under control, shouting at Rock to get off her damn back because she doesn’t need his stonefaced stare. Lm wishes Oprah would read her blog or her one published fictional book, “Tea With Nanny”. She obviously doubts Oprah will surf through self published authors on Amazon and discover her but allows herself the room to dream big some days. Diagnosis #2 Chronic Repetitive Pain Syndrome or CRPS. This is the second ingredient to her badass cocktail recipe. After two decades of intense pain stemming from an inherited degenerative disc disease, (DDD) severe osteo-arthritis coupled with Diagnosis #3, Fibromyalgia Lm’s body just stopped cooperating. It has been through so many tests, met with so many doctors and specialists from A2Z that hope begin to flail about like a freshly caught trout on a rock struggling to breathe. She tried to stay busy in her impaired bodily image, practiced mindfulness, meditation, prayers to various all knowing visionaries, wrote,drew, and had many penpals.From not moving enough and fearing the excruciating pain that moving often led to, her muscles began to spasm, her entire life became overtaken with dis-ease. Years of prednisolone have caused her to be cortisol dependent leaving her weaker than she has ever felt at times. After her stay at Uppsala University Pain Rehabilitation Clinic in Sweden she began to feel possessed by positivity. It was like a week of “Ted Talks” and a retreat that kicked her out of bed each day with tough challenges not just physical but mental and emotional. This reset Lm’s self image on a high that lasted what seems like forever but in reality it’s been a slow three and a half months since she came home. Here is where the badass cocktail blew up in her face, Rock resurfaced dutifully and she is back to the, “I can’t do it” stage. After many mornings doing yoga-lite with a Swedish television celebrity health guru,“Yoga med Sofia”, trying to walk 20 minutes or more at least three times a week and watching her weight go down, the FIBRO bomb dropped out of nowhere. The one diagnosis she can’t shake, hates due to it’s social stigma, a disease poisoned by wicked disbelievers, one drowning in controversy and for reasons still unknown, it changes one’s life forever. Lm’s kind of fatigue is the type that can’t be overcome by splashing cold water on your face or drinking twelve cups of strong coffee, it is invincible. The pain that morphine barely breaches, the depression of losing the fight, over and over again bleeds the mind dry. All the progress Lm has made to create the image of a better self just floated away. Glued to the sofa, too weak to bathe or care increases depression. The brain fog from her pain is cluttering her mind to the point that words lose meaning and writing them down has almost become impossible. Her blog and her poetry and short stories suffer,too. Her creative self is swallowed and regurgitated repeatedly. Rock alas kicked her to call on her Dr. who upped Lm’s cortisol as she’s been dragging and very short of breath. What does all this mean? What is the point of writing about any of this? We know Lm is a fighter, stronger than her worst self, and Rock will hold onto her so she can get back on her saddle. Knowing she can’t escape or hide from any of these diagnosis makes her weary and she slides down a few steps and Rock always leads her slowly, ever so gently back to the light under the doorway that leads her into clarity. The crack remains, no matter how many times Rock has plastered over it,he knows it’s an ongoing project,just like Lm.
The wind whips through the forest, my heart is warm, alert. The birds found cover somewhere on Mother Earth. Cold, fabulous display of Divine Nature having her way. I am beneath old quilts from my grandmother, have a fireplace and my forever lover. I welcome the scream of the Northern Sea, I am not afraid of what shall be. My heart beats with the waves, ne’r afraid of meeting my grave. Test me, taunt me, make me wince! Nothing will change the world I’m in. Rhapsody, tragedy, an orchestra of might, relieve us each dream and every damned night. Ghosts of future flying by, names of past in a flurry, twists of love in a fury. Receive my regret, my heart’s desire, give me hope in my head awhile. I love my life, my love and wonders, all I beg is that they are covered; from the bellows deep and wild, protect my hearth and my child.
My dreams don’t match yours; do they have to? Can you take the lead for your own needs? I can’t fulfill yours and you can’t fulfill mine, but I can give you love and listen to your dogged determination as you assemble your quest. Engage me. Pull from the depths of your being and expunge all of your desires; I won’t run or hide. Don’t make me guess at who you really are, what you really want or what frightens you. Simplicity can be so contrite. I don’t want to dance around my own nature; I must be, must BE, must be, ME. To hold on to you is not to let go of me; to believe in myself does not mean I do not believe in you. Trust my defiance, my arrogance and faults, for they too, are the truth of me. I am not your leader, so please do not follow. I am not compliant so please don’t beg me to change. I fall in your love and swim around and then struggle to breathe. I need US and I need me. Loosening the reigns won’t cost you my devotion, likely it will bring me closer to you as I fly. I am bored with repetitive notions, convaluted emotions, chatter and morning talk. Let us be two and one. One love we share. Another we spare.
RealStuff by RealMe 
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