Kids Don't Come With Instructions  Ó 2012 Currie Silver

The Way I’m DOing My Life Now…

Julie Daley’s prompt in Module 21: Self-Awareness, speaks to a deep part of Who I Am Discovering lives inside my body, breathes my every breath, and thinksandfeels my every thoughtandfeeling. Once again I noticed the part of ME who steps away, off to the side, thinking she does NOT BElong here, is simply TOO Different, Strange, and Extremely NOT Enough. She can BE a handful, that ME.

My timeline, which until recently NEVER really occurred to me to investigate, is remarkably cyclical and consistent. And yet it follows no pattern, there is no discernible, at least discernible to ME way of circling the cycles. I CAN see patterns which have repeated similarly, but mostly I am only seeing those from Here, Now, in this place where I am engaging and exploring via A Year With Myself.

Little bits of ME over the past 59 years all seem to join together. Inside I am ME, Now, or whenever the “Now” was when I was “in that part” of my Life. When I moved back to the East in 2009, I had a chance to go through a large bin of photographs from my Life. Well, at least from 1953 until 1994. The ones from 1994 forward weren’t really “mine” to access, and BEsides, I wasn’t aware THEN that I’d NOT go back and collect the “stuff of a Life” I’d packed and organised so carefully in storage.

And yet…

Here is the thing about that: so much of what I packed and organised was WHAT WAS LEFT. Left after a HUGE Letting Go. And still, the more recent and Present Letting Go are on BEyond HUGE.

I have been a mover throughout my Life. Starting at age 6, when my family moved from Rochester, NY, to Winnetka, IL. Then at age 9, in April of 4th Grade for me, we moved BACK to Rochester. At 10 my parents divorced and in Very Short Order my father remarried and via the divorce agreement had shackled my mum to within 25 miles of Rochester OR she would lose custody of my brother and me.

There was another move, within that 25-mile radius, yet a few years later my mum had to get out and away. At that time I was only able to see through the eyes of a 13-year old, very unhappy, very angry, and even very neglected girl. It is, in fact, a part of my story that I am choosing Here & Now to Let Go. I was a child. What I did and HOW I did it was from the perspective of a child. It has taken all of these 46 years to REALLY grasp that fact.

There were a couple of years in there where my brother and I lived with our dad and stepmother, stepbrother, and stepsister. It could have looked “sweet” on the outside, but I assure you inside was anything BUT evenly loosely tied to “sweet.” Just yesterday my mum and I were talking on the phone [the vast majority of my Life and my relationship with my mum has BEEN by phone and in short spurts] and reflecting, each from our own vantage point, on How Things Have Tended To BE in our lives as well in my brother and father’s lives. It was interesting, BEcause for the most part I refuse to participate in these discussions with my mum. With anyone, really.

My next move was away to boarding school. Then college. Then Cape Cod for a year during which I discovered whatever I might WANT to DO in my Life, I wasn’t going to DO it without finishing college. Of course, with all the moves and changes of schools through my Life, it never really struck me as odd that I was all the time changing where I was living, learning, and making an effort to create a Life of My Own.

Anyhow, the timeline is less substantive once I reached, perhaps only by virtue of my age, “adulthood.” There were still many moves. Changes of work. Long chunks of Life living apart from my son. The thing is, somehow I never STOPPED dealing with My Life and its curious momentum from the age of 9. In many ways I am STILL that girl; it’s just that 50 years have gone by with me riding shotgun…

Recently I have been reflecting on this Life of mine for more than just AYWM. I’ve been on disability since 2002 and am at present looking to add a bit of work to supplement my disability income. It took me a long while to “get it” that I didn’t need to rely upon a resume in the way I did up until 2000, the last time I had to use one for working. Instead, BEcause Vocational Rehabilitation sent me for a psychological evaluation [read: testing testing 1 2 3] and then last week for a work evaluation [read: testing testing again and I still find fractions troublesome!!!] I’ve needed to make up a resume of my work history and my education. That document alone sums up something like Julie’s timeline. Very telling. Very intriguing to see myself and my Life summed up on one page.

While I was still receiving support from my former partner, I was terrified that I’d lose it [and, ultimately, I DID] and THEN WHAT WOULD I DO?! However, while the loss was sudden and done in a way that still stings me, it was by far and away the Very Best Thing Ever To “Happen To Me” In My Entire Life.

WHY?!

BEcause NOW I get to rely on ME, and on my idea of God, the Universe, and Life Itself…

The past 3 years I have let go of one thing and then another I was certain I could NOT live without. And yet here I am. Stronger. Happier. More ALIVE than I can remember, at least since I was 9, back in Winnetka.

It is sort of like carrying that Little Red Wagon of my stories and relationships. I thought I MUST hang onto it, or I should say “them” forevermore. But Now I know it is NOT about the stuff or the people or even the learning or work or places. It is only and ever it has only BEEN about Right Now, this moment, this day, this experience, time, companionship, or solitude.

I’ve had different stories for How I Live My Life and they’ve all been momentary. Blinks and times that came to pass. This story will change and pass, too. It’s just The Way I Am DOing My Life Now…

perhaps you need to shift your thinking, Currie…

Discovery By Taste-Testing Mama Deer

Module 20 - Getting Unstuck - Weekly Prompt

Lisa Wilder says:

What story, or series of thoughts, has been running in your head about why you’re feeling stuck?

It is good for me, BEing prompted in this way. Especially Now, when it seems much has been, through my DOing as well my NOT DOing, resolved regarding most of the stuckness I’d been mired in earlier this year. Just this morning, while tying my shoes to go out with Gracie for Morning Adventure, I looked up and saw the mind-map sort of thingie I’d made in December about how I envisioned 2012.

I was able to acknowledge that Currie. I was able to share with her how far she/we have come since that was written. She was so serious about having to “pay back” all her debt, so unwilling to see things in any other light than the one which highlighted her errors, fouls, and mistakes. I was able to let her know that her seriousness is seen and understood, and yet there is really NO “debt” that she owes. Amazing how something so simple as wrong-thinking can take us so very far afield.

How might you shift those thoughts, or re-write that story, in a way that will serve you rather than keeping you stuck?

A month ago, a few weeks after selling my car, having chosen to BE car-free as the one single thing ONLY I COULD CHOOSE TO DO to reduce my monthly financial obligations, I was speaking with a counsellor at a debt counselling service I’d happened upon last November. She and I have spoken BEfore and she is an excellent listener. She was able to see clearly something I was NOT seeing at all. She said just one thing, perhaps you need to shift your thinking, Currie… which stopped me like running full-out into a brick wall.

Last week I woke from a dream feeling markedly different and new. I couldn’t tell you, even if I tried REALLY HARD, what that dream was about. I only knew it was as though I’d had “psychic surgery” which un-tethered me from my old Life and Self completely. Since then I have this sense of freedom which is definitely NOT BEing or FEELING Stuck.

Break what needs to be done down into the smallest steps possible. Which is your first, or next, step?

When I was so totally focused upon what I owed, what I thought surely I MUST repay, and especially that which I had knowingly “rung up” in the past couple of years, I couldn’t get out of my own way long enough or far enough to DO anything but walk in place. Like walking on a treadmill, I was working up a sweat yet going nowhere, really.

I’ve had so many grand schemes and brilliant notions about HOW to pay off my debt. I think I was operating in another Universe entirely. What I imagine would BE the case were I to live where Gravity does NOT… But, the trouble with that entire mindset and way of living Life is that I was driving ahead with my eyes locked onto the rearview mirror. It took me the first quarter of 2012 to really “see” that, and it required many tiny incremental steps. As I thought I was moving forward I was only standing still, Life damming up BEfore me.

What support do you need to make taking that next step easier?

As I have worked through AYWM, week by week, week in and week out, staying current, I will admit a part of me thought I was just DOing it to “show myself” that indeed I can DO something with consistency and conviction. I thought, I’ll just keep my focus on this and let everything fall into place. But here’s the problem with thinking that: it’s simply insane. It has been the week by week, week in and week out, and staying current that has brought me to the place where my ears, and heart, NOT to mention my MIND, were open to hearing perhaps you need to shift your thinking, Currie…

I have started and let slide many things over the past few years, especially since my move back to the East Coast in 2009. This year, 2012, NOT so much, mayBE even NOT at all. What has made this possible is listening to things, especially the wondrous things I read and reread and embrace in AYWM. One little week at a time I have been “shifting my thinking” and allowing it to BE shifted by the words and wisdom and insights of this amazing program.

How might you reward yourself for having taken that first step?

Rewards are NOT what I used to think they were. Instead, they are the feeling of waking up with my first thought BEing genuine Gladness for the generosity of BEing given a new day. They are the ability to sit quietly with myself when overwhelmed, sad, or simply tired. To BE there, just BE with myself. And most of all they are the little and large encouragements that Letting Go, of EVERYTHING, is just how I roll, Now.

HOW I DO ANYTHING IS HOW I DO EVERYTHING: Thoughts on the Prompt from Desiree Adaway, Module 19

Learning To Let Go Ó Currie Silver 2011

I have been judging myself and my level of attachment to and participation in the variety of groups I am or have been part of. In particular, since it’s the one I am still most geared up for and plugged into, I’ve been judging my recent roaming far afield of the AYWM community. I’ve been thinking pretty harshly of my having any expectations at all of other people I don’t really know. And yet, I have these thoughts. This is NOT something I need to dig deep to discover. It’s right at the surface.

Last year and for the years of 2006 through 2010, I was all about trying to BElong, BE a part of, BE accepted, included, and most of all wanted. I can see the flaws in my approach very well from here, but during those years I couldn’t see it even if it jumped up and bit me on the nose. I felt there was this great conspiracy and trickery afoot. Why did people seem so welcoming and encouraging only to turn tail and run or flat-out ignore me when I stepped in their direction?! How was it that people I really didn’t know [or perhaps even like… the truth is just that simple] seemed to so quickly size me up and pass me over?! Again and again and again. Even the ones I thought there was some “there there” when we connected?!

Funny, sharing that “out loud” in writing lets me see myself in the way that brain scans reveal things that we’d’ve never imagined could BE seen, even KNOWN… It’s NOT even embarrassing to reveal this. It’s a relief. It’s like carrying an umbrella and rain gear through the desert on the off-chance that there might BE rain. Surely I did NOT think I was THAT important to THAT MANY people that they would all have conspired to leave me out or turn their backs?!!!?

This goes to the heart of How I DO Anything Is How I DO Everything. Lately I have made some HUGE changes in Who I AM and How I Live In This World. Some of it may well BE due to AYWM and the other things I have patched together over the past 6 years of zigs and zags, to-ing and fro-ing. The first BIG thing was letting go all the stuff I’d acquired, accumulated, deemed still essential to keep though all the while thinking I was really paring way down. The amount of stuff I left BEhind in storage in Sedona when I left to move East in June of 2009 boggles my mind. Blows it in fact.

Now I have let go of having something with 4 wheels, save for my nifty cart which has four wheels but NOT anything like steering capacity. I have learned to use public transportation and the two feet at the ends of my 2 legs. I haven’t even gone and got myself a bicycle, though I would get a 3-wheeler simply BEcause I know a regular bike would wreak havoc with my entire mid-section. I am learning each moment of each day how little I really require. How there isn’t [and likely never was] any good reason for my obsession with acquiring and “having” what I had acquired.

How I am “down-sizing” or “right-sizing” or simply adapting myself to Life Now is an across the board endeavour. It’s the same process with each new thing that comes into the equation. BEing a part of or acknowledged or noticed or even wanted have all lost their former compulsive appeal, too. Instead of noticing how this one or that is NOT living up to my expectations, NOT giving me what’s due me, or what have you, I am noticing how lovely it is to BE. Just BE. I have also discovered that the things I DO Now are done By ME For ME and NOT for anyone else’s approval or acknowledgement.

I suppose the biggest Ah-Ha!! for me has been the realisation that I please myself and that is really quite something. I have fewer and fewer expectations and really no demands. That’s huge. Gigantic even…

Letting Go has BEcome my Way. My practise, you might say… I savour and enJOY moments Now, even exceedingly long ones as in the steamy laundromat this morning. I show up. I Live. It’s just How I DO it. Now…

Friends and Truth Telling

Treat your friends as you would a bank account - refrain from drawing too heavily on either.
~ Samuel Johnson


Funny thing, I was just thinking some thinks like this yesterday and Monday. I wanted so to DO the Venture Map #1 - Truth Telling Interview in Module 18, I STILL want to, but I realised that there's really no one in my Life at present with whom I could DO this just in the moment, straightaway.


What are my strengths?
What are my weaknesses?
What can you count on me for?
What can't you count on me for?
If you were speaking on behalf of the people who know me, how would you describe me?


The thing is, I am NOT afraid of the truth. I am, I think, afraid of my friends and family rolling their eyes, feeling put upon by my curiosity, or simply blowing me off. Again. I have attempted similar requests with oftentimes NO response.


I so rarely see, in person, people I consider close enough to ASK these questions, and I have, for some time Now, BEcome the one person I am closest with. The one who knows me best.


The one who WANTS to know me.


MayBE the ONLY ONE who WANTS that...


This is NOT a whine, a trembling admission, or even said with sadness. It is what it is. This is How and Where Life and I meet at this time. Simple.


So, when this little quote came into my emailbox this morning, I took a moment and wrote this post. BEcause, for me, I'm thinking this interview will have to BE reconfigured and done differently.


Or mayBE just saved for another chapter...

The Story I Have Been Avoiding

Jenny Bones says:

What story have you been avoiding sharing? Which one makes you the most nauseous when you think about hitting the ‘publish’ button? Write that one. Today. Publish it. Free yourself from the restraints it inflicts on your creative expression.

I sit here on a BEautimous Monday afternoon. It’s blue skies and breezes and sunshining. It’s the sort of day that makes Gratitude grateful. And all that BEing said and oh so true, I am also in a deep funk. A dark one. The sort of funk that feels much more February-ish than May-ish…

I know there is a reason. A cause. A place from which this funk comes. But y’know… it simply doesn’t matter. The thing is, I am here. I am here for the on BEyond some gazillionth time in my Life. And all I can DO is BE.

During AYWM and my writing on this blog, I have shared some pretty difficult things. And never once did that really scare me. I suppose BEcause I don’t envision anyone ever reading my posts. Well, anyone other than others on this AYWM Journey…

But in this funky place I am Right Now I am noticing that I DO have things I hold inside. Refuse to share out loud. Things I wouldn’t want someone or several someones to read or hear or know. Things I am almost afraid to think about. As though just that act alone would BE some sort of treachery…

One thing I am reluctant to share is that I am happy with my Life. Just as it is. Just as it is NOT.

Another is that I have wanted to end my Life so many times BEcause I was tired of trying to make a Life that someone or something else would deem Enough. I have always wanted to live a Life I’d BE proud for anyone to read about and Now I don’t really give a $#!+ what ANYone thinks. That may make NO sense at all, but it does… It does to ME.

I live with depression. It is my constant companion. Like my Spina Bifida, that I didn’t know about until age 36, which has, in the past 22+ years taught me so much more about itself. I always knew something was wrong with me. Or NOT right. That I wasn’t like anyone else. That I was different. And I learned over and over and over again to “get over it” and “rise above it” and yet it was NOT within my power to DO that. So this often led me down the road where I would think ending my Life was the Rightest thing.

Depression is no more something to BE ashamed of than Spina Bifida. And still…

These are things that I don’t want people to know BEcause I didn’t know them for so long. I didn’t know that there was no reason for shame or guilt about a physical “defect” so why would I make the giant leap that said there was none for shame or guilt about a mental and emotional one?! I hadn’t a clue that wanting to end my Life was how I coped with the NOT knowing about the physical defect that made itself known in so many ways that never were clear enough to “get” as BEing caused by something quite BEyond my control.

I don’t want to publish this rambling MEandering. I want to “fix it up” and tie it together first. But… 

Commencing To Get Ready To BEgin

I've been changing, moving from too much to just enough. I am meeting the challenges in my Life with a sort of grace. Oddly enough...


I didn't start out this way. And grace has NOT really EVER been my strong suit. Imagine that!


Life isn't a thing I must work against as though it were some sort of obstacle on my path. It is much more an opportunity and a wondrous adventure. Loving that!


BEcoming this new Me is oftentimes very odd and it leaves me feeling that sense of I'm forgetting something but I can't remember what it is which I'm finally facing rather than running from. I was always looking "out there" at someone or something that wasn't ME!! Who knew?!


Starting without a clear vision should have been a handicap, yet it's turning out to BE much more fun to DO this, making it up as I go. It's sort of an eat when I'm hungry and sleep when I'm tired way of Life. Utterly amazing...


Turns out that simplifying my Life is only complicated in moments. For the most part of the time it's as freeing as a spring morning. Sweet stuff!!


There isn't really any "when" to get ready for; Life is always Right Now. Even yesterday and tomorrow are figments of human imagination. Of course!


It's taken me a Very Long Time to learn this, something I see is second nature to others, like babies, dogs, and the squirrels running along the fence outside. To BEcome as smart as a squirrel, Now there's a goal I can lean into!!! Yes indeed!


This idea of preparing, what I call Commencing To Get Ready To BEgin, albeit tongue-in-cheek, is just how I've always DONE Life. It's actually kind of nice to have had that so wrong for so long. You know?!


Now that I am laughing, near myself and mayBE even a little AT myself, I hope you'll join in the grin. Life is much too wonderful to take too seriously. Laugh on!!