My H.E.A.L.T.H. plan – H for headstrong.

At the beginning of the year I wrote an initial post about how, in this first year of my new beginnings, I wanted to focus on me and getting my health and fitness to a level I was happy with. I devised a H.E.A.L.T.H. plan for myself of

Headstrong Eating and Active Lifestyle Transition Habits

My plan captures everything I want from life. Good health. Sensible eating. Becoming more active. A balanced lifestyle of self, family, stability, relaxation, social connections, career, creativity, home, celebrations, and community. I decided to give myself time to transition into my meaningful life, find my life’s purpose and form habits so I could do this for life!

The lapse in my writing has been that it has taken me a while to decide what the first ‘H’ would stand for. Now that I am seven months down the track I realize my plan began with devising it, thinking it through, and researching the best ways of becoming fit and healthy for my age and lifestyle. All that happened in my head – the logical part of me.

However, my head is also the part with little voices that sometimes do me undone. Those voices that say ‘what is the point’, ‘you have tried before and failed’, ‘you are not strong enough’, ‘you cannot fight your genetic make-up’ … and so on. There are also voices of other people and society-accepted norms pushing me into dietary or lifestyle choices that do not serve me well. I needed to find the strong voice inside me to counteract that which had previously dragged me down. I did that by creating a vision in my head of a healthy and fit me, and a prevention of diseases of affluence such as heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. I devised my own dietary and lifestyle plans with choices that would benefit me and lead me to my vision. I believed in those choices and became committed to my vision of a healthier me. That conviction was so strong that the voices within me also became strong – strong  enough that I no longer became swayed by others or unexpected events or my own inner negative voices that tried to pull me against my choices. I became strong enough to defend my choices.

So the first step on my road to better health began with my mind, creating my vision, devising a plan, committing to it, and developing a strong voice within me to persevere with my plan and defend my lifestyle choices.

My first step was to become headstrong.

My journey continues …

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feeling intoxicated!

I have been feeling Euphoric!

The taste of what true freedom means is beginning to seep into the essence of my being.
This began after the sale of the business and has continued to grow as I have gradually shut down all work commitments. Since my head has been clear of that part of me, I have been better able to see more clearly what my life will be like. For the very first time, I have been able to see my life as a single person and being able to build that life as I want to.

When I had the business to manage and the marital property settlement to contend with, I grieved not having a partner to lean on in the decision-making process of that period. It was tough going because for forty years I had always had someone beside me for previous big decisions. Having navigated that period by myself and succeeded in my resolve to ensure the business sale proceeded and the property settlement was fair and reasonable, I now have more confidence. I know that whatever event in life I am confronted with, I will have the courage to face it and survive. Moreover, I can climb to the top of the mountain!

With the business sold and marital settlement trudging over, there is now for me a lifting from my shoulders of a large weight and a somewhat delayed but nevertheless euphoric and triumphant ‘I have done it‘ beating of my fists into the air!

I am free. I am on my own and I am free. I do not have to compromise my time any more. I am free to adjust and adapt my time with myself and my loved ones and my contributions to society and my creative projects or whatever else I decide. How I distribute that time is mine alone to choose. And that feeling of being alone and single and being able to control my own time in its entirety is intoxicating.

 

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new transitions

Back on that bridge …

As I wrote in a recent post, I am again on my way from here to there, with life in transition. A transition is moving from one life chapter to the next such as transitioning from teenager to adult or from adult to retiree. We may also transition after a significant life event such as moving house; changing jobs; having children; coping with an illness, injury or disability; and navigating a financial or legal crises. Transitions involve four phases – holding on, letting go, taking on, then finally moving on.

The life ‘chapter’ or ‘event’ I have been through is the end of my marriage and relationship with my husband of 37 years. In my case of late-life divorce, there has not been this one simple life changing event for me. There have been several. The business sale has meant the end of my working life as I have known it and an identity crisis of its own merit. There has been a change in family dynamics, my social networks and community connections. There is my sunken financial situation to consider. I also intend to sell my home, move to a new area and forge ahead in a new career and lifestyle. That is a lot of changes over a few short years.

Transmuting anger

“I have learnt through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power that can move the world” Mahatma Gandhi

I have written before that I find it difficult feeling, dealing with or expressing anger. I am not inherently an angry person and I hate confrontation. I am generally of a forgiving nature – perhaps too forgiving – and I am tolerant of other people’s up and down moods. However, I tend to put anger in a different category than a simple ‘mood’ and I am prone to associate anger with aggressive, toxic and hostile people.

So if ever I find myself becoming angry, it fills me with angst as I become concerned that I may be turning into an angry toxic person. Then, as I am reluctant to face my anger, my emotions start to twirl around in an uncontrollable fashion.

Having had to deal with a fair amount of anger over the past few years, I have come to realize that the feeling anger has a defensive form and it tends to be this defensive form that is the one that sometimes hits me. Usually it hits me in response to an aggressive action directed at me. In those circumstances my own anger that I feel has actually been the one emotion that is everything to do with defending my values.

Anger is my reactive emotion whenever I have perceived mistreatment, insult or malice. It is the feeling of anger that gives me a sense of justice, and to want to right wrongs. It is anger that leads me on to defend morality. For example, anger is the outrage I feel when I hear about child abuse, racism, mistreatment of women, rape or murder. From a personal perspective, it has been anger that has empowered me to do good in past causes that I have taken on such as the saving of wilderness areas, and fighting for free speech.

Anger is also the feeling that empowers me to become the best I can be. Anger has been the emotion behind my silent protest against what I initially saw as a reprehensible situation, on the collapse of my marriage. Anger planted within me an inner drive to get through the mess, survive and thrive. When I have felt utterly worthless and useless, anger has been the rebellious spirit within me fighting for feelings of self-worth, courage and dignity. Being energy-charged, anger has enabled me to keep going though all the turmoil, through all the mud. When I felt all the values I ever believed in had been violated, it was anger that gave me the drive to fight to maintain my own values, to keep believing in them, and to keep living by them – no matter what. Anger has kept me striving towards a life of moral principles to live by … and to keep doing what I believe is right.

Rather than try and bury anger, which I am prone to do, it is far better that I ask ‘what value do I feel has been violated that is making me feel this way?’ Then with a rightful indignation against the violation of that value, affirm within myself that I will never compromise that value and determine to keep living by that value’s code. Once that value within me is reaffirmed, the course of action out of turmoil into a land of peace and harmony becomes more obvious to me.

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This is a third post in a series on feeling my feelings.
# 1. Feeling my feelings
# 2. Recognizing my own feelings

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Recognizing my own feelings

Since returning home, I have begun sorting through my boxes, some of which I have not been able to previously tackle as they hold records of family ventures, travel, community involvement and business projects that I shared with my ex-husband. Now with the marital settlement finally finished, the business sold, the company financials complete and nothing pressing hanging over my head that I must get done; I have started sorting. What I have noticed going through these boxes is that things have changed in my head in two very significant ways. I could never have envisioned or predicted either of them.

The first thing is there has been an emotional detachment of sorts, from the bond I had in my marriage. As I am sorting through, if I come across an item such as a letter that would have previously made me sad (grief phase), angry (resentment phase), or sick (disgusted phase), now it conjures up no feelings whatsoever. Things I am coming across to do with my ex-husband, I am throwing non-nonchalantly in the rubbish bin without a backwards glance. I am not thinking of the relationship in either a positive or negative way. As far as the relationship is concerned, I do feel I am “over it”.

When I come across something to do with a shared project, because there is now this detachment from the marital bond, I see myself having participated in these projects and being proud of what I did as an individual detached from any association with him. This is weird in a way, as it not the way they happened but it now how I see them. I do not feel any pain, or anger, or sadness, or shame.

However …

The second thing I have noticed as I have begun sorting is some items will trigger thoughts of past events and I am now seeing those past events as an independent witness, rather than as I was back then as the supportive wife. As an independent witness, I can more clearly look at the fairness or otherwise of past events. I can see sometimes I went along with activities or ventures that were not my choosing, or were done in different ways than I would have done. That was fine when I was the supportive wife as I was happy to compromise, as one does in marriage. I was very happy with that compromised situation throughout my entire marriage. Now, with the emotional detachment that has occurred and looking through the eyes of an independent witness, I am not seeing myself as that supportive wife but rather I am seeing myself as me, as my own person. As I begin to see myself as me with my own needs and beliefs and values, I am now also getting flashes of my own feelings, feelings that I experienced at the time of those past events, feelings that I buried. I am feeling feelings of long ago and those feelings are my feelings.

The feelings are coming to me in little breaths, in little heart beats. Generally they are not overwhelming and are gone almost as quickly as they came. However, sometimes I have had to take some time out to catch my breath, and to allow myself the time and space to feel my own feelings and to tell myself that it is OK to feel my own feelings, even those feelings from many years ago. One day, I felt more deeply than a heart-beat and I had to get away and I went into town and spent the afternoon at the library. The feelings that I was suddenly feeling were very strong and I needed some space to get my thoughts straight.

So this is a bit topsy-turvy. On one hand, I have this strange detachment, this emptiness of any feeling. On the other hand, I am getting these flashes of deep feelings from yesteryear.

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This is the second post in a series on feeling my feelings.
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I am on the bridge!!

I am on the bridge!

Life in transition has four phases of holding on (mourning losses), letting go, taking on, and then finally moving on.

I was stuck in the ‘letting go’ part for a long time and then when I was finally free of all that I started to wonder what could be next. So I sat still for a little while. It was almost as if the ‘letting go’ had become a world of its own accord as it had become my normality and even my identity for a while.

Well it has finally gone and I am taking on new things getting ready for the road ahead.

I am on my way from ‘over here’ getting ready for ‘over there’.

Feeling my feelings

At the beginning of 2014, at the tail end of a period of reflection, I was beginning to have a vision for my future. It was a defining moment. After my marriage collapse I had spent quite some time mourning the past, yet fearing the future. To come to the place of a bright vision for my future was a fantastic place to be. The downside was I was still trapped in the mud of the financial process of my marital settlement. I could not move on to the vision that I had. From that point, I was no longer trapped in the past, I was trapped in the quagmire of an unpleasant present.

That was frightening and demoralizing. Two mini-epiphanies pulled me out of my dark hole. The first was a suggestion from a friend to re-frame the processes of the marital settlement as steps towards my bright envisioned future. Clunk! An obvious self-esteem boosting solution once I could see that. The second was sage advice from my mother. She told me I needed to face what had to be done, write down the tasks to get it done, get started on the first, keep going, get through it, then – and only then – when all done – begin living that life I was dreaming.

Facing all that had to be done was extremely painful and overwhelming, but I did face it. I wrote it all down into a horrifying long-list, subdivided into categories, tasks, and sub-tasks. Slowly, task by task, I moved through the list and got the job done. When I wrote the list, I had no idea at the time that it would take another fifteen months to complete, all the time dragging myself through mud. The going was tough and slow.

Sadly, I also did not know at the time that I would lose my dear mother along the way.

I did not know for ten of those fifteen months, I would be flitting between the two worlds of the marital settlement process, and caring for my mother in her last phase of life. Two entirely different and emotionally intense worlds, yet both were worlds where I had to put my emotions aside in order to cope. In order to survive and get through that last fifteen months of the marital settlement, which required my logical thinking brain, I had to put aside my feelings of grief at the loss of my marriage, and feelings of anger and resentment at being stuck in the process of settlement. In order to care for my mother and provide for her an environment to live her last days in peace and happiness, I had to put aside my own distress that I was losing her. I had to put aside my own grief, for her well-being.

Four huge changes have taken place in my life over the past few months: the selling of the business, the end of the marital settlement process, the final separation from my husband, and the death of my mother. Friends and loved ones were concerned that with all that, when I found myself alone, I would emotionally collapse. What would I do with myself? How would I cope?

I must admit, I too had moments of concern. Over the past fifteen months, when emotions surfaced, I would actively blunt them or push them aside. I would tell them to go away until I had time to deal with them. I was afraid that when things became quiet they would return and would overwhelm me. I was also afraid the opposite may happen, that I was so used to burying my emotions, I would become a frozen wasteland devoid of feeling.

I have not collapsed. I have not become overwhelmed. I am coping. In fact, at times I have been bubbling with excitement and anticipation at approaching blue skies and exciting adventures ahead. However …

I am feeling my feelings – all of them. Instead of pushing them aside I am embracing them and I am at peace that I am at last able to allow myself that space to feel them. ___________________________________________________________________

This is the first post in a series of posts I am writing on feeling my feelings.