Learning How to Fall
I was reading one of my favorite blogs, Permission to Live, and she had a post on Learning to Fall. It seemed an interesting book so I got it (my first book on my new Kindle). I got the book a few weeks ago. It is a slow read for me simply because it is so deep. It is written by a man who has Lou Gehrig's disease and his journey through trying to accept life as it is including his death. Since he was a literature professor he uses many references as he tries to figure out the meaning of life and death.
This was a hard read for me because I have Parkinson's Disease, Young Onset. I am now 40 and actually doing better than everyone thought I would. Those who do not have a degenerative and fatal or potentially fatal disease may find that this book spends a lot of time questioning, looking within, and almost obsessively trying to figure out life but not really living it. The thing is so much of the time we are sidelined by our diseases and there is nothing but our minds and life in general to think about. I think different people will get different things from this book.
From each chapter I took something new or something I had feared to process, the way this book is written though, I think everyone will take something different from each chapter.
The Chapters:
Learning to Fall - Taking risks, willing to loose something, trying something new is learning how to fall. I also take this in literal form - over the years, struggling with Parkinson's stuck foot and balance issues I have learned how to fall. I accept that sometimes I am just going to fall and instead of trying to find a way to stop that fall, I allow myself to fall. I don't fight it, I actually kind of fall into the fall, I try to relax and often am less hurt and embarrassed than if I tried so hard NOT to fall. That moment of acceptance often has a calming affect. I am not scared, I am just in the moment - so much of this book helped me to remember how important being in the moment is.
Getting up in the Morning (and other essential duties) - I had a conversation once with a friend who fought cancer. We were discussing the different way we live life compared to those who are healthy and don't think their world will end soon. This chapter brought back those conversations for me. The author writes "I don't mean to say that my diagnosis makes me special. Life, as I've said before is a terminal condition. Those of us with terminal illnesses simply have been blessed-and I mean blessed with having the acts of our own mortality held constantly before us." This was the gist of my conversation with my friend. I personally will most likely never have those "golden retired years" so I do try to live my life and do the things I really want to do NOW while I can. Of course winning the lottery would really make that happen, but until then, I must try to live my life to the fullest without financially hurting those I love.
In Praise of the Imperfect Life - When I was younger (not that I am all that old at 40), I had this desire for everything to be perfect or to be at an end point to be happy with it. Life would be better when we had a nicer house. Life would be better when the house is paid off. Once my son's grades come in and he has good ones, I will be happy. The vacation will be perfect if... This chapter helped me again regain what I had recently lost, enjoying life as it is and all of it's imperfections. It is through those imperfections that we learn life's lessons, become unique individuals, and rise up to challenges. My daughter was able to pick up on a moment like that. While eating a fast food meal that she found delicious, she knew she was getting some on her face and she simply said "If there is any of this on my face - I am saving it for later." Her expression and the way she said it was amusing but more importantly she found perfection in the imperfection.
Unfinished Houses - Following in the same mindset as above, the author talks about enjoying the actual process of life not just the end point. I am by nature a very goal oriented person. The problem with that is that I often find myself focusing on the future and not enjoying the now. While reading this chapter, I really thought about it. Life is a journey if I focus only on getting to the end and looking back that will be just the moment I am about to die. If that is the case how would I be able to look back at all of the things I enjoyed and did if I really never paid attention to it. I constantly have to remind myself is to not only stop and smell the roses, but to NEVER stop paying attention to them in the first place. I have created this wonderful little office space that is peaceful and so very magical to me but I remind myself that it will never be finished because it will evolve as I will. This space is a reflection of me and I never want to feel that I am done or complete because I want to always become more than I am, but the important thing is for me to enjoy the journey as I learn and grow.
Wild Things - I think for me this was one of the hardest chapters for me to relate to. Maybe it is because I have such a hard time quieting my mind (one reason I am often sitting here blogging). The idea behind wild things is to fully immerse yourself in what you are doing. I cannot even explain it how I think I understand it because it is so hard for me to grasp. If you have ever noticed how peaceful a cat looks while taking a nap. We often wish we could do that, in the middle of the day to find a puddle of sunlight and just flop down and sleep in it. What stops us? Often it is guilt, the knowledge that there are so many other things to do, the thought of being lazy and how we should not do that and our busy minds. What if we can be like a wild thing - just do what we need to do and put 100% of ourselves into that moment, that task? What if we could not feel pulled to do something else or to be thinking about what we will do next but to focus and immerse ourselves in the task at hand. I struggle with this a lot in my own life. One of the reasons for creating the office is to leave my laptop in it and not have it on my lap while watching a show or chatting and spending time with my family. I am trying to focus on them, on what I am doing that moment and not feel like I should be multi-tasking. I struggle with this the most.
Out of the Cave - We are both solitary and communal creatures. Often we are more drawn to one side of the spectrum or the other. It is important to find a healthy balance. I have struggled with this a lot. I seem to find myself teeter tottering from once side or the other. Early in my youth, I wanted to be very social. I struggled with being accepted and become very solitary. Then I found a way to be solitary while still being social - by keeping masks on and never having to deal with being rejected because I was not putting the real me out there. Then around the age of 30 I focused more on being solitary - to find and accept my true self. Now I working to find that nice blend of being authentically me and to have a social connection. I know this balance will only work if I have some solitary time to know myself and work on myself and then to come out of my cave and be social.
Mud Season - The author writes so descriptively, "What death is this? Or what is it within me that needs to die? And out of this death, what resurrection will come?" For me this is time time of harvest near Samhain. What is it that I need to let go of, to mourn, so that new things can blossom from this death? Right now I am dealing with this a lot. I am struggling in my grief of my previous parenting role of my daughter and of my son for completely different reasons. My daughter because she cannot handle the mother role I played in her life because of her past trauma. If I am to help her and to be there for her, I must let go of the old role I held and accept the changes which will happen as I enter the new role. I have to let the dream of my daughter living with me and going to high school and being a regular teen age daughter go, and grieve for it. Then I need to allow myself to see how my new role will grow and bloom. My son is nearly an adult and I am struggling to let go of the child I still see in my heart and embrace the lovely young man he has become. The circle of life does not only apply to living and dying but also the losses and new beginnings throughout our lives.
Choosing the World - Despite all of this deep thinking and trying to be Zen like or connecting with the greater energy to find my spirituality, we need to find God or that other worldly experience within this world. I am not really living life if I spend my days focusing on how to be spiritual and how to be closer to God or whatever deity we may believe in, if instead I ignore all of the world around me. For we can find God or that higher power within the little things in life. I can find it in my son's laugh or silly joke, I can find it in that moment of peace I have as I drift off to sleep in my hubby's arms. I can also find it in the dishes that need to be cleaned. I can choose to be part of this world and find God where ever I am and in what ever I am doing, or I can miss the world and the journey of life. After all if we are all connected and all part of the spirit world then everything from the annoying buzzing of a mosquito to the smile and hug of your child is part of that.
Winter Mind - Finding stillness and calmness even in the chaos is important. To find the awareness of breath, to hear our breath, feel our spirit, to hear the spirit of the world. I found so often I will run and keep moving forward amid the chaos without taking a moment or even a few moments strung together to find stillness and quiet. I often do not want to for I am afraid of what I will find if I stay still enough to let my thoughts catch up with me. Here I find the fear of falling, falling into silence, into stillness, fear of the unknown. It helped me that the author wrote descriptively of sledding downhill silently at high speed, for I can see winter's stillness more easily and can see what I struggle with - to really leap silently into the unknown to fall and to trust.
The Art of Doing Nothing - I know as a child there was always a guilt trip put on me if "I did nothing" because someone else always had to pick up my slack and do "SOMETHING" that I didn't do. I struggle with being able to just relax and enjoy doing something (like just one thing) or doing nothing at all. I am the queen of multi-tasking. I can write a college paper, while helping my son with homework, while cooking dinner, while doing laundry. What I cannot seem to do is just not be busy. I know that often all of this doing something is simply an excuse to be busy so that I can not deal with whatever it is that I am pushing out of the way with this busyness. Again the concept of just being present in what you do, without thinking of the next thing or something else, to not feel guilt over just being present with your son and joking and laughing and being silly. It is hard when you hear that voice saying "your not DOING ANYTHING" in your head when in fact you are - you are giving the gift of yourself and the feeling of importance to your son while being silly.
Returning Home - One of the things I am learning as I work on myself is to "return to home". What this means to me is after a stressful event or chaos, is to find your center, to ground yourself. For me this is really hard. Up until recently my center was not grounded, it was more like chaos. I lived and thrived in chaos, well I thought I thrived in chaos. The problem was since my "home" was not calm, was not grounded, it caused me to often go back into the next challenge life brought to me in a chaotic and not healthy way. I have been working to change this. If I am to be a therapist, my clients will need me to come from a place of calm and not chaos each time they bring me into their disheveled lives. They need me to see with clarity and to do this I need to return home between sessions and after a work day to a calm home, to a center that is based on calm and being grounded so I can start fresh with the next client or the next time I see them.
Living at the Edge - The edge is the beginning and the end. It shows change and it shows stagnation, it encompasses everything, past, present and future. We can experience the different realities by living at the edge. For example, walking along the shore's edge we can experience soft, wet sand and crabs burrowing down and just a step into the waves we experience foam and pull towards the open waters and the sand pelting our feet through the crashing of the waves. Both are true realities but we can slip from one to the other with ease when at the edge. We can see how each impacts the other. We can have a broader understanding of the world around us. I will be meeting and working with people of all types when I am a therapist, living at the edge will help me see their lives not from the distance of my center but up close from the edge of my life to the edge of theirs.
I really suggest reading this book because everyone will get something different from it. It is a good book to pick up and read for a bit, think about what it means to you and put it down, go back later and re-read parts and read a bit more. I found it thought provoking and interesting. For me it helped me focus on some of the parts of me I need to work on.
This was a hard read for me because I have Parkinson's Disease, Young Onset. I am now 40 and actually doing better than everyone thought I would. Those who do not have a degenerative and fatal or potentially fatal disease may find that this book spends a lot of time questioning, looking within, and almost obsessively trying to figure out life but not really living it. The thing is so much of the time we are sidelined by our diseases and there is nothing but our minds and life in general to think about. I think different people will get different things from this book.
From each chapter I took something new or something I had feared to process, the way this book is written though, I think everyone will take something different from each chapter.
The Chapters:
Learning to Fall - Taking risks, willing to loose something, trying something new is learning how to fall. I also take this in literal form - over the years, struggling with Parkinson's stuck foot and balance issues I have learned how to fall. I accept that sometimes I am just going to fall and instead of trying to find a way to stop that fall, I allow myself to fall. I don't fight it, I actually kind of fall into the fall, I try to relax and often am less hurt and embarrassed than if I tried so hard NOT to fall. That moment of acceptance often has a calming affect. I am not scared, I am just in the moment - so much of this book helped me to remember how important being in the moment is.
Getting up in the Morning (and other essential duties) - I had a conversation once with a friend who fought cancer. We were discussing the different way we live life compared to those who are healthy and don't think their world will end soon. This chapter brought back those conversations for me. The author writes "I don't mean to say that my diagnosis makes me special. Life, as I've said before is a terminal condition. Those of us with terminal illnesses simply have been blessed-and I mean blessed with having the acts of our own mortality held constantly before us." This was the gist of my conversation with my friend. I personally will most likely never have those "golden retired years" so I do try to live my life and do the things I really want to do NOW while I can. Of course winning the lottery would really make that happen, but until then, I must try to live my life to the fullest without financially hurting those I love.
In Praise of the Imperfect Life - When I was younger (not that I am all that old at 40), I had this desire for everything to be perfect or to be at an end point to be happy with it. Life would be better when we had a nicer house. Life would be better when the house is paid off. Once my son's grades come in and he has good ones, I will be happy. The vacation will be perfect if... This chapter helped me again regain what I had recently lost, enjoying life as it is and all of it's imperfections. It is through those imperfections that we learn life's lessons, become unique individuals, and rise up to challenges. My daughter was able to pick up on a moment like that. While eating a fast food meal that she found delicious, she knew she was getting some on her face and she simply said "If there is any of this on my face - I am saving it for later." Her expression and the way she said it was amusing but more importantly she found perfection in the imperfection.
Unfinished Houses - Following in the same mindset as above, the author talks about enjoying the actual process of life not just the end point. I am by nature a very goal oriented person. The problem with that is that I often find myself focusing on the future and not enjoying the now. While reading this chapter, I really thought about it. Life is a journey if I focus only on getting to the end and looking back that will be just the moment I am about to die. If that is the case how would I be able to look back at all of the things I enjoyed and did if I really never paid attention to it. I constantly have to remind myself is to not only stop and smell the roses, but to NEVER stop paying attention to them in the first place. I have created this wonderful little office space that is peaceful and so very magical to me but I remind myself that it will never be finished because it will evolve as I will. This space is a reflection of me and I never want to feel that I am done or complete because I want to always become more than I am, but the important thing is for me to enjoy the journey as I learn and grow.
Wild Things - I think for me this was one of the hardest chapters for me to relate to. Maybe it is because I have such a hard time quieting my mind (one reason I am often sitting here blogging). The idea behind wild things is to fully immerse yourself in what you are doing. I cannot even explain it how I think I understand it because it is so hard for me to grasp. If you have ever noticed how peaceful a cat looks while taking a nap. We often wish we could do that, in the middle of the day to find a puddle of sunlight and just flop down and sleep in it. What stops us? Often it is guilt, the knowledge that there are so many other things to do, the thought of being lazy and how we should not do that and our busy minds. What if we can be like a wild thing - just do what we need to do and put 100% of ourselves into that moment, that task? What if we could not feel pulled to do something else or to be thinking about what we will do next but to focus and immerse ourselves in the task at hand. I struggle with this a lot in my own life. One of the reasons for creating the office is to leave my laptop in it and not have it on my lap while watching a show or chatting and spending time with my family. I am trying to focus on them, on what I am doing that moment and not feel like I should be multi-tasking. I struggle with this the most.
Out of the Cave - We are both solitary and communal creatures. Often we are more drawn to one side of the spectrum or the other. It is important to find a healthy balance. I have struggled with this a lot. I seem to find myself teeter tottering from once side or the other. Early in my youth, I wanted to be very social. I struggled with being accepted and become very solitary. Then I found a way to be solitary while still being social - by keeping masks on and never having to deal with being rejected because I was not putting the real me out there. Then around the age of 30 I focused more on being solitary - to find and accept my true self. Now I working to find that nice blend of being authentically me and to have a social connection. I know this balance will only work if I have some solitary time to know myself and work on myself and then to come out of my cave and be social.
Mud Season - The author writes so descriptively, "What death is this? Or what is it within me that needs to die? And out of this death, what resurrection will come?" For me this is time time of harvest near Samhain. What is it that I need to let go of, to mourn, so that new things can blossom from this death? Right now I am dealing with this a lot. I am struggling in my grief of my previous parenting role of my daughter and of my son for completely different reasons. My daughter because she cannot handle the mother role I played in her life because of her past trauma. If I am to help her and to be there for her, I must let go of the old role I held and accept the changes which will happen as I enter the new role. I have to let the dream of my daughter living with me and going to high school and being a regular teen age daughter go, and grieve for it. Then I need to allow myself to see how my new role will grow and bloom. My son is nearly an adult and I am struggling to let go of the child I still see in my heart and embrace the lovely young man he has become. The circle of life does not only apply to living and dying but also the losses and new beginnings throughout our lives.
Choosing the World - Despite all of this deep thinking and trying to be Zen like or connecting with the greater energy to find my spirituality, we need to find God or that other worldly experience within this world. I am not really living life if I spend my days focusing on how to be spiritual and how to be closer to God or whatever deity we may believe in, if instead I ignore all of the world around me. For we can find God or that higher power within the little things in life. I can find it in my son's laugh or silly joke, I can find it in that moment of peace I have as I drift off to sleep in my hubby's arms. I can also find it in the dishes that need to be cleaned. I can choose to be part of this world and find God where ever I am and in what ever I am doing, or I can miss the world and the journey of life. After all if we are all connected and all part of the spirit world then everything from the annoying buzzing of a mosquito to the smile and hug of your child is part of that.
Winter Mind - Finding stillness and calmness even in the chaos is important. To find the awareness of breath, to hear our breath, feel our spirit, to hear the spirit of the world. I found so often I will run and keep moving forward amid the chaos without taking a moment or even a few moments strung together to find stillness and quiet. I often do not want to for I am afraid of what I will find if I stay still enough to let my thoughts catch up with me. Here I find the fear of falling, falling into silence, into stillness, fear of the unknown. It helped me that the author wrote descriptively of sledding downhill silently at high speed, for I can see winter's stillness more easily and can see what I struggle with - to really leap silently into the unknown to fall and to trust.
The Art of Doing Nothing - I know as a child there was always a guilt trip put on me if "I did nothing" because someone else always had to pick up my slack and do "SOMETHING" that I didn't do. I struggle with being able to just relax and enjoy doing something (like just one thing) or doing nothing at all. I am the queen of multi-tasking. I can write a college paper, while helping my son with homework, while cooking dinner, while doing laundry. What I cannot seem to do is just not be busy. I know that often all of this doing something is simply an excuse to be busy so that I can not deal with whatever it is that I am pushing out of the way with this busyness. Again the concept of just being present in what you do, without thinking of the next thing or something else, to not feel guilt over just being present with your son and joking and laughing and being silly. It is hard when you hear that voice saying "your not DOING ANYTHING" in your head when in fact you are - you are giving the gift of yourself and the feeling of importance to your son while being silly.
Returning Home - One of the things I am learning as I work on myself is to "return to home". What this means to me is after a stressful event or chaos, is to find your center, to ground yourself. For me this is really hard. Up until recently my center was not grounded, it was more like chaos. I lived and thrived in chaos, well I thought I thrived in chaos. The problem was since my "home" was not calm, was not grounded, it caused me to often go back into the next challenge life brought to me in a chaotic and not healthy way. I have been working to change this. If I am to be a therapist, my clients will need me to come from a place of calm and not chaos each time they bring me into their disheveled lives. They need me to see with clarity and to do this I need to return home between sessions and after a work day to a calm home, to a center that is based on calm and being grounded so I can start fresh with the next client or the next time I see them.
Living at the Edge - The edge is the beginning and the end. It shows change and it shows stagnation, it encompasses everything, past, present and future. We can experience the different realities by living at the edge. For example, walking along the shore's edge we can experience soft, wet sand and crabs burrowing down and just a step into the waves we experience foam and pull towards the open waters and the sand pelting our feet through the crashing of the waves. Both are true realities but we can slip from one to the other with ease when at the edge. We can see how each impacts the other. We can have a broader understanding of the world around us. I will be meeting and working with people of all types when I am a therapist, living at the edge will help me see their lives not from the distance of my center but up close from the edge of my life to the edge of theirs.
I really suggest reading this book because everyone will get something different from it. It is a good book to pick up and read for a bit, think about what it means to you and put it down, go back later and re-read parts and read a bit more. I found it thought provoking and interesting. For me it helped me focus on some of the parts of me I need to work on.
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