Showing posts with label coping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label coping. Show all posts

Saturday, September 7, 2013

finding my path...

It’s hard to write sometimes. Hard to sit quietly examining my inner self, trying to make sense of the construct I’ve created over the years to cope with outside forces.  It becomes easier however with each passing moment that I allow myself to be honest instead of holding onto old beliefs of who I am.  Easier still if I listen to those who love and know me because they are to who I show my truest face.

Seems rather out there but stop for a moment.  My mother always said we have three faces.  The face of who we think we are, the face of who we show the world, and the true face of who we really are.  With trust in someone, we find ourselves showing our true face and therefore seeing it as well.  Many times however, we deny that face.  We don’t want it to be true because it is that face which is most vulnerable.  It has no barriers, no battlements. 

When outside forces diminish trust between people, the face turns away from the truest face and walls arise.  Trauma to the psyche damages the ability to trust.  Paranoia, fear, anger all create blockage.  So it is sometimes up to the counterpart to help find the path back.  We all do it, helping those we love navigate life, and it’s done for us as well.

The helping can be subtle as an encouraging smile during difficult moments.  Or it can be blunt and hard, like saying what is not wanted but most needed.  When we choose to be most honest with those around us we create trust.  This trust creates ease in motion and thought.  It allows us to become comfortable in our own skin and move forward in evolving and healing.  When we help others find their truest face, we find our own.

Knowing my true face has been an exercise in letting go of old pain I’d become accustomed to cultivating.  Anger and disappointment over losing who I was clouded my ability to find my way to a new path so I could figure out who I am now.  I simply stood at the fallen tree across my old road and cursed the heavens for being unfair.  It’s easy to get caught up in what might have been when our plans are so set in stone.  But stone gives way to the elements and we must give way to circumstances we cannot control.  The goal is not the destination but the journey and many times plans must be changed regardless of how loudly we scream to the world or how pitifully we cry for ourselves.


Finding enough strength to hear those around me has been my biggest challenge and my greatest reward.  It created light where I could not see allowing my new journey to become visible to me.  And though I will always look back on my old path with fondness I’ll no longer stand with my feet planted crying for what I lost.

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

socks can do amazing things...

It is thought that knitting first appeared somewhere in the Middle East.  In my house it appeared when my mom got sick.  We weren’t expecting terminal illness, no one ever does, but it happens.  Over the course of the nine weeks before her illness took her life, I learned every technique in knitting that I could.  I knit feverishly.  I filled two large bins with beautiful colors of wool in all different weights(this means the thickness of the yarn).  I even learned to spin and dye my own wool.  The only aspect I didn’t dive into was raising my own sheep, and that’s only because we don’t have the room. 

Luckily, even though I am left handed, there is no difference in knitting.  One always knits the same way other than which hand holds the working yarn.  My first project was a Christmas stocking.  I took on fancy stitches like cables and double knitting.  Watching videos online, I learned how to knit socks, sweaters, hats, mittens - you name it, I figured it out.  I knit presents, I knit selfish.  I learned to knit with the largest to the tiniest of needles and in the end, I gained a skill that has strengthened my coping skill-set.

This need to make things has served me well.  I was a potter for 18 years of my life.  I like to create.  It feeds my soul, but it also helps me deal with the ups and down of life with PTSD.  Hobbies can be a wonderful outlet when times are hard.  They occupy the mind so our days aren’t spent dwelling and rolling over all the horrible possibilities.  Through knitting I’ve taught myself to not worry about what I cannot change.  I can’t cure my husband’s PTSD, I couldn’t cure my mother's cancer.  I won’t be able to find a magic remedy on the internet.  I can educate myself, but I can’t fix everything.


I can however fix a stitch.  So in knitting, I give myself the ability to fix what I can.  Being able to fix something helps because many times I feel like I’m failing my husband in not finding that magic cure like I thought at the beginning I could.  I can however knit a pair of socks that fit like a dream and some days, that’s good enough.