AUTHENTIC ADULT WOMAN

JUST IN CASE THERE ISN'T ENOUGH

But WHEN is enough, enough?  Especially if it's about food.  I like to eat crunchy sesame snacks, for example, one right after the other, 'til the bag is empty...while sipping a refreshing rum & coke... And watching a deeply psychological TV drama like  

In Treatment.  

So where is that enviable inner stop clock that says "ENOUGH, YOU ARE FULL"?  

I don't have one...alas.  

Last week a therapist friend asked about my childhood between ages 5 and 10. ...

"where were you, what was you life like,".  I said that during those years my father left his business in the city and followed the 'call of God' to go way up to Northern Canada to minister to people in tiny prairie towns.  

It was during the Great Depression. We moved every 2 years.  In the first town we lived in a 2 room tar-paper shack. The snow was 10' high in the winter.  People were too poor to put much in the offering plate, but brought us occasional sacks of potatoes or legs of mutton.  As a little girl I had no sense that we were poor or starving...and my mother never complained.  But my therapist friend believes she was always worried, fearful about where the next meal was coming from.  

I must have absorbed that fear, unconsciously.  Deep in my cells there is a constant pressure to eat everything available....just in case....just in case there won't be enough....

That was a big insight!  So I think I'll try to use the same method that helped me stop smoking....it's called paradox training.  It requires me to say to myself..."I want to eat more than I need, and I CAN eat more than I need.....

However, there would be many benefits from eating less. (And list the benefits, like longer life, lower blood pressure, better looking in clothes (and out of them!) . 

Then I choose to tolerate the discomfort and anxiety of NOT eating more than I need  IN ORDER TO REALIZE THOSE BENEFITS.  

Chances are that the old programming will become less insistent...and the benefits more appealing than the mindless, immoderate eating I've done for decades. 

I'll let you know.

Here's a collage of the old program that says "happiness is in having MORE THAN ENOUGH!"

DIET DREAMS

WELL, I STARTED THE SOUTH BEACH DIET AGAIN...because the food tastes so damn good - (although the prep time is agonizing....chop, chop, chop, saute, braise, bake, melt, fold, whisk, grind., puree...etc.)  

Yet apparently my psyche supports this new effort to be healthy.  Last nite I dreamed that a dear surrogate mother told me that her garden was full of herbs and beets? and that I should eat right.  

The nite before I dreamed that I took a napkin full of sweets, like lemon cake with crunchy brown sugar icing....from a buffet at UCLA....and then some bad guys stole the sweets from me!   I was furious.  I woke up this am determined to heed the advice to eat lots of herbs and beets.  Here is a picture of a little dinner I made for friends just BEFORE the diet began.

I cooked the little red potatoes and carrots until just tender and then stirred in a bit of southwestern ranch dressing, and fresh pepper....a beans, tomatoes and onion combo in a butter/balsamic sauce (from Traders) and sliced the moist, yummy pork tenderloin (in godknowswhat delicious marinade, from Costco).  Quite nice, actually.  I remain totally in love with food, music, art.... and beauty in general.

MY NATURE IS TO NURTURE!

I love to nurture people...bring them a cup of tea, top off their wine glass, put a pillow behind their back or feet, cover them with a cozy afgan. Somewhere along the line I realized that I was doing exactly what my mother, Gladys, used to do to me. But as a child I hated to be fussed over, brushed off Mother's ministrations, saying, "I'm fine, just leave me alone!"

Sometimes my friends reject my attempts to nurture so I've tried to stop...but I suffer true anguish when I watch them squirm in discomfort...needing another pillow, needing ME to bring them another pillow. One day, not long ago, I forced myself to NOT offer the nurturing gesture, just let them ask if they needed something....after all these friends were in their 60's and 70's ...as am I.  Surely they would ask if they needed something, or move if they were uncomfortable?  

Then it hit me.  IT IS MY NATURE TO NURTURE.  It is NOT a curse or a flaw!  I wanted to be a nurse when I was little, my dolls were rocked to sleep and pampered when ill.  My many pets have been combed and brushed and I built carpeted shelves and climbing posts for their pleasure.  It gives me joy to prepare a good meal for guests and make sure everyone feels included and valued.  Why should I feel guilty about what is a natural part of my personality?  This is who I am. Take it or leave it.

And then the truth hit me...IT ISN'T THE NURTURING THAT OFFENDS some PEOPLE....IT IS MY INSISTENCE on making them comfortable, FUSSING OVER THEM WHETHER THEY WANT IT OR NOT.  Maybe some folks just don't want to be fussed over, want to be invisible, or just want to figure out how to make themselves comfortable.  I can offer my pillows, afgans, tea and comfort ONCE, and if the offer is not accepted, I need to BACK OFF!  And go pet my cat.  

 

MY NATURE IS TO NURTURE!

IMAGINARY LIVES!

If a thought is as real as an act, as Jimmy Carter famously said about the infidelity in his heart, then I have led many imaginary lives.  For example, I have shelves of fancy cook books on every type of cuisine from all parts of the world....and I love to sit down and read the recipies.  Under cover of a loud fake cough, I will secretly rip out a page of Cooking Light in my doctor's office.  I dreamed of hosting a sort-of Julia Child dinner under umbrella trees on a Tuscan evening...wine flowing...But in reality, I rarely don an apron and make anything but chicken, a green veg and mashed potatoes.

Then there is my imaginary life as an artist.  I have drawers stocked with caligraphy pens and inks and books;....boxes loaded with gourd crafting supplies...burning tools, special saws, dyes, books...

I have a complete woodworking shop...hammers, screw drivers, saws, drills, routers, sanders, planers, (manual and electric) small tools for every possible project hanging on magnetized bars, big tools and levels, stacked vertically under the hanging lumber rack.....and every color and hue of stain and dye and polish.  Large shapes of wood like the 5' tall piece of lightning-struck redwood with its wild explosion in the center...that prize stands ready to be sanded down and polished for a stunning bit of garden art.  I even happily design complex wood projects...but only succeed in occasionally producing simple custom shelves for the house. 

And I get high shopping in artsy shoppes....thrilling to the colors and textures and shapes created by other artists...I think, "I could do that!"  or "I'll bet that artist had SO MUCH FUN making that".  I draw up sketches of ideas for things I want to create.

I love photographs...play with them on the computer; enhance color, crop, sharpen, assemble into posters, send to friends...dream of being Imogen Cunningham or Margaret Bourke-White.

I can't go in an art supply store, or walk on the beach without bringing home bags of possible creative projects...I thrill to the shapes and colors Nature leaves on the shore....

So now I have TOO MANY IMAGINARY LIVES....too many supplies for too many possibilities.  My friend, Kath, calls it "possibility clutter"...SO many tools, and books, and fabrics and stones, and shells, and knives, and colored pencils, and brushes and ...and...........

I just hate to give up the possibility of fulfilling any one of those dreams....or of needing one of those items and not having it.  I suppose my keepers, when I reach the stage of not being able to do anything, will just dump the stuff.    So maybe I have to pick and choose the stuff I will really REALLY use.  DAMN.

The point is, I enjoy IMAGINING that I'm going to create these things....and I feel comfortable knowing that I have the stuff so I can dive in any time I'm reasy...,and thinking about it almost feels like I'm doing it!,

 

SEA SCULPTURES

Have you ever noticed how the sea has sculpted these glorious shapes - twisting - tangling - polishing.   Pulling them out, washing them back  in?  Today I found these...and they reminded me of the bas relief "Poem", by Hakumaki...I found it in a gallery in Chicago in 1964.  The beauty of nature stuns my senses and soothes my soul .  My little beach is rough and rocky, full of great flotsam and sparkling sea glass...

Just Be - Me

I am gentle, innocent, quiet

Wild, forceful, intent, unstopable

Never too tired, Never too busy

To do what I love

And what I love is

To peel away the bark -

Reveal the heartwood

Polish and protect

The heartwood

And I love to play

Move the muscles of

My face, my body, my voice

Drive a powerful car

Singing at the top of my lungs

About God, about love

I love - finally, fully

To be me

Just Be. Me.

dja

OH NO!

For decades you climb and climb your life's ladder, and sometimes, as Joseph Campbell says, you get to the top and find you've climbed the wrong ladder!

OH NO!

But if you've got the guts, you climb back down, figure out YOUR RIGHT ladder and start back up again.  The thing is, when you find your right ladder, you are joyfully supported every step of the way.  Even when it is hard, you know you're on the right track.

Then somewhere along the line, you realize that you aren't really in charge, after all.  And you have to surrender your willful self to the Divine guidance that has been leading you all along.

The vibrancy of this surrender will permeate all your cells....it seems like the ultimate feminine receptivity.

More later, I'm still working on this!

SURRENDER, DOROTHY!

AND THE NIGHT SHALL BE FILLED WITH MUSIC!

Music MUSIC music... magic... total joy... pulsing through every cell.

This week my body is full of life again...rediscovering powerful emotion...heart full ...swaying to the glory of Chopin's Nocturne No. 8 in D flat.  Dancing my crazy personal dance around the studio, eyes closed...to Song of the Soul by Cris Williamson....raising my arms, "filled with the Spirit" as they say,...and indeed, I am.  I can't imagine why I let music almost drop out of my life.  I think it was after the big earthquake in Santa Monica...all my fabulous albums were ruined and the fine turntable destroyed.  Now, more than a decade later, my favorite pieces of music, from classical to disco, play off my iPod through my rich, full Bose speakers....

Sometimes, as a kind of meditation, I listen to Barbara Striesand singing HOLY GROUND. 

If I need to MOVE I play one of those wild big-beat disco tunes from the 70's...like NEVER CAN SAY GOODBYE, by Gloria Gaynor.  Often I long for the soaring, deeply gorgeous, heartbreakingly beautiful sound of Dvorak's ROMANCE IN F MINOR, opus 11.  I move with eyes closed, arms waving - pulling music from the artists like an inspired conductor.  And how about Sarah Brightman's HOW FAIR IS THIS PLACE?  

And SINGING is so fab!  In my youth I sang all the time:  solos, trios, choirs.  My voice is scratchy and sort-of trembly now...but so what.  With my head phones on I boldly sing along with Anne Murray and her great new DUETS album...Anne's voice is getting older too, but god, can she belt out those famous olde tunes, like MAY I HAVE THIS DANCE...(.that's a good one to dance & sing to).  Or Eva Cassidy's SONGBIRD.  I can't believe the gift of music...it fills my spirit with life.  My whole family loves/loved music.  It's in the genes.

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Here's a collage that reflects some of the ecstasy I find in music.