Triple posting
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Posted:Mar 11, 2009 5:50 pm
Last Updated:Dec 13, 2010 1:55 pm 13587 Views
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I just have never multiple posted & thought I would today.
Feel chatty I suppose.
I've missed cruising through the mental Hard-drive some share on
here.
I've been doing foster respite care lately. I can't share much about my experience here because, like my experiences with my personal a veil must be lowered here.
I can say though, that foster care respite is having a who is living in a foster home come and stay with you, as you would have a niece or friend's , for the weekend, or some other time when respite (relief) is needed.
When a pair of partnered wolves lives near a pack, if they should die or become very ill and unable to care for their cubs, usually the nearby pack will come and take the cubs. The human species (and I continue to call it species though I've been advised not to), being what it is, we don't make it a practice to care for our own, or for much of anything.
I was so graced to meet the young person who stayed with me recently. It's tiring, and constant one on one but it's also fun and silly and touching. The courage these have reminds me of my mom's when she was very old, and very helpless.
I've done this before in my community (& previous ones) unofficially. This is sort of a job though, as it is official. I was happy to see how much interviewing fingerprinting & background checking there was.
It pays very very little but gives you great reward in how you feel sharing your home & your love with someone who is young helpless & floundering.
I haven't seen that movie, America, by Rosie O'Donnell but I hear it speaks about the foster care system and the huge amount of in need. Would any of you have the time to do it ? Check into it if your heart tells you to.
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Windcries
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Posted:Mar 11, 2009 11:15 am
Last Updated:Jul 7, 2012 7:52 pm 13136 Views
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When I was a little girl
I used to think
that souls taken before their time
lived in the wind
Lately I'm hearing
their cries raging louder than ever
wailing through February's
sleeping leafless trees
If I close my eyes
to me the sound
seems almost like a sea
that's angry
Hurling itself against the shores
of inhumanity
leaving behind etched in the sands
an admonition long forgotten
I'd like to see it
scrawled across the sky
each morning bannered
glorious in gold and scarlet, "Go in peace..."
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Dimenticato (forgotten)
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Posted:Mar 11, 2009 9:17 am
Last Updated:Apr 11, 2010 11:00 am 13049 Views
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They told me you were back,
asking about me
a chill swept through my soul
and for a moment, I forgot your name
Some have said I love too easily
and wonder what I aim to gain
looking into my open heart
they speak about agendas
They may see love as a market-place
with everything for sale
at a price too high for beggars
too low for thieves or saints
You haggled over what
I gave you freely
counterfeit words,
carefully chosen catapaults,
weapons of vast indifference
used to gain incremental hold
Don’t dream of me
or even speak my name
you’ve lost the right to be,
even a shadow,
in my selective memory
Saddest of all the fact
that I’m no longer saddened,
by knowing that the sweet surrender
of self gain and self defense
is something you will never know
That state of grace
which I call love
in which I now reside
has somehow dimmed my memory,
and all you are to me is, someone,
whose name I used to know
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Head Over Heels
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Posted:Feb 13, 2009 5:21 am
Last Updated:Mar 4, 2012 4:57 pm 12209 Views
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If we’re parented by loving people we first learn about love when we’re infants & small As we grow up and come to know our immediate & extended family, teachers, caretakers and community, if these subsequent experiences are with caring nurturing people this love experience expands. When our needs have been met we feel safe, trusting and nurtured.In time we learn to reciprocate.
Eventually we come to long for a romantic focus for our affection. For those whose needs were met, this romantic yearning is a balanced wish to love & to be loved. For those who were deprived of the comfort & safety of met needs and the feeling of being valued & lovable the drive can sometimes be to find someone to finally meet those needs; to find someone to be loved by. These people have had little or no loving experiences to pattern their feelings & behaviors on. Many of us have found ourselves in relationships with people in this developmental standstill at some times in our life. Some of us are those people. Few people have had a perfect upbringing.
There is no template of acceptable and functional behavior to pattern on if one has not been parented effectively. Commited relationships give us an opportunity to work through these issues and to reach a higher level of maturity in what I see as an emotional alchemy.
The phrase “falling in love” has often puzzled me. How many people do you know who love to fall ? Falling implies: loss of equilibrium, loss of balance & often, pain or injury. We warn small “Careful, you don’t want to fall ... “ But almost everyone hopes to fall in love. In my early 20’s, after some painful romantic falls I decide it was time to incorporate some “choice” into my love life. This doesn’t mean that I intended to ignore chemistry or attraction. I just thought it was time to arrive at some characteristics & qualities which I was looking for in a partner beyond initial attraction.
When my was in college she would call me whenever she met someone she was interested in. By that time I had developed a check list based on the primary qualities I had arrived at “back in the day” when I was my 20’s when I was honing in on what I wanted in a mate. The list my husband met & eventually surpassed.
“Is he kind... intelligent... does he have a sense of humor?” Kindness & courtesy are essential in the close quarters of a love relationship. Whatever intelligent means to you is essential in a life partner, boredom makes your attention wander. Humor keeps you from taking life too seriously and escalating nonsense into issues. It makes life together more fun !
The 4th question may seem inappropriate to some . My 4th question was - “Is he hot ?” (the current slang for attractive). She would giggle & elaborate. Chemistry and attraction provide a spark to the fire of relationships.
Many people have forgotten how to sustain and nourish their relationship. It takes attention & focus. Many allow that focus to be taken by an other’s attention. I’ve asked people in failing or faltering relationships “How would you behave if you just met your partner and you weren’t yet sure if they were really interested in you ? Would you wear sweats and an old ripped T-shirt to bed ? Would you walk around all rumpled and uncombed in the morning? Would you wear a sexy cologne or put on lip gloss before he came home? Would you bring her flowers for no reason at all ? Do you still run your hand down his arm when you go by or stop & hug her as you’re doing something in the same room. Do you smile at each other often, or look in each other’s eyes often. When your partner comes home are you glad ? Do you get up and make a real loving connection showing you’re glad they’ve come home, or do you keep doing what you’re doing and absentmindedly say hi ? How often do you really look into those eyes which first caught yours ? And flirting, remember flirting ? Who do you flirt with these days ?
I’ve been with my husband 33 years. We still flirt, look in each other’s eyes, hold hands, hug and touch often throughout the day and call each other when we’re not together just to say hi and hear each other’s voice. He doesn’t complete me, he complements me. He doesn’t make me happy. That’s not his job and happiness is transient anyway. I have found my own joy. I share it with him and I am happy with him. In our walk together through life we diverge & converge. We share many interests and goals & some are our own individual paths. We’ve had rough times but we've e worked through them; telling each other what was important to us, what we wanted and needed, and caring enough to change what we could and accept what we couldn’t The reward has been worth it. My relationship, like my home, is my haven and sanctuary. It nourishes my heart and gives me the ability to have that love ripple out to my family, friends, animals, strangers, humanity and the world in general. Love really does make my world go ‘round.
Choose well who you go to for advice when your relationship is faltering. I’ve seen people guided into a direction of pride and self righteousness or alienation by bitter or detached people who are unable to nurture a relationship in their own lives and who unwittingly steer the troubled pot in the wrong direction. True we grow & change and sometimes end up as quite different people throughout a relationship. Sometimes we do need to move on. But never settle for living in animosity and detachment.
Speak with love and respect to each other, and if you’re too fired up to do so at the moment then reschedule the talk for two hours two days or even a week. later. Make amends, apologize if you need to, but don’t make a habit of behavior which requires apology. Ask yourself if it’s more important to be right, or to be loved and loving, Be the person you want to be with. Be grateful and full of grace. And use actions and sweet words to tell each other of your love. You’ll find that the coals of a long term relationship will respond to all of these things and the fire will never go out.
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4ever-fun's Post
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Posted:Jul 30, 2008 6:46 am
Last Updated:May 9, 2024 12:1 am 12194 Views
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Had to come back on this morning although the hounds of day to day and some life shifts which need my attention are biting at my heels.
Last night after my 'ciao' post I went to read 4ever-fun's post forget-me-not, and it lingered hauntingly in my mind with it's ying yang of love and pain. If we find love in this life, we'll all someday be forced to relinquish those we love, and life itself.
Love though, is an energy of the heart and a state of the soul which will not be erased.
Thank you Chelle.
Now I have to go and find a mini Friend Finder rehab so I can honour my promise to myself that I will keep a single minded purpose to meet the wonderful opportunities which have come into my life lately, and to heal from this latest health crisis, which seems to rebound in a cyclic way and which feels like a major cleansing and healing on many levels.
Thank you so much for your kind comments on my last two posts. I don't dare answer them, because it's like the having just one last drag on a cigarette.
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Leave Of Abscence
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Posted:Jul 29, 2008 9:06 pm
Last Updated:Jan 4, 2009 1:15 pm 12257 Views
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I wont be on here for a while.
There are things I need to focus on.
This place is rather addictive and I'm trying to get some things which are important to me underway.
I need a single minded focus now.
For those of you who've shown such sweet concern, I'm feeling much better tonight. Had a wonderful day.
Be well & allow joy and love into your hearts.
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Firing Squad
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Posted:Jul 28, 2008 5:20 pm
Last Updated:Jul 7, 2012 7:53 pm 11922 Views
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There've been times
when I've turned myself
inside out
for love of truth,
or maybe for true love.
Then, shivering
and blind
I awaited execution
while praying for reprieve
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An Unconstitutional Act
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Posted:Jul 27, 2008 10:14 am
Last Updated:Jul 28, 2008 12:12 pm 12611 Views
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Good Morning.
Such glorious thunderstorms last night.
I woke up to a constant barrage of flashing light and booming blietzkrieg like spectacle. Since the head of my bed is under a window I felt very vulnerable and got up and slept the other way. I've seen what lightning can do, so I don't know how or why I thought that would help. I've always adored thunderstorms.
Am reading a book called Heart Mountain by Gretel Ehlrlich. It's set in Wyoming in the period after the attack in Pearl Harbour and it explores the isolation of the literate "cowboy" and the despair of the thousands of Japanese-Americans forced into as coming from a Latin=American poet.
In a beautiful long letter to her just before she moved back to Switzerland from the states, my grandmother describes how frightening to see her financial security slipping away.
Over time, my grandfather, an engineer sent to Japan originally by General Electric, had achieved a financial position which assured them more than just security. They had, as my grandmother describes Roses with Our bread" as she quoted from a Latin=American poet.
They lived in Japan until my mother was 11.
Unfortunately an accident my grandfather had caused a severe illness which resulted in his death in Switzerland where he and the family had gone to vacation and to find help from the fine doctors Switzerland was then famous for.
Three days before he died my grandmother writes of one of their final talks before he "set sail for The Next Great Adventure" in which they decided that she and her three would go to the states where they had always planned their would be educated.
Later in her life she tells of how "in the twinkling of an eye" all was taken from her after Pearl Harbour. She found herself a widow suspected of being a Japanese spy and under threat of deportation, which in her words would have left her a "woman without a country", for as she said in her letter she would not have been allowed back into Japan.
For years the Quakers and various organizations such as The International Institute, The international House, and many individuals helped her by finding work for her and worked on her behalf to find a way to keep her from being deported.
My grandfather's sister hired a lawyer, and co-operating with the Director of Immigration in Philadelphia, they managed to get Congress to pass a special Act to make her citizenship a reality.
As my grandmother wrote in this letter to her in 1959 :
” Always , it seems, there has been great misunderstanding of creation, and such a false frenzy for security or survival, that bitter prejudice has walled up countries, kept them isolated through the years, and eventually at war one against the other. But now any war becomes a world conflict”.
I never knew my grandmother. I met her only twice but what a legacy this long and beautiful letter is. My background may be why this book has moved me so. I am as deeply touched by the descriptions of the years of legal prejudice practiced by this country against it’s own Japanese- American citizens, many of whom were finally allowed to enlist and die for this country which had denied their constitutional rights.
Every time I read this letter I’m proud of this woman and hold the letter to my heart for a moment before putting it away again.
I've written of her before but this book inspired me to do it gain. I'd put a photo of them on here but my i-photo has disappeared, which lately it sometimes does. I don't have the energy to go through the process of recovering it again. Still feel very ill. Hope the doc gave me the right medicine for what I have.
How do you like my glass cat ? I got it for 5$ at the thrift store a few weeks ago. Took the photo at sunrise.
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Home Again
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Posted:Jul 25, 2008 6:06 pm
Last Updated:Jul 28, 2008 3:16 pm 12060 Views
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I have a congested lung but no pneumonia.
It's been 11 days of coughing like a firing squad and feeling weak, and with day after day of rain the air was difficult to breathe.
Once you've had pneumonia (although it was 26 years ago, you fear it when a respiratory infection worsens.
I had packed a bag but decided that was tempting the fates and I left it home.
It's the first time I've been on antibiotics in 15 to 20 years.
Thank you so much for your kind concern.
I'm very relieved.
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Hope To Be Back Soon
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Posted:Jul 25, 2008 8:30 am
Last Updated:Jul 28, 2008 5:22 pm 12182 Views
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Going to the Dr.
It's at a nearby medical building/hospital. Hope they don't keep me. Feeling just awful.
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