Letting go...to move forward

My candy thermometer broke last night as I was making a batch of prickly pear hard candy. Well, the truth is I don’t know when it broke. I was working on several things at once in my kitchen and the candy was near the end of my list. I got it started and watched the temperature climb– slowly as it does– and didn’t notice the glass top was missing until I was at 300 degrees and getting ready to pour the candy into the pan to cool.

While this might seem like a silly thing to blog about, the thermometer belonged to my mom and it was the only one I’ve used to make the prickly pear hard candy.

I don’t know why she had one– what she had made so she bought one– and I don’t think I ever used it until I started making prickly pear candy several years ago. I felt a little irritated, knowing I’d have to create another batch because I don’t know if the candy had glass or not, but mostly because that was a connection to Mom.

Yet something else occurred to me– perhaps this letting go was about more than using her candy thermometer. Instead, Mom is saying, “It got you started making the candy, but get a new one. You’re going to be making more candy and you need a new one.”

Many times we get upset that the objects that tie us to our loved ones get ruined, broken, or whatever. Yet those things happen so we can go forward, so we can let go, but mostly so we can let something greater come to us.

Surgery in the Rearview Mirror: Reconciling Who I am Supposed to Be

Three years ago I was supposed to have ablation (where the uterus lining is burned out) which meant any inkling of having kids was over. However, because there was a golf-ball sized fibroid in my uterus that didn't show up on the ultrasound and because the sodium levels in my body were rising too high after the large fibroid was removed, my doctor didn't have enough time for the ablation. However, he believed that was causing most of my problems so I went on with my life with few problems, happy that I had taken care of it.

This past January I knew something had changed and we gave it a few months to see if it was a freak thing or not. An ultrasound in late April proved it wasn't– two golf-ball sized fibroids this time. My choices were to do nothing or to have my uterus removed. Because then it made sense that I was always running to the bathroom (the fibroids were pushing on my bladder), I opted to have the uterus removed this past Friday. It turned out I made the right decision because my uterus was full of fibroids and my doctor told me that once he saw all the fibroids in my uterus that it explained all my symptoms. 

But this surgery wasn't just about the physical problems I was having. I found out on a Saturday evening what my options were and on Sunday morning I was driving to early mass when I asked God to please help me learn what I'm supposed to from this experience (a blog I had recently written about) so I could move on from it.

To say that it's been a crazy journey is an understatement. 

I never had children– by choice because of certain things in my life, one being that I believe children deserve a lot of time and with the goals and dreams I have, I didn't believe I could give them that. I also was married before and because we divorced and a slew of other things had happened, it wouldn't have been a good situation if we'd had kids. I've had a parade of children come through my life but they never stay for any length of time. I seem to be just part of their journey for a short period and then they can go on. 

I know many women who had their uteruses removed but they all had had children while I was only birthing books, my goal and dream since I was six years old. There has been a lot of sadness over this but deep down I never really saw myself having kids. And yet now part of this journey is completely letting aspect go of that aspect of my life. Yet another loss for me to find hope.

Finally, my parents died when I was 35 and 43 and because they were older when they had my younger sister and I, I'm not willing to take the chance of not being around later as I sometimes feel parentless now (I have lots of "second parents" but we all know it's not the same without our "real" parents). I know they are with me although in a different way.

My life has been filled with loss and I realized that the way children have come through my life is much like life was in Naperville growing up. It was a very corporate transient town and I made friends only to have them move away four years later. It's a lot of work for me to keep grasping hope in the face of loss but that's why I choose to do work that makes me happy– creating through many avenues.

But there was another huge factor to this that most people don't know– I was deathly scared of spending the night in a hospital. I had successfully managed to avoid that since I was three and had a traumatic experience having my right eye muscle tightened. Several months ago I found my baby book where my mom had written it was traumatic for me and that I'd been allergic to the anesthesia (which then also explained why I had a rash after my surgery three years ago). Today there is no one to ask about the surgery because everyone involved (my parents, the doctor, my grandfather who was a charter doctor at that hospital) have died. Once more I had find my way through a maze of questions knowing I'll never really get the answers.

I can't explain how rattled the idea of having surgery and this time spending the night in the hospital left me. I felt as if I were facing one of my greatest fears in life. Somehow I did it but it didn't come without feeling constantly wound up and more tears than I would like to admit to. 

And yet something else came to play in this journey– my writing. I wrote 100 pages in May and I have finished the rough draft of a manuscript. So while there were times when I couldn't stop thinking about things like catheters and the fear of more surprises from my uterus as has happened before, I somehow managed to refocus myself to write 100 pages (and recover fourteen patio cushions). 

This current writing doesn't relate to what I was going through; it was all sorts of creative stuff for my manuscripts (yes, there is more than one) but it felt that because I had left that door open of asking to be open, God could let the writing through. In the face of my fear, it didn't paralyze me, instead it helped me push forward because I also hope that now that I have completely shut the door on having children, a new door will open, one that's been waiting for that to happen.

I believe everything happens to us for a reason– it's one huge way that allows me to go forward in the face of loss and change– and we are put right where we're supposed to be even though much of what happens to us doesn't make sense at the time it happens. I believe this is just one part of the journey that helps me continue traveling on this road of who I'm supposed to be.

Letters to God

The stack in the photo is my life from 1986 until almost today (the past few days are in a brand new notebook that I forgot to include). I started journaling as a requirement in eighth grade English and I continued doing it that summer in the top book– bound by my Grandpa Linn who worked for the University of Chicago Press. After that, I always used leftover notebooks from classes.

I wrote daily for years and at some point it dropped off although recently I picked it back up because I was reminded that once I heard that all my writings are prayers to God. It makes sense to me part of the reason I wrote on my journal was to use it as a sounding board to let go of something. In my life I have found that writing is form of finding my way through something.  I just never realized that by putting it on paper I also was giving God a chance to see it as well.

I don't often reread what I wrote unless I want to see my reflections on a certain life event. And some days I write just a few lines, maybe about something in particular that is challenging me, or something with which I need help. Whatever it is, it's no different for me than actually being in a traditional form of prayer. But as someone who has loved to write since I learned to write, it now seems logical that even though I didn't feel close to God particularly for the first half of my life, I actually was writing to him all along.

And I as I continue to journey forward in my life, I see where and how he continues to respond, sometimes in my writing, too.

The Holistic Health Plan

From the outside, I know that my lifestyle looks like a lot of work. I am up at 4:30 each morning (although do sleep until about 4:45 on weekends– I know, it's very late compared to the rest of the week!) to run and run-walk my dogs. I do a five-minute morning prayer before I shower. I plan most of the meals in the house and make a concerted effort to make sure that we're eating enough vegetables and keeping it as balanced as possible. I go to mass nearly every weekend and spend an hour with a priest at a monastery here once a month for spiritual direction. And each day I try to spend some time doing something I enjoy even if it's just a short time reading. This morning I had my yearly physical and blood work done. I go to acupuncture with my Chinese doctor twice a month where she works to me balanced with a slew of needles, cupping, and burning moxa while I rest.

But there's a reason for it: three years ago I had a group of fibroids removed from my uterus, including one that was the size of a golf ball. It was at that time that I realized I needed to make changes in my life. Outwardly all looked well, especially because I was just a few months from getting married. But clearly something was wrong inside my body.

While I have been running since I was twelve, there were a series of life events that had taken a toll on me: my sister's suicide when I was 21, my parents' unexpected deaths (among other close losses in my life), and then my first marriage where my then-husband was hit by a drunk driver and suffered a head injury. While running– and also walking the dogs– helped me through that, I now see that it wasn't enough and that's when I believe the fibroids began to grow.

Instead, I thought the way to cope was to do more: remodel the house, add more dogs, add a pool, get a doctorate, write more books, educate the world on suicide and grief. None of that I regret, I just look back now and see it was all a way of coping. By moving forward, I could manage the drama that surrounded me and keep it from suffocating me. There was no way to completely emotional cope with the roller coaster of living with a brain-injured person and my body instead resorted to doing it physically.

Just taking care of one part of ourselves is a start but it's not enough. We are holistic beings– and if you were in Maz's health class at Naperville North High School I know you learned this well. Although I admit I neglected all but the physical for a long time– and if we want to be healthy we have to work at it.

Don't think I jump out of bed each morning because I don't (and Greg will attest to that). But I will be the first to admit I love to be out in the quiet darkness, looking up at the still-night sky which is often clear here in Albuquerque. It's there that I start my day in prayer, in gratefulness, as I ask for help to make the most of the daylight hours ahead of me. I learned a long time ago that a new day, as the sun comes up over the mountains, is the same as the chalkboard being wiped clean; I can start over again.

What looks like a lot isn't in the scheme of my life. It's nothing compared to what the alternative would be if I chose not to work so hard at staying healthy holistically. I wouldn't choose it any other way.

A Look Back, A Look Forward

It's hard not to think about college this time of year. Whenever I hit August, I am reminded of my "anniversary" of moving to Albuquerque in 1994. But this year it's also a little different. As I'm writing this, Greg's nephew Dean will be flying to Albuquerque tomorrow night and I'll be helping him to move into his dorm room on Wednesday so he can start school as an undergraduate next week here at the University of New Mexico. 

It's brought up a lot of reminders for me not just about when I moved to Albuquerque, but also my years at Ball State University in Indiana where I have my undergraduate degree from.

I didn't start at Ball State– from high school I entered what was then North Park College (now University) on the northside of Chicago to run cross country and track as well as study. I don't remember anything about moving in the dorms. My best guess is that because we had to arrive a week early to go to camp on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, we must have stored our belongings somewhere and then moved into our dorms when we returned. 

Ball State I remember clearly, particularly my parents getting ready to drive away after my things were unloaded into my dorm room (there wasn't any such thing as orientation then– it was drop your kid off and let them figure it out!). 

As I think of Becky, putting her son on a plane tomorrow for Albuquerque from their Boston home, it's not like he's going just a few hours away. He's going almost the whole way across the country, excited to start a new adventure in a place he wants to get to know better.

And I think of my friend Janet who once told me that you don't raise your children to be like you, you raise them to be their own people, to be independent. And so you send them on their way.

While Becky is letting Dean go, for Greg and I, we get to enjoy time with him (I jokingly say until he makes friends and wants nothing to do with us), helping him to explore Albuquerque and New Mexico and build a new life around his next level of schooling.

When I came to New Mexico, I was twenty-two and I had just finished my bachelor's degree. And my sister Denise had died just eighteen months before. I didn't understand then how hard it must have been for my parents to let me go, to drop me and a UHaul full of items off into a studio apartment, and head home. There were no cell phones for us and it was because I moved away that my parents joined AOL so we could email at least, providing more contact than phone calls (which still weren't so inexpensive then). Obviously I managed to build a life here because, well, I'm still here.

But when I transferred to Ball State my sophomore year, I was lucky that a few weeks into the semester, I was sitting in the Newman Center Church, just off campus, when a woman and her middle-school son sat next to me. It wasn't long in that first conversation that Pat declared herself my adopted mom.

Pat had three daughters of her own– all in college or just beyond at that time– even one also named Michelle. She lived several miles from campus and I only had a bicycle, but she gave me a connection in the community, made me dinner, too me to dinner, gave me a family to spend Easter with when I didn't go home, and an attic to store my belongings when I went home for summer break. 

She's come to Albuquerque, I've been back to stay with her in Indiana multiple times, and when I married Greg two years ago she sent us a slew of Fiestaware off our registry (me forgetting how much she liked it) and I think of her every time I pull out the yellow pitcher for a dinner party.

While I made other connections throughout my three years there, Pat was a stable family presence, one that I relished while my own family was in Chicago, and especially after my sister died the next year. The photo here is of us and her son Tim taken in August 1992. My mom took the photo and somewhere I have one of Mom and I there in Pat's backyard, but I don't know where it was. 

As I look back now, I'm sure my parents appreciated Pat more than I will ever know. 

And as Dean arrives tomorrow night, I hope that I can return the favor of all that was given to me, twenty-some years ago.

The Push and Pull of Letting Go

Letting go is one of my biggest challenges (along with being patient!). It's not just that I want things to happen, it's also that I'm willing to work to make them happen. And yet much of the time it's not on my schedule. I'm a doer, I'm not a person to step back and let things unfold in front of me. I try to do as much as I can to make the unfolding happen.

But reality (yep, there's that again) is that there is much that can't happen if I don't let it go. If I keep something at the forefront of my mind, if I continually thing about it, what I'm doing is holding it back because I can't let it go.

I don't want to let it go because that means– gasp!– I'm giving the control away. However, I can't count the number of times that I've forced myself to stop thinking about something, stop asking for it. And the minute I turn around, my mind and work elsewhere, it reappears.

When something we want- especially to accomplish- feels as if it's stagnant, somewhere we need to balance how much we work on it and the letting go of the rest. There is only so much I can do, and accepting that is hard for me because I want certain things (particularly in my professional life) to happen. But life is also about balance, especially balancing working hard and letting go of the rest. 

And the day I master that? I won't be the only one watching it unfold. Until then, back to balancing I go.

Easter Perspective

I had taken some time on Saturday morning to photograph the dogs– Hattie and Lilly– for Easter. Neither one was happy with me (although after they ran off when I told them we were finished, Lilly hurriedly pushing the bunny ears off her head, they were easily swayed back into happiness with treats) and later I told Greg about how obvious it would be when I posted the photo on social media Sunday morning.

"No one is ever happy on Easter," he said. When gave him a funny look, he added, "Everyone is uptight about something."

Then I remembered the Easter Sundays of my childhood: we were always late for mass. I have no idea why and I never asked my mom when she was alive because she always got upset and accused me of thinking she wasn't a good enough mother. But the church filled up early and it meant we were left standing in the entry way listening to mass. For an hour. 

In that hour I had little understanding of what Easter meant. Yes, I'd taken religion classes growing up, but honestly it didn't mean a lot to me.

Then about six years ago, the same time I had returned to going to mass weekly, I found myself leaving Easter mass wanting to sing, feeling the happiness of coming out of darkness into the light. And each year since then, Easter has come to mean more to me.

I'm sure that I could argue that I'm older now and I "get" it more than I used to but I believe it's just a sense of having traveled multiple journeys of finding myself in darkness and having to seek out light. Each year Lent reminds me that there is hope, that we can get to the light, to the sunshine, that we don't need to be scared.

And a beautiful, cloudless sky– like we had in Albuquerque yesterday– doesn't hurt. 

Retraining the Brain: Focusing on the Good

I found this blog from two years ago on my old web site and it felt appropriate to repost for the holiday season:

It's easy to do: we start to think about something that's not so good in our lives, or something we're frustrated about, or something that just isn't great. One thought leads to another. And we can't stop.

While this can happen anytime, it always feels as if it's more pronounced during the holidays. Every television commercial we see portrays complete happiness and prosperity. Then we look around our own homes and lives, knowing full well there aren't the funds (or significant other) to receive that piece of jewelry or the new car for Christmas. And we forget that it's not about the material gifts, getting swept away by what media shows us, believing we should have that, too.

And so the thoughts begin: we think about the past year and all the pain. We realize we didn't accomplish much of anything that we had wanted to do in the past year...

Stop.

Why do we focus on all that's so challenging and difficult when there is so much good around us?

I can hear a few cynical snickers about how I am getting married and how can I not only see the good right now?

Not quite: life is always challenging no matter what good is happening. And I know what it's like to be struggling especially during the holidays when I've spent them single, without a secure relationship.

There is much to be thankful for no matter what our challenges are. Look around you and see the beauty in the day, even the rain here in New Mexico today (because we need the rain as always!). What each of us has in our lives to be grateful for will be different because we all have unique lives. 

Each morning make a list of as many things as you can think of that you are grateful for. And then do it every morning after. Try to write them down if you can because when you're in a difficult place you can reflect back on them and retrain your brain to keep the positive thoughts.

Thinking about the good makes us feel stronger, gives us more peace, and helps us feel hopeful. Think of it this way: no matter what you're going through, there is always a small fire burning inside you. It's your goal to remind yourself that the fire is still burning. How will you do it?

Chaco's Sunset

Chaco wasn't supposed to be my dog.

When we adopted him on New Year's Day 2003, it was because my then-husband needed to quit smoking and start exercising. As I stood in line at the store the following day with a box of Nicoderm and dog treats at the checkout stand, I had to laugh at the dichotomy of what I was buying. 

Quickly it became apparent that Joe wasn't going to walk Chaco and so after my three-mile morning run, I started to take Chaco to the park a few blocks from our house for a what started as walk (mostly because he was really depressed those first few weeks with us– we don't know what happened in his prior life but he had a chip and no one responded when they were contacted and he had been found eating out of a garbage can on the University of New Mexico campus) but eventually it turned into a run where he pulled me along. My life was transformed after that.

I couldn't have known in that January all that was ahead of me: the crash by a drunk driver that August that would alter everything when Joe would get a brain injury, my foray into doctoral work and Chaco's inspiration that people must be helped by their dogs after the death of a human loved one, the addition of several more dogs, the publication of my book Ginger's Gift: Hope and Healing Through Dog Companionship that was largely inspired by the road Chaco led me on when he became part of our family, the death of my dad, the trips around country and the world educating people about suicide and suicide grief, the addition of the swimming pool and then the remodel of most of the house, my holding everything together while Joe struggled to function and work, the eventual divorce, the move back to Illinois that split Chaco and Gidget from Nestle and Hattie, the move back to Albuquerque that brought the dogs together, the deaths of Daisy and then Gidget, the death of mom, the addition of Lilly after the death of Gidget earlier this year and, of course, in the midst of this, the addition of Greg into our lives.

Chaco changed me in ways I never could have predicted. I was not a dog person. I always tell the story that the Linn Family joke about Karen's dog Chaos was, "Will Michelle ever pet the dog?" But when Chaco came into my life, everything as different. We took him to Texas several times and then up to Minnesota, making him more traveled that many Americans with all the states he visited, and just about every morning for the past fourteen years– as long as I was home– he got either a run or a run-walk and later just a walk. The morning he died he went for his walk. He whined until he got outside and felt at home leading the way to the park each day.

For all those years when I was holding the household together with very little tape, every morning when Chaco and I would go out for a run-walk, I could see the hope as the sun started to come up over the mountains. I always felt like, no matter how challenging life was, it was as if the day before had been hosed off and there was a new day starting. I began to pray during my time with Chaco, mostly because it was usually some of the most uninterrupted time of my day (although because of Chaco I also became a bigger member of the park community– suddenly people who didn't talk to me before, started to talk to me, because of my handsome dog of course).

In Naperville, we ran along the river, including through the fresh snow in the winter. Chaco chased squirrels up trees and watched them for hours. He laid by the pool– right back in his old spot– when we moved back to Albuquerque. He was quiet, he asked for very little. He slept at the foot of the stairs and, as my former husband said, with one eye open to make sure no one could get to me. 

And last December we nearly lost him until the vet told me it wasn't time yet. With a pair of socks for his back legs to keep him from slipping and what I jokingly call a magic powder, I made sure that every night I told him I loved him and that I was glad he was my dog, before I went to bed in case he died during the night. I didn't want any regrets about the life that we shared.

But on Saturday the deterioration was coming quickly; he was standing sideways. The vet said it was the right time, that the muscle mass on his hips was wasting away. He could bounce back but it wasn't going to get better. 

Chaco's journey with me was finished. He traveled through so many events with me but now with Lilly and Greg along for the ride (and with Hattie, too- Nestle resides with her "real" dad), he knew he could move on, surely greeted by Mom, Dad, Gidget, and Daisy in heaven.

And he made sure about six weeks ago he had one last hurrah before the cold weather set in: while he always laid by the pool, he never ever ever ever ever ever wanted to get in it. I have photos of him clinging to my former husband, freaked out as Joe tried to carry him in the water. Chaco would swim in a lake or a river or even go for a ride in a boat but he could never grasp the concept of the pool.

One evening as twilight was settling in, Greg and I heard some whining. We both figured he had fallen and couldn't get up as that was happening more and more. But when we couldn't find him, we went outside to see him swimming laps in the pool.

We never knew if he fell in on accident or on purpose but he looked happy and didn't want to come to the edge where Greg was calling him (somewhat of a futile attempt because Chaco was deaf by then). The weight of his back hips that were failing him fell off in the water (although he was still wearing his socks).

And for one time, at nearly sixteen years old, Chaco got his swim. The road was complete, the time to move on looming.

He went quietly, his snout on my leg Saturday morning. No more pain, no more pacing, no more looking like he couldn't remember what he had done five minutes before. No more back legs failing him. Freedom with all those who have gone before him. And me left with the memories of a life that hasn't been the same since he came around that corner on New Year's Day and entered my life.

The Swimsuit

The plan had been to start making swimsuits. I just thought I had bit more time to learn my new serger before I tackled my first one. However, my friend Veronica was leaving on vacation at the end of July (to the beaches of California, no less) and she needed a suit. I wasn’t going to say no to the opportunity to create something for my friend, especially because it was a chance for me to start making them.

But I didn’t really consider what a daunting challenge I had in front of me. What didn’t scare me was that I knew my mom had created one for my older sister Karen in the 1970s– one that lasted Karen quite a long time– and Mom had done it on the same Bernina sewing machine that I am using.

We bought a serger for me in Late May but with two trips in June, I haven’t had much of a chance to use it. I would need to make Veronica’s swimsuit on the Bernina with lots of zig zag stitches.

Taking her measurements, the pattern, the notions, and the fabric she picked in hand, I realized what a daunting task I had in front of me. I couldn’t do it alone.

Often in the past I have written about my struggle to be the competitive runner I was supposed to be. I often joke that in high school God and I broke up- an unanswered prayer in eighth grade regarding my dad’s job situation left me not believing in God. I thought I had to do everything on my own.

But several weeks ago as I watched the Olympic trials, particularly track and field, many of the runners talked about how much God helped them.

If I was going to make a swimsuit, not only would I need to channel my mom but I’d need God’s help, too.

Sewing knits– which tend to slide all over the place– is tricky. Getting the needle and thread to behave on the knits can be perilous, too. I allowed myself hours at a time. Just in case. And prayed a lot, often shaking as I sat down, unsure how I could truly make Veronica’s measurements match a pattern that was confusing (my friend Bonnie often called pattern instructions “destructions” because of the chaos they cause). It also made me realize why women hate buying swimsuits. No one’s measurements are the same. How can we be standardized when our bodies are so unique? And I know this from trying on all the clothes that I do– how much doesn’t fit right because of my short frame.

With the seams sewn together but nothing else, Veronica came by and was happy with the fit. It looked great but I was mostly concerned that it felt good. I didn’t want to create something she would never wear.

And when the suit was finished, truly looking like a swimsuit, I felt like I’d survived a final exam and needed a nap. When she put it on, not only was it a perfect fit, but she was happy and comfortable. Excited is a better word.

It wasn’t beginners luck as I attribute some of my successful to the binkini bottom I made in January that taught me some elastic lessons, but rather it was taking the time and letting go, asking for help in a way it took me a long time to comprehend.