My Dad's Back

When my back hurts, the best thing I can do is to keep moving.  It's part of Dad's legacy to me.  How easy it is for me to see Dad reaching up with his fingertips on the door frame, stretching those lower back muscles; or walking slowly with a slight limp; or reacting suddenly to a back spasm.  I picture those every time I find myself cautiously stretching my back, limping along, or gasping as a spasm rips through my lower back. 


It's what happens to me when I don't move.


This weekend I didn't move much.  Dad (Ed Esch, in case you didn't know) died unexpectedly last week, so on Sunday I found myself in a funeral home, receiving love and memories from hundreds of people whose lives he touched.  Four hours of standing takes its toll on a back, as do several hours of sitting in a van to and from churches, a funeral home, and a cemetery.


The cure for this pain?  Movement.  The more I keep moving, the better I feel.  I see some symbolism there, and I hope you do, too. 


On the crosstrainer this morning, my lower back moaned in protest but felt a whole lot better than it does after I've sat for five minutes.  I worked long and hard, and every now and then I'd take deep breaths in honor of my dad who couldn't do so.  I pulled the air into my lungs and imagined the oxygen moving through my body, healing me and keeping me alive.


My faulty lower back is a bittersweet reminder of a dad who loves me.  We're connected in our pain and in our determination to learn to cope with it, and not give in to it.

overcoming the judge

I could have given today entirely over to my inner judge, the one who looks at all the clutter in my life and sees failure; the one who condemns me for being involved in many activities; the one who criticizes my body, my skin, my hair, my teeth; the one who even threatens to spill over and poison those closest to me by paralyzing me with self-abuse.

My inner judge crept into my thoughts this morning.  I succumbed for a while, but then I remembered lessons I've learned.

Thank God and Kathryn and Carol for bringing don Miguel Ruiz into my life.  Ruiz helped me identify the judge - who it is, how it works - and gave me the power to recognize it and thereby to render it powerless.

I am no longer the victim of the judge.  I'm doing the best that I can, and in being aware of that and being proud of that, I silence the judge.  In silencing the judge I stop the self-abuse and I am alive again.
 
"We search for everything we believe we don’t have, not knowing that everything we are looking for is already inside us. We are born with it.

"God is life. God is life in action. The best way to say, "I love you, God," is to live your life doing your best."  don Miguel Ruiz

April 2, 2012

Dear Diary,

It's been almost a year since I quit attending Weight Watchers meetings.  I stopped attending meetings because finding time to attend meetings dropped down my priority list, I was annoyed by the company's pushing its line of processed foods, and I felt like I had all the knowledge I needed, and I could do it by myself.

Nearly a year later, I find that I've slipped back into bad habits, and I'm tempted to run back into the open arms of WW.  I know that I succeed with WW. 

I'm not going to do it though because 
  1.  WW demands more dollars than I can allocate (I can hear the leaders arguing "It's an investment in your health");
  2.  My time is still at a premium (leader: "You need to make yourself a priority, and attending meeting is important.  Members who attend meeting lose more weight and keep it off.")
  3.  (and this is the big one) At every WW meeting, WW leaders told me of all the people who quit the program, saying they could do it on their own, only to find they couldn't.

The facts are that my resources are limited, and the demands on them are high.  All the WW arguments make sense, and I cannot deny the success I achieved with WW.  It's a good program that helps many people. 

But now I need to go one step farther.  I need to be accountable to myself.

I want to prove that I can do it.

ME!

It'd have been so easy to go to sleep last night with a goal of sleeping soundly so that I could do everything everyone expects of me today.  Instead, I went to bed with the goal of waking up early.  I bet you know where this is going.  In an answer to my soul's request of the universe, my Friend agreed to meet me at the gym at 5:30 this morning.  I checked the clock at 3:30 and at 4:30, and finally got out of bed at 4:45.

When I arrived at the parking lot I was thinking about how very cold and dark it was outside.  Then I saw that my Friend was there, and I forgot about the cold and dark.

We chatted into the gym where we exercised and talked.

And when we were done, my Friend asked if I'd like to do this again tomorrow. Oddly enough, the answer is yes.  However, I asked her to please not call me if she wants to cancel; I'm still at the "I'll do it if you'll do it" phase.  I'm afraid that if she doesn't go, I won't.  I'd slip into "I need some rest so I can endure another day of doing what everyone else wants of me."

It's really hard to break the emotional chains of people pleasing.  I'm working on it though, and in the process I'm grateful for all my buddies & Friends who lead by example, lend me a shoulder, give me a kick in the pants, and journey with me.

PS: My goal for today is to eat healthy. I've even logged into my online tracker!

The Life of Karin

That's IT!

Ladies & Gentlemen, a lesson has worked its way through my skull.  Longtime readers may remember my Year of Karin: twelve months when I put myself first and was super cautious about volunteering.  During those months I was healthier than I'd been in a long time.

Since that Year of Karin ended in October, I've added a lot of weight to my frame.  First there was surgery recovery which derailed my workouts.  Then family, school, church, and community demands crept over me like ivy.  Add some holidays and cold weather, a verbalized UNrecognition and an unspoken lack of support for projects I'd taken on, along with the demands of my new venture; couple these with a recognition that my family -- my husband, my kids, me -- are getting the short end of the stick... even my clothes are turning up the pressure. 

Well, enough is enough.

I hereby declare the Life of Karin.

The world is on notice.  I'm going to be selfish, just like my counselor advised me all those months ago.  Other people can step up and volunteer.  If organizations can't run without me, then they won't run.  And the fact is, I'm pretty sure they can run without me.  I can't run around trying to save the whole world while killing myself; I need to work on my corner of the world, ' planting my own garden and decorating my own soul' (V. Shoftstall).

There will still be volunteering & community in my future -- but out of love and belief, not out of obligation.

Life's short, my time with my family grows shorter.

I'm not going to waste precious time.

Gifts, Part 2

Have you ever had someone take issue with your words?  Believe it or not, it's happened to me once or twice.  Shocking, I know.

The time about which I'm writing here concerns words I once wrote in this blog.  You're welcome to look them up, but for our purposes I'll be content with summing it up.  I had written something like "I shudder to think what people think of me..."  

A dear, wonderful, and loving Friend read that and wasn't about to let me get away with it.  She wasn't about to let me assign to the eyes and minds of others any ridicule of me.

And she went behind my back and asked people who know me to describe me.  And then a flick of her magic wand...

No, it wasn't as easy as that.  She carved out time from her very busy life with her very busy family at a very busy time of year, and invested that time, along with her talent and treasure, in me.  My own caretaker, my steward.

In the 12 Days of Christmas, she presented me with the fruits her labor.  Here it is:



What you're looking at is a print, a composite of words people used to describe me.  My friend tells me that the frequency with which the words were used correlates to the size of the font.  That means the words that jump out of the print are the words most often said about me.

Wow. 

I've been wanting for some time to publicly thank my Friend for everything this print stands for -- for all that went into it, and for all that it gives me on a daily basis.  When doubt or self-loathing creeps in, I grab this lifeline of love and pull myself out.

Thank you, my Friend.

Gifts

I'd like to say that I was tidying the basement this morning, but the fact is that I was doing the pre-tidy stuff: going through boxes of things I've shoved out of sight real quick! before company arrived.

Here's a picture of something I discovered.



I saw it, and I recognized it as something having to do with 50.  I asked myself, "Did someone give this to me when I turned 50?"  Since I'm only (wait, let me do the math...) 38 years old, that wasn't likely.

Then I remembered: Oh yeah!  I know what's in there:





Now don't go peein' your pants or planning to rob me: these aren't dubloons from a sunken chest.

These are 50 half-dollars.  If you took 'em to the grocery store, you could use them to purchase twenty-five dollars' worth of goodies.  These aren't hyper-valuable to the general population.

So why do I have them?  Why have I kept them, rather than spend them?

They were a gift from my sister, a way to congratulate me and commemorate my losing 50 pounds.  These coins are a symbol of her thoughtfulness, support, and love.  And my holding on to them is my holding on to her thoughtfulness, support, and love.

Uncovering my 50 half-dollars reminds me that I lost 50 pounds, have kept most of them off, and can lose the more than 50 pounds I still have to go.