the answer is not that hard

As i slowly but steadily reclaim my old me i am wondering whether i will eventually find out who i am - a question most people ask themselves at times i am sure. Am i the mother of three or is that just a role i am fulfilling? By definition, i would say that being a mom is a job but also a destination. Except that now i dont know whether i would choose that destination again.a Thankfully, i dont have to waste a thought about that, since it is a fact. i am a mother. So apart from that, what else am i? What i like doing could be leading to finding an answer. Except i like doing a lot of things... like painting, photography, reading, writing.... the list is getting bigger every day. That's nice to see, that i have a lot of things that i enjoy doing. But it is the doing part that i am a bit worried. If i just sit still and not do anything then i quicikly run away from myself. Because i feel that by not doing anything i have nothing to offer to myself. That boredom with myself causes ED to get hyper and make me do... so i want to learn that it is okay to just be. I also know that the answer to who am i lies in accepting life at lifes terms and grow with every second. My friends, the buddhists always point to the fact that if i dont live that very second to the fullest than my life loses meaningful time... since the past is gone and the future not yet there. But boy oh boy living in the moment is hard. That means taking the boredom... taking the restlessness and not reacting to it. I would like to say that i am closer to finding out who i am but fact is i am not. I need help and i think help is to just accept that i dont know what to do with my life. Should i continue fulfilling my roles as mom, wife... and concentrate on finding joy in those tasks??? Yes, this is a sensible approach since it doesnt involve creating new roles ... and i can paint, take pictures, read at the same time. So this was an easy process - finding happiness in the known is far less risky and consumes less energy. And i can honestly say that i am a good mom. i try hard and always stay true to the kids. I apologize when i make mistakes i tell the kids that i love them for how they are not what they do, i hug them and i try to make their life nicer. More i cant offer.... but i guess looking at their development, i see 3 happy troopers, that cruise quite easily through life and dont have major problems facing life.

I did a good job, and will continue to do so, with renewed energy and motivation. I am grateful for the second chance that i was given by someone up there... thanks! I might not be able to answer the question who am i at the moment but i have options to go ahead and will cherish my role as a mom even more!

May all the mothers out there feel the same way about themselves and not critizize themselves too harshly! May all the ones out there that do not have the role as mothers know their role in life and be able to enjoy it!

How many tears are too many??? or Winnetou is right...

No, the subject of this blog is not a sad one... on the contrary, as i was shedding tears today i realized that it has been a long time- probably almost a year that i felt so sad and ironically that makes me happy. Why??? Part of my disease is the cutting of unnecessary energy and emotions like crying use energy. My body needed every morsel of energy for maintaing its functioning therefore i did no longer have any feelings of sadness. This is no longer the case and that means if i touch things that have happened in the past that i felt sad about or hurt i can now cry about them. No, i cant let go of the things of the past. not yet. but the day is near... and i just feel tired and emotionally drained today. not more not less.

I bought a little funny book today for my husband that has the title How would Winnetou have decided (Winnetou is the most famous movie-American Indian that Germany ever produced) and it contains little fairy tale type of stories about being succesful. And of course one chaper is entitled "Winnetous rule no 5 : Always try and help yourself." The short sentence that the reader is supposed to memorize is: If you are looking for a helping hand, look first at the end of your right arm. Now that is new to me. Arent all the self help books always telling me that in order to change behaviour i have to learn how to ask others for help??? Both is true, but i like the aspect that Winnetou states that no problem can be solved solely by relying on the big manitoo (AKA God, Buddha....) entirely. For self centred people like me i like being helped and yell at them for treating me like a needy person.. so i want to visualize me having a right hand and a manitoo and then.... i smile and think YES WE CAN!!!

the places you will go (again)

i just learned something today.... it is never too late to start anew.. yes i know this is a fact but one thing is to know that intellectually another thing is to feel it. I was strolling around outside today and all of a sudden i became aware that i have been given the fantastic opportunity to redifine myself completely. I can now grab life by its horns and become a new me. Correctly spoken i would even say i have the chance to become a me since i was entirely defining myself before based on my achievements and/or looks. Now i feel a lot more vulnerable but i am not as scared of that anymore. I am ready to face my past in a way that i can feel past wounds but then to accept them as being part of the past. I dont know what the future brings but i know that all i really can live is this moment, and i love this moment. i would even go as far as to laugh about myself because today again, my short term memory loss has led me to forget a bag with something somwhere. now i can go back tomorrow to the same shops trying to find it.... how fun is that to revisit the past.... hahah.

May you be less forgetful but just as optimistic as i have been today!

Real power

Today, i just would like to share a quote i found in o magazine: Real power is usually unspectacular a simple setting aside of fear that allows the free flow of love. But it changes everything."

Not only do i really think it is true... i also firmly believe that this is one of the most important lessons in life. When i think of people i admire because of their power then it is people like oprah winfrey, but also small town heros like my best friend who fights her disease every day. I admire everybody where i can see a quest for life that is shaped by being cuious and brave. To be brave is something that empowers (once you actually dare to....) me very much.

May you all be brave today and like me change a little thing....

wherever you go there you are...

it is sunday morning and i have a story on my heart. i woke up very early this morning and decided to not get up but instead to listen to an audiobook with the great title "wherever you go there you are" by one of my favorite teachers Jon Kabat Zinn. he is the founder of the stress reduction clinic in Boston and a world leader in the field of meditatiion and its benefits for body and mind. Anyways, go read or listen to the book if you want to find out more about him. As i was listening i fell back asleep probably after half an hour. When i woke up i had to laugh that a book like this is soooo boring that i fall asleep. then i rewound and thought well, meditation is about knowing who and where and what you are and to be ok with that. To fall back asleep could then be interpreted as "at ease and content with herself, therefore back to sleep". This thought is a good one for me because it has been a long time since i felt at ease. Then another thought, a vicious one , entered my mind - meditation doesnt help you and you will never learn it... so i dont know why you are even listening to the thing..." Bad thought, not helpful.

Meditation has been hard for me but there have been times in my life where i benefited from it. The mere conscious making effort of eg when you take a walk, how you walk, how your feet step in front of each other, and then going more and more into details, (eg my right foot starts walking by attaching the heel to the floor, then i can feel my sole of my foot getting into contact with the earth, then my small toe... )leads in my case to me not only slowing down my walk but also to all of a sudden feel more, for example the coldness on my face... and i am then getting really focused. After approx. 5 min of doing this, and believe me it has been sooo hard not to get distracted or if distracted to just let the thought go and start again.... , i usually have forgotten worrisome thoughts or dangerous comments from my disease.

Yet this morning instead of "achieving" another level in the book, i fell asleep. And I am happy with the fact that meditation this morning was a great idea because i could sleep another 2 hours happily. And think it is funy too...

Hard to stay focused

No, i am not writing something negative this morning. I am no longer allowing the myriad of negative thoughts that run through my brain roads to dominate me. The title is just a mindfulness exercise. I am writing something and immediately, i attribute things with it. I write the fact that sometimes it is hard to stay focused. The closet of "you will never make it" or "you used to be so much better at that" or even "if you did this and that it wouldnt be so hard but..." opens. But i read in a mindfulness exercise that there is another closet availabel that you open you put the thought in and you close it. And you go on. Some, including me have no problem in having a lot of available closets for comfortable, pleasing thoughts (which ironically translates in my case into self destructive thoughts because they feel familiar to me) but if it comes to uncomfortable, things, i label them soooooo soon. Yet it is just a thought. One of 60000 a day. Nothing spectacular, nothing special. A thought. Just a thought. So i feel more at peace knowing that it is hard to focus sometimes and that is neither good nor bad it just is. I am curious to find out what other thoughts are going to pop up in my brain today and i am ready to let them go and not holding on to them, trying to figure out in what closet i should put them.
May you have a lot of empty closets that close easily available today.

true power

hi,
i was listening to an american author this morning who mentioned the following quote" if you want to feel empowerede, use your power". I observed my reaction to this. First i thought critically: well, thats one of those typical housewife-in-mind quotes.. then i paused. Because i had caught myself once again in the trap of labeling ... so i pressed the rewind button for my brain (believe me there is one, just hard to find...) and listened to the words again. This time i noticed that i didnt like the quote. Why??? Because it tells you that everybody has some power in himself no matter how powerless he or she might feel. That statement is nice. But not for me. Because at the moment i am working hard on recreating (or creating....) a self esteem that is not based on outside achievements, image or results but on finding my true inner worth and this quotes addresses some of my issues. In my sick world my self esteem has been based on the pillars of pleasing others to get love, ED, and producing results. The pillar of ED replaced such important issues like self acceptance, social confidence.... and i did not notice it at all!!! so being the impulsive me, i said i was going to tear the ED pillar to pieces, with so much anger i intended to make dust out of him. Guess what, i was told and believe it that this doesnt work that way, at the moment, ED has maybe a crack in the pillar but not more... and it will be a long time before some of the pillar can be blown up. And only if I find oother pillars that i will be able to strengthen. One of the most difficult for me will be self acceptance. There i could use some empowerment. And then this quote is telling me that the power lies already within me - Where is it??? I have no idea. And this doesnt feel good. So that is why i dont like the quote But....#
it is a truly inspiring quote since it implies that even though i dont know where the power is (maybe in my toes.....) i will be able to boost my power level once i found it. Or maybe i dont even have to find it and just wait to feel it.
I hope all of you out there are able to identify their power source and are able to use it today.