Spring healing.

from gardenblog.projo.com

Last day of Poem a Day therapy for me over at Robert Lee Brewer's Poetic Asides blog. The prompt: write a fade-away poem.

My offering:

FADE

I’m drawn outside
by the
first lilac on my tree
knowing
you’ll never see
leaving me to
rock and keen
the sudden
loss of you
Spring’s early heat
wraps its arms
around me
enfolds
like a mama holds
her child,
kissing my face
soothe
soothe
here now
here now
e
v
a
p
o
r
a
t
i
n
g
my
tears

Sincere grief.



attributed to The New Yorker

TODAY, day 29 in Robert Lee Brewer's Poem a Day Challenge, the prompt is to take a line or image from one of our earlier poems and write a new poem around that.

Since i've been using it as free therapy, i decided to do my poem based on the 5 stages of grief found here, pulling lines from different poems during the different stages i've tracked my muddy footprints through over the past month. Again, therapeutic! i highly recommend it.

i make no claims of great eloquence, but i can guarantee the sincerity of my writing, so that counts for something, right?


STAGES

But I just talked to you days ago
and you’re so present within these walls
I can’t believe I’ll never hear your voice again
if our parents weren’t already ashes
I would burn them to the ground
I can’t stand the wounds they caused you to live with
and if I could just rewind my life
I’d call the day before--
your being gone severely messes with my head
and I don’t know just how I’ll make it
I don’t know how I’ll survive
I’m leaking gravity, and I may just blow away…
and I’m waiting for acceptance
though it hasn’t shown up yet
it’s an aching pain, I’ll miss you quite a lot.

Poetic therapy, day 28.

photo borrowed from uk-telephones.com

Day 28 of the Poem a Day Challenge on Robert Lee Brewer's Poetic Asides blog. The prompt today:
write a problem poem. The poem could be about a problem the narrator is suffering through, or someone else’s problem. Or a math problem.


RAW

 and it’s been forty-nine days of
waking up remembering
you’re really gone and that
not having you on the planet is
severely messing with my head
and today I let the dogs out and
made some coffee
before I remembered I can’t call
you on the phone today but
it was a whole twenty minutes
this morning
a whole twenty minutes before
the empty space spoke up
and I don’t know if that’s a problem
I should be facing or if
maybe just a tiny bit of rawness
in me
is healing

Grief as an animal.

borrowed from mml.org

Poem a Day therapy from Robert Lee Brewer's Poetic Asides blog
prompt for day 26: write an animal poem.

UNPREDICTABLE

it’s a different sort of animal
this grief in me
it’s an elephant in this waiting room of me
that others with their magazines
look down hard so as to avoid eye contact
until the elephant becomes
a feral cat
all sharp edges hard to contain
leaving people scrambling
from
this grief in me


Skimmer's Recap: julie finds grief a curious animal, prone to sneaking up on one from behind.

My maximum sport enjoyment.

Day 25 of Robert Lee Brewer's Poem a Day April Challenge:

write a poem about a sport.

photo borrowed from Wikipedia.

DUSTY SUMMER BASEBALL


my brother played baseball at the park up the street
dusty boys in the summer heat
I loved when he played those Little League games
never found anything quite the same
this little sister with my grubby toes
barefoot girl as often as I chose
running to the diamond in the middle of the grass
waving at big brother as i'd dance past
my brother played baseball at the park up the street
dusty boys in the summer heat
with me on the bleachers wiggling my toes
and keeping cool with my red sno-cone

dusty days in the summer heat
never found a way it could be beat…


Skimmer's Recap: i'm all about the sno-cones. Not so much about the sport.

Poetry Prompt Promptly Posted. (say that 3 times fast.)

Robert Lee Brewer Poetic Asides blog, Poem a Day Challenge.

For today’s prompt, write a morning poem. The poem can be about the morning, take place during the morning, or however you want to work the morning in.

photo at Sunset Hills mortuary borrowed from daughter Cori.

MOURNING.


it’s a white morning in nearly Spring

 the trees are black more than they’re green

 in contrast set against the sky

 as snow is falling

fast



we pause as birds ready to fly

 we’ve left you in the hands of God

and grief-trained hosts at the mortuary

 my dove heart beating

fast



biting my tears I turn to see

him gazing at the scenery

 pain and joy both cross his face

 “She would have loved this,” he says,

 “the snow,

the contrast”



He smiles. 


***********
ANOTHER MORNING POEM.


and I wake

“I was running a race in my dream,” I said.

“No wonder I’m always still tired in the morning.”

More Poetic Therapy.

More of my take on the Poem a Day prompts at Robert Lee Brewer's poetry blog at http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/poetic-asides

If you're looking for light and laughter, today's not the best day to visit here, so just click on somewhere else in blogland and check back with me another time. :-)

April 21, 2012

For today’s prompt, write an under the microscope poem. By that, the poem could be about something actually under the microscope–like single-cell organisms or leaves–or it could be more like “being under the microscope” in other people’s eyes.

(not enough) OXYGEN

I pinned the carcass in the wax-filled box
nose wrinkled, averse to killing even a bug
eighth grade project, doing the minimum for the grade
having seen enough death in our home
enough decay in the demise of hope
enough to steal a small girl’s smile
to keep us captured for a while
till you led us to be set free

but things meant for harm just made us seek
a different way to be so we
turned our backs on imprisoned breath
no more holding back instead we’d give
oxygen to those we loved

I carried the pictures to the funeral home
clenched teeth hard against my trembling lips
one more project of specimens gleaned
from your twenty photo books
where you kept the cards and memories
of those you loved and who loved you back
I chose the most of you and he
who found your smile again
but I love the one of you and me
sitting on the steps when I was three
two girls back when our lives were new
and I wish I could be your oxygen
and have you and not just
photo specimens.

***********

April 22, 2012

For today’s prompt, write a judging poem. This is a poem that could be judging others, or it is a poem being judged. I realize there is the opportunity for feelings to get hurt with this poem–so please be mindful of language, subject matter, and personal attacks.

 MISSING HOME.

I judge myself for living on
when you so recently have gone
I judge myself for taking breath
when yours is silenced now in death
I judge myself for staying home
for not just picking up the phone
that Friday when I never knew
I’d not again be seeing you
I judge myself for having health
for being strong, for illness’ stealth
taking you and not myself
I judge myself I judge myself
I judge the way I’ll never hear
your laughter smiling in my ear
I judge the way you’ll never know
you were my lighthouse
always
guiding me
home.



Skimmer's Recap: just missing my sister.

When food takes itself too seriously.

from LAWeekly.com

Today's blog post is brought to you by "Just for Fun".....and the number 18.

Today's prompt from Robert Lee Brewer's Poem a Day challenge was to think of a favorite regional cuisine and write a poem about it. i chose to write about an experience we had back in the 80s. Though this wasn't my favorite meal by any means, it was one of the funniest.


CALIFORNIA CUISINE

 My first introduction to this cuisine
came courtesy of a birthday dream
this special one, allowed to choose,
picked “California Cuisine.”

We read through the menu, we celebrators,
traded our thoughts, ordered our dinners
hungry for this singular treat
of California Cuisine.

We chattered and laughed while we waited
smiling as we anticipated
this new delight unknown to us
called California Cuisine.

Our food appeared on expansive plates
we all looked down--we’d sealed our fates--
my husband gazed at three lone spears
of green California Cuisine.

The asparagus lay in a precise way
across from two mouthfuls of entrée
we all looked up at each other’s reactions
to California Cuisine.

We looked from plate to plate in wonder
I tried not to laugh (it’s a social blunder)
but couldn’t stop when my husband said

“How ‘bout we stop for burgers on the way home?”

No more California Cuisine.


Skimmer's Recap: if you can't laugh WITH your food, laugh AT it.

Poetic Therapy.

On the Writer's Digest website, Robert Lee Brewer has a blog called "Poetic Asides." Each April for the past several years he has run a Poem A Day challenge with a different theme challenge for each day. It's pretty fun to read, pretty fun to do. This year i've dubbed it "PAD Therapy" and i've been writing all my poems dealing with my birth family and recent loss of my sister Patti. Who says you shouldn't enjoy at least part of the grieving process?

The challenge for today was to write either a science fiction poem or a fantasy poem. This was my take on it.

JUST TWO GIRLS.

In a morning garden
we meet near the climbing roses
that caress a fountain
of cement gray.
We stroll the winding path
down the hill to a small café
we love to chatter at
next to the sea,
and sit raising our faces
letting the sun embrace our skin,
just two girls bathing in
an ocean breeze.


Op’ning my eyes I see
the room around me, my aged hands
and say goodbye for now
my sister-friend,
happy to have a place
we can go walking, and laugh again
because I miss you so
with my eyes open....

3 Weeks A.P. (After Patti.)

I have an odd feeling of my life being on "pause." That while all around me things are going on same as usual, I am stuck in the realization that the activities and interests I cared about on March 9th suddenly meant nothing on March 10th, the day my sister died.

I've always been one to love projects--at least the idea and planning of projects--and books and yarn and ice cream with friends and going out to coffee. But right now I'm stuck. Stuck in the space in my head and heart that knew Patti as a constant.  But now, the constant of my sister and our shared history and inside jokes is the rug pulled from under my feet. And I'm stuck, trying to keep my balance, Keystone Cops style.

I know eventually I'll find equilibrium. I know that eventually I'll care again about books and yarn and starting a new project before I've finished the last one.

I know eventually I will smile when I see a beautiful landscape she would have loved to photograph, and to laugh when daughter Cori (who Patti seems to have imprinted her attitude on at birth) makes a snarky remark that channels her aunt.

And I know I'm missing her this much because I had her in my life. Our father gave that up when he chose to molest her throughout her childhood. Our mother gave that up when she couldn't accept any of her children unless they agreed with every last thought of hers.  Our missing brother Michael gave that up when he turned his back on us some 23 years ago.

And once again, in the land of my birth family, it's been their loss.

So I'm kind of privileged to be missing her this much, because

*****I have much to miss.*****

Miller kids, left to right: Julie (me,) Michael, Patti

Skimmer's Recap: Missing Patti = "Good Grief."  
I'd like to thank my Mental Health Care Professionals, my family and my friends, for helping me be at least as stable as I currently am. :-)

Taking care of business (everyday.)

As much as I'd like "self-care" to look like me and a big ol' bag of Lay's Barbecue chips with a side of cheesecake, I've learned much over the past years about what real, healthy self-care looks like.

I've worked on the mental/emotional part of it over the last decade, and the physical part over the last year. I'm learning to make better choices, to be aware of when my idea of self-care looks more like shooting myself in the foot. Don't think I've got it all straightened out with perfect self-discipline, oh no. I've even had some barbecue chips, just not the whole bag. I've had an ice-cream sundae, I just had a smaller one. And not every day. (Honestly, I've never been prone to huge binges, just lots of little bad choices that add up!) And the big part:

I went back to the gym this morning for the first time since my sister died on March 10th. I decided to show up for myself, for my health. It was tough, I haven't wanted to go out much the last couple of weeks. I feel a little helpless and a little hopeful on this whole grief thing; helpless because I don't know what to do or think about it, and hopeful because I know in time the blow will soften.

And meanwhile, I'll be taking care of myself, in a more positive way.

Good Grief.

The Miller siblings 1956, left to right: Julie (me), Mike, Patti

i like to call it "clean grief." That's the best way i can describe it. A grief uncluttered. A purity of "i miss her" with no complications.

Not that i mean it's an easy grief, for grief to me will always be painful, hitting me out of the blue, taking me to the mat hard at the least provocation.

But with my sister...i just miss her. i miss the reality of never hearing her voice again, or seeing her face, never again sharing a laugh caused by her off-beat, cynical sense of humor. i miss the thought of sharing the good memories of the time i spent with her in the Colorado Rockies. i miss being able to ask questions about our childhood of things i only remember on an emotional, fearful level.

 i miss. i miss.

With other relatives who have died, there have always been the wrappings of the dysfunctional family we were born into: the packaging of accusations that we had not-done-right-by or enough-for the now deceased relative, the bow tied with a flourish usually the pronouncement that We Were Lacking. Guilt, my family loved them some guilt.

With Patti, my only sister (and the only sibling left to me after our brother also decided We Were Lacking and left with no forwarding address back in 1989,) i see no gift wrap of Not Good Enough. She loved me like no one else in my birth family had: without condition. It was a New! Improved! way of relating in our birth family. We had changed things for the better within our gene pool.

That change makes it hard to say goodbye. There is so much Goodness to miss. But at least it's a New! Improved! grief, an uncomplicated grief, untouched by large servings of guilt. My only regret? That i will never again be able to tell her "i love you!" and hear her answer with a smile in her voice, "I love you more!"

i will miss.


Skimmer's Recap: i miss.

3 days A.P. (after Patti.)

How am I today, you ask? Oh, just your regular, everyday sort of devastated, thanks.

Remembering Patti.

When we were young i thought she was the pretty one and she thought i was the pretty one. As adults, when we talked on the phone after i said "i love you!" she would always say "I love you more!"

As young adults, she welcomed me into her home after i had left college and was at loose ends.

When my daughter was born, she stayed and took care of us, feeding the baby in the night so i could sleep, doing our laundry, making my bed each day so it felt fresh when i got back in. We tried every new outfit on the baby like she was a doll.

When our mother had her lawyer send me a letter after her death to tell me what a disappointment i'd been, (though i was the last of her 3 children still speaking to her) my sister helped me through the pain, having made peace years before with the knowledge that our mother could never be pleased.

She loved hard.

She had a wicked sense of humor and could always make me let out a big ol' belly laugh.

i will always remember Patti Miller Woodard, gone at just 62 on March 10, 2012.

i can't believe i'll never hear her voice again.



i love you, Sissypoo, always and forever. <3

Life by the Numbers.

< imagine funny cartoon about numbers here because

 i couldn't find one. numbers just aren't that funny. >

I've long had a love/hate relationship with numbers. I don't love math, but I love that my birthday is 9/9. I was a giggling (old) girl about my 09/09/09 birthday. People just looked at me when I mentioned it with that half smile/half quizzical "not sure what you want me to say" expression.

 My British son-in-law and I have spent an exceeding (Brit-word alert!) amount of time during the birth of each of his children trying to add up the date numbers to come out as an even number (his favorite) or odd (mine.)

 I can remember important points in my life by the number of my weight at the time: my wedding (down 20 because of my nerves,) or just before the birth of my daughter (roughly the size, shape and weight of a dirigible.)

And driver's licenses. How many lies have I told filling out that form over the years? I've always tried to stay in the believable ballpark, not wanting to risk the raised eyebrow of the store clerk reading my I.D.

And there have been more numbers since December, since I've been using MyFitnessPal.com to count calories. I've learned things that cause my blood to run cold, like the calorie count of a Costco cookie (230) or Costco's Cinnabons (over 500, for cryin' in a bucket!) And I've learned just how much time I need to spend on the treadmill to warrant having that super buttery, yummy pasta dish my daughter Cori makes (a lot. But so worth it.)

SO: between my Year Of The Gym and starting MyFitnessPal, I've lost enough weight that, get this, I WEIGH LESS THAN THE NUMBER ON MY DRIVER'S LICENSE! I hate to say it, but this is probably the first time. Ever.

I'll probably never turn into someone who does Trigonometry for fun, but I'm definitely feelin' a little more love for the numbers these days.


Skimmer's Recap: For once in my life my license weight is a lie. In a good way. (Thanks, Sabrina, for introducing me to MFP.)

On depression and the magic of cupcake papers.

What is so magical about these little cupcake liners? Maybe it's that they look like little sunshines. Or that cupcakes usually mean some fun is around the corner. All I know is that as I've been fighting my way back uphill out of depression-land, seeing them made me smile.

I know I'm hard on myself--I don't "do" enough, whatever it is. You know: work out/eat salads/cut out chocolate/contribute to life... And I find that I can't seem to forgive myself for having Fibromyalgia and being "less than" because of that too.

BUT--tonight is a fun and special night. Granddaughter Cassidy turned 12 yesterday, and tonight her mommy, my eldest daughter, is bringing dinner over and we're having cupcakes for Cassidy's birthday. Candie's making her awesome 90 gazillion calories per serving macaroni and cheese, and I'm making a salad--and the all-important cupcakes.

If you're not familiar with depression, it has the talent of robbing a person of their interest in life, their desire to do the things they'd usually enjoy, so couple that with the lack of energy and the body pain of Fibro and life can become a struggle. So it surprised me when I found myself smiling over such a simple little thing as cupcake papers with their crinkly little sides. It was a lovely little gift.

It's good for all of us to look for the happy little positive things of life, they called it "intentional happiness" in my pain management class. All I know is I had to put a picture of them on my blog and see if they make you smile too.

Under the heading "Things i've never thought of."

Hubby had to change out the toilet. This was on the box.

Huh. Good to know.

January in my little corner of California.

Last week I went for a walk in the neighborhood. I saw gorgeous citrus growing,



but there were still plenty of red leaves that hadn't yet fallen

and roses in bloom!

And not even two weeks after Christmas.  

Oh well.

I tried. I really did. I tried to clear myself of Cymbalta and live a more naturally medicated life. But today, somehow fittingly on the 11th anniversary of the death of my mother, I embraced the fact that it isn't working. Maybe some would say I didn't give the 5 HTP a long enough chance, or that I lack the strength of character to somehow "tough it out." But they don't have to live in my head and my body.

The moments I've been able to step back and observe and assess myself, I've seen signs that point to the return of depression: lack of interest in things I'd normally be interested in, daily anxiety about every little thing of life, more difficulty than the usual "not a morning person" experiences getting going with the day, feeling chronically overwhelmed. And there's enough "chronic" in fibromyalgia to contend with. All these things have increased over the past few weeks. My trainer at the gym says I've remained more stiff off the Cymbalta, so apparently it really does do some good for the physical aspects of fibromyalgia. At any rate, my experiment has come to an end. I survived the withdrawals only to be unable to survive the absence of the drug in my system. But, "quality of life" being what it is, I choose to once again embrace my need for Better Living Through Pharmaceuticals.

Hopefully I will soon feel more hopeful and less anxious. I mean seriously, I have been anxious about eating, about cooking, about shopping, about every ridiculously small thing! Even my fatigue seems more pronounced to me, which (again) makes me anxious. *Sigh*

Time to move on and get some help for those synapses!

Trying to leave Overwhelmed Lane.

borrowed from LOL Zombie
http://lolzombie.com/2551/get-er-done-with-jesus/

What did I used to tell my kids when they needed to do a project that seemed overwhelming? Break it down.

Like I mentioned in my last post, I'm feeling mired in the Land of Too Much Information, stalled out on Overwhelmed Lane. What did I do yesterday? Let myself hunker down to picnic on aforementioned lane. What did I do today? Assessed my options, which seemed to me to be 1) let myself run screaming into the night, or 2) follow my own advice. Being chronically fatigued and inherently lazy made option 1, while appealing, seem like much too much effort, so I chose option 2.

Faced with too many supplements and medications at too many different times, I made myself a chart. I suppose I could take a page from my preschool teacher daughter and make a sticker chart where for every time I got the right pills taken at the proper time I get to put on a sticker of my choice. (This worked well to potty-train said preschool teacher daughter as well.) But instead I stuck with making the chart in pretty colors, something like this:

So now all I need to do is get about a half-dozen more of those old-lady-weekly-pill-holders, fill it, and I'm set! Oh, and then remember to take them!

Skimmer's Recap: Sometimes it's just baby steps, yunno?