Failure

Failure confronted and dealt with becomes a lesson.

I have learned never again to value myself less because someone else does not value me.  Motherhood and well-tended hearths have enormous value. 

By motherhood, I am not talking procreation, but the nourishment of minds and bodies that will take us all into the future. 

A big, fancy house is often cold and abandonned for lack of care.

Loving service on the behalf of another is beyond price and has value “beyond rubies” and ought to be held as such.  I am grateful to my mother and to her mother before her for furnishing this to me.

A mother is not an unpaid domestic servant; nor is a wife a domestic prostitute.

Divorce

My marriage is dissolving and I am asking myself what it means for my soul’s journey.  Most particularly it involves my promise to myself that this was it, THE relationship, THE man I would commit all my efforts, what I was as a person, to create life and to create a life. 

I have broken none of my vows, but what about the promise?   He does not like me.  He scorns me and he still tries to manipulate and dominate me.  I hope he will find someone who will take over his care, who will iron his sheets, warm his bead and feed him.  Someone who will care for him and for whom he will find it possible to care.

To him, I was a ‘difficult woman’, a ’stupid woman’.  He is better off without me and I do not repudiate him. 

It was me who wanted the children so badly.  It was me who believed in him as a young professional and who has continued on in the philosophy of loving care that he taught me.   In our marriage service I requested the readings:  the one from the old testament that honours a good woman “whose price is above rubies” and the one from Corinthians on the qualities of love:  love is not vain or puffed up.  This was the statement of my beliefs.  It was not the statement of his.

It is not hard to love someone.  It is difficult to overcome one’s barriers to love.  I have loved, and truly, a man whom I thought better than he believes himself to be.  I am a good wife.

Soothing the Savage Beast

Music hath such charms.  It sooths the soul and cools the brain.  It exults, it weeps, it plays.  It tames the emotions and transforms them to something of beauty.

I don’t care what they say, the purpose of art is to take the raw material of this life and create beauty.

Diving into Deep Water

The initial shock of hitting the water as far as the PSW course is concerned, has worn off and I feel like I have surfaced and am looking around at my situation.

The distance we have to go is moderate.  There are only seven weeks of class left if you subtract the time off at Christmas.  The information is coming together into a cohesive whole, concepts of observational attitude, understanding of the system as currently in place, and means of professional communication have already been set up creating a framework upon which we will create our behaviour in the field.

At the end of seven weeks, we will be in the field.  We will take what we are learning here, both from the book and from our experiences, onto the actual field of battle.  Ms. Tolley is our sergeant major, drilling us in our skills so that we can take our weapons of DIPPS onto the field of uncaring and ultimately win the day.

How can we love those in our care, if we do not learn to DIPPS each other?

D-dignity

I-independence

P-privacy

P-preferences

S-safety

Fear of Success

Success brings responsibility and we are all of us either denying responsibility or wrestling with it.  How much less stressful it is to merely accept it.

Accepting responsibility, from small to great, is what success is all about.  It is not the big car, the designer home or the status.  It is the very power of the mind to accept, prioritize, plan and execute.  True success empowers, sooths the heart and motivates one on to accept even greater responsibility, should it be offered.

Winter Thoughts and Thoughts of Winter

The cat us curled up on the back of the sofa, bathed in the soft light of the reading lamp and the Christmas lights surrounding the front window.  To my right, my little Christmas tree stands perched in a silver loving cup awaiting its garnish of ornaments.  A feeling of overwhelming peace and contentment wash over me as I sit safe, dry, warm and secure in my little home.  It is the beginning of the deep, dark winter, but the light has moved inside.  As with the warmth of Pushkin  kisses in icy air, so the warmth of my home increases with the cold of winter outside.

My body is rebelling against the winter, but the mind tends to fly at this time, forced by the long stretches of darkness to fall back in upon itself and seek itself as inspiration.  I look forward to the white days ahead when the world is changed utterly by a spread of snow.

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Change

Situations change.  Feelings can remain constant.  Whatever one’s situation, a person can remain happy at heart and maintain a joyful attitude toward life.  On the long surf of life, one can be at the top or bottom of the wave at any given time, but hanging ten continues.  Forget situation and enjoy the ride.

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