Nanopoblano 2023 Day 24: Post Thanksgiving

Yesterday was a lot.

Almost three hours in the car with my 30 year old, D, driving. I have driving anxiety and, essentially PTSD from being in the car with a road rager for over 18 years. D’s driving terrifies me.

It was a lot of people: D’s housemates, one of the housemate’s dad, all four of D’s kids: 3, 6, 8, & 9 (it was the 6 year old’s birthday), my eldest, and my youngest. Including myself, there were 11 of us and a dog underfoot. Apparently the cats were in hiding.

It was a lot of food: deviled eggs, homemade cinnamon rolls, ham on the bone, mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes with AND without marshmallows, garlic green beans (fresh), homemade dinner rolls, blueberry crumble with AND without nuts, birthday cake, and ice cream…and champagne.

It was the first family holiday I’ve had with all my kids and grandkids together. It was the first family holiday that wasn’t filled with conflict and tension due to bad romantic partners. It definitely had its moments and I know my adult children felt more stress and tension than I did overall. But it was the best holiday we’ve had together.

My youngest and I got to stay at the local Hampton Inn last night and have their complimentary breakfast this morning. Then my oldest, J, drove me and my youngest home. It started off badly because they were out of data and we used the map app on my phone…which I forgot was set to avoid highways. Set us back an hour and eventually was compounded by post-holiday traffic to cause J to get home 3-4 hours late.

N, my youngest, and I watched the movie, Leo, when we got home. Then I went to my room and got buried under the kitty.

All in all, life is good for me, for this moment in time. I’m grateful.

Nanopoblano 2023 Day 23: Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving. If you gather with family and friends today, I hope it is as conflict and friction free as possible. I hope the charcuterie boards and chips bowls contain your favorites, that the turkey is moist and that the rest of the meal be flavorful, safe, and texturally pleasing.

If you’re alone and don’t want to be, I see you. I know how painful it can be to be isolated and lonely in general and more so on holidays. Please hang in there. I hope you find people to spend time with and good food to share with them.

For those who are caught up in danger, violence, grief, and displacement, I’m sorry for your heart, your trauma, and your loss. I hope kindness, provision, and safety find you.

Nanopoblano 2023 Day 22: True Love, a poem

I’ve mentioned before that on Tuesday nights, I participate in an online, open to the public, zoom co-writing group. The host, Clive Matson (author of Let the Crazy Child Write!)*, calls it 2 Busy 2 Write. We gather, read poems as prompts, and then write for an hour. After the hour is over, we come back together and talk about how the writing went. Those who feel comfortable can share what they wrote and the others get to talk about what they liked about what the writer shared.

There’s a process he offers for people to get connected to their creative subconscious and quiet the inner critic. I told him I was doing this blog and that I hadn’t shared the details of his process and he gave me full permission to share.

It’s a four-step process.

  1. Write down words or phrases that capture your attention from the prompts being read
  2. Once you’ve collected 8, 10, 12, or however many, you write a sentence for each one. The sentences are independent of each other.
  3. Select the sentence that has the biggest “buzz” for you.
  4. Decide if it’s the topic, beginning, end, or somewhere in the middle of what you’re going to write.

This is the recommended process. However, there is no wrong way to do the writing prompts. The point is to write.

Last night I collected quite a few prompts and got a decent poem out of it. Here are the prompts I got from the poems that were read: Slender, Jade, Coral, Celestial, Flowers, Valley, Cryptic, Promised heart, Love what it loves, Clear pebbles of the rain, Harsh and exciting, Glimmered, Light of the fire, Songs of disappointment and love, Dismayed by the fire’s ferocity, Black tulips in my heart, Embraced wandering and hunger, Canvas of lightning, Sing for joy, Wine and rainbows, Convex shields, Rapacious 

Here’s what I came up with:

True Love

How can true love be rapacious

aggressive, greedy, and grasping

How can true love leave its object

Dismayed, weeping, and gasping

Truly passionate love burns brightly

Warm, glimmering, and exciting

Singing of wine and rainbows

Loving what it loves, not slighting

The first sings of disappointment,

Wandering, harshness, and hunger

The second sings for joy

Leaving one feeling younger

The heart is a convex canvas

Cupping the ferocious dark

Or releasing the light

Of true love’s mark

Passion’s fire wanes

To glowing embers

A soft, steady light

The promised heart remembers

lem 11/21/2023

* I am not an Amazon affiliate and will not receive any benefit from clicking the link and completing a purchase. The link is just to show what the book is and where it can be purchased online.

Nanopoblano 2023 Day 21: From the Archives – 365 Writing Prompts
Photo by Du01b0u01a1ng Nhu00e2n on Pexels.com

I tend to go long periods without writing here. Then I join a challenge, like the one we’re in now. I don’t think I’ve fully completed one since 2012, maybe 2013. In the drafts folder I found this post from August 20, 2018. Apparently, I also tend to do these challenges when I’ve got a lot of other things happening and I’m a pantser, posting by the seat of my pants without planning or plotting out what I’m going to write.  Another thing I do is use socialized writing apps. First it was Heyku, then Lettrs, and now Musist (the revamped Lettrs). I have done a lot of different prompts from those apps. However, sometimes even their prompts aren’t inspiration enough for me.

So, back in 2018, I Googled “writing prompts.” I came across one article with 365 prompts on a website called “think written.” The first prompt seemed perfect back then. I’ll use it today.

“Outside the Window: What’s the weather outside your window doing right now? If that’s not inspiring, what’s the weather like somewhere you wish you could be?

Wind rustles the leaves

Ink black sky, shimmering stars

Early Fall morning

lem 11/21/2023

The prompt I chose today is: Friendship: Write about being friends with someone.

A force of nature

Insightfully traumatized

She sees me fully

  •  

Same age as my eldest

We are equals in this life

Her wisdom guides me

  •  

Parenthood struggles

Conmensurate support

We love our children

  •  

Reciprocation

We are neurodivergent

Forces of nature

lem 11/21/2023

Nanopoblano 2023 Day 20: The Advent of Peace, part 2
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Yesterday’s post kind of ended on a depressing note. I am hoping today’s will end on a more positive one. However, I am figuring this out as I go and we will see where we end up.

I am part of a different kind of Christian faith community. We don’t do sermons and programs the way they are traditionally done in the US. We use a dialogical approach to teaching and learning about the bible and theology. No one preaches and tells us what to think or believe. We have a conversation and discussion. We ask questions. We wrestle with the text and talk about the difficulties within it.

Someone reads the scripture. We all sit in silence for several moments while we contemplate what was read. Then we identify things about the passage that stand out to us and that we have questions about. Our teaching elder goes through the room, writing down the questions and concerns the members of the congregation express. Then he gives context and background to the passage. He describes the culture and belief systems of the time in which the passage was written. He identifies the source or the author, if known, or who tradition says is the author and makes sure we know it may not have been that individual. He talks about the audience and who they were and what things they were going through as a society at the time. Then we discuss.

Last night we read Psalm 46. It talks about God being our strength and refuge when the world is raging and being torn apart. We had a lot of discussion about what it means for him to be that. We talked about co-regulation and grounding. The idea that when we’re feeling overwhelmed with fear and worry, we can turn to God and trust him to cope with the worry and fear we can’t. We also talked about God’s peace that passes all understanding. Somehow, even though we can’t make sense of things that are causing worry and fear, we can trust that God will carry us through these things and we don’t have to make sense of them.

I’ve personally experienced this kind of inner peace. It’s enabled me to move through and walk through traumatic events and to do the work to heal, grow, and recover from a lot of personal trauma. It’s helped me to stand face-to-face with a loud, angry, and abusive person and stop cowering and caving into his angry demands out of fear.

However, it doesn’t address the question of why isn’t God bringing peace to the world in the midst of all the violence and conflict I talked about in yesterday’s post.

I asked the question: How do we share a message of hope and faith in God and his peace in a world that is burning down around us and tell people that the all powerful, all loving God is bringing peace?

That question sparked more discussion about what it means to be people of a God of peace and love. We are to be the peacemakers and the peace bringers in the world around us, but doing so under the guidance and ability provided by him through his Spirit.

Get grounded in God’s peace and carry that into the world through our words and actions with each other and those in the world around us. I can’t solve the problems of the world, but I can bring some of God’s peace into the world around me.

I don’t know if that’s any more satisfactory an answer than I had yesterday. But, it’s the only one I have at the moment. I’ve experienced too much goodness, growth, and healing through my faith and belief in God and Jesus to deny that they exist. I don’t expect or ask anyone else to believe because I say so. Instead, I will do my best to share the gifts I’ve received and hope it brings goodness, growth, and healing to those around me. That’s the best I can do.

Nanopoblano 2023 Day 19: The Advent of Peace?

I volunteered to read one of the Advent readings in December with my faith community. The one I volunteered for was the one for Peace. The Teaching Elder has encouraged me to write one.

What have I done?

I’m struggling to fathom how peace will ever be possible. It feels like we are perpetually on the edge of World War III.

According to the Geneva Academy there are more than 110 armed conflicts happening throughout the world in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America.

Closer to home, in the US, mass shootings have climbed to 684 in 2023, according to Mass Shooting Tracker. The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence presents stark and scary statistics about the reality of intimate partner violence. Hate crime statistics for 2022 as reported by The US Department of Justice show over 13,000 reported crimes and over 10,000 known offenders. Reported and known…how many are unreported and unknown?

It’s all so overwhelming to think about. It certainly doesn’t present a picture of hope for peace. It’s enough to cause one to question one’s faith in the Prince of Peace and the God of Love.

How do I reconcile my faith with what’s happening in the world around me?

All the references to peace I find with a cursory search are about experiencing a personal and internal sense of peace in the midst of stress and strife. The only references to a completely peaceful world happen after the second coming of Jesus when the world and all in it are made anew.

In the meantime, we’re called to peaceful action and to be in peaceful relationships, as far as we are able.

This isn’t satisfying for me. I have more work to do.

Nanopoblano 2023 Day 18: Parenting an Autistic enby
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I don’t think I’m supposed to say this out loud. I’m going to say it anyway. As much as I love my child and who they are now, I miss who they used to be and the hopes I had for them when they were little. I fully accept who they are and do my best to show respect and honor for the identity they carry now. It’s who they are.

I used to write about them when they were little. I haven’t taken any of those posts down, but I won’t refer back to them because I feel that would be dishonoring to them now. That being said, I came across one of them today with its pictures and micro-poetry and was hit with nostalgia. It brought tears to my eyes.

They were active and outgoing, playful and fearless when they were little. Now, at nearly 15, they barely move and won’t go outside unless it’s to go somewhere . . . which is very seldom. They have complete autonomy over their body. I don’t coerce or force them to do anything and they won’t do the basics to take care of themselves. Some of the activities of daily living (ADLs) such as personal hygiene: bathing, brushing their teeth, and brushing their hair hardly ever get done, at least not without a lot of exhortation and pressure from me. Bathing requires my assistance because they have toe-walked their entire lives and now they cannot safely stand in the shower. I bought them a shower seat and a grab bar. I have to help them out of the bathtub because they’re terrified of slipping and falling. They can’t handle water in their face, so I wash their hair for them.

I’m pretty sure that, as part of the Autism, they have PDA – Pathological Demand Avoidance. Anything that looks or sounds like a demand, command, obligation, or expectation is met with increasingly profound resistance. When they were younger, before I learned about PDA, they would get physically violent in avoiding doing anything they wanted to avoid. Everything was a literal battle. Once I learned about the PDA, I stopped fighting. I probably went too far in the other direction in trying to accommodate them. Other people certainly think I’ve been enabling them. But I was so exhausted and mentally/emotionally wounded from the battles and I didn’t want to have that kind of relationship with them.

I learned about PDA in January of 2021, almost three years ago. Since then, they haven’t really attended school online or in person. It’s always been a fight and a struggle to get them to do school. So much so that their IEPs in elementary school started turning into a behavior support plan, rather than an educational plan. Now, they are supposed to be a freshman in high school, except they haven’t regularly attended school since COVID shut everything down. I’ve tried everything. Nothing has gotten them to attend or engage in school for more than a couple of days or so.

So, they don’t take care of their personal hygiene, they don’t go to school, and they don’t do even the most basic things for themselves. They do engage with an online community they’ve built up utilizing their art and fandoms to create what they call AU (alternate universe) role-playing. They come up with elaborate scenarios, backstories, storylines, and avatar art to represent the characters they come up with. Their art is amazing. They are basically educating themselves about the things that interest the characters they come up with. Their imagination is so rich and their artistic skills have evolved to create beautiful, elaborate digital art.

I’m the only one to clean, do laundry, do dishes, prepare food, and clean up after their dog and the cat. Between diabetes, hypothyroidism, and fibromyalgia I was already tired all the time. Now, I’m putting in 40 hours a week at work. I’m absolutely drained right now.

I love them, but I’m scared that they aren’t ever going to develop the skills to live independently and I don’t know how long I can carry it all on my own.

Nanopoblano 2023 Day 17: My brain is fried
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It’s the end of week three of working a full 40 hours a week for the first time in 15 years. I can’t seem to keep my brain in full functionality.

  • Tuesday I forgot my work phone on the charger at home.
  • Wednesday I forgot to take my meds
  • Thursday I forgot my glucometer
  • Today I forgot my work laptop

Additionally, I now have to submit all my schedule changes and updates via email to the front desk to input into the electronic health record (EHR) database we use. I’m supposed to cc: my supervisor on certain changes. Other changes I have to remember to include the following:

  • Initials
  • EHR ID #
  • Date
  • Time
  • Length of appointment
  • Type of appointment: phone, telehealth/video, or in-person

Invariably I forget to include one or more pieces of that information.

In the midst of all of this new information, I have been voluntold that I’m participating in the initial implementation of a new model of how behavioral health services are going to be provided to the organization’s clients. The five-hour “kickoff” meeting for that happened on Wednesday. At the meeting, we learned that there will be a 10-member team of service providers assigned a “panel” of 250 clients/patients to share and coordinate services with. I’m one of the 10. Here’s the lineup:

  • Peer Services Provider (me)
  • Therapist
  • Case Manager
  • Behavioral Health Nurse
  • Psychiatric Med Prescriber
  • Substance Use Disorder Counselor
  • Primary Care Provider
  • Primary Care Nurse
  • Care Coordinator
  • Administrative Assistant

There are seven different training times scheduled. The first one is only for an hour but it still is happening in person instead of via videoconferencing. The next five are from 9:00 am – 2:00 pm. The final one is from 9:00 am – 5:00 pm. Not really looking forward to that in the first two weeks of December.

Supposedly we’re going to start in January. However, I’ve been told that there isn’t a transition plan in place to work with the existing client caseloads everyone is already working with and that without that in place we won’t start then. That’s comforting. What isn’t comforting is the fact that I have to proceed with building my new caseload and start relationships with people who have already been waiting for consistent services and will have to transition some of them within a short but undefined timeline. This frustrates me. That frustration just compounded the brain stress and dysfunction this week.

This is all part of why this post is nearly 15 hours later than I wanted it to be. We’ll see how well I’m able to get tomorrow’s post done.

Good night, all.

Nanopoblano 2023 Day 16: Dressed for Autumn
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On Tuesday nights, I participate in a writing workshop hosted by Beat-era poet, Clive Matson. It’s called 2 Busy 2 Write. It’s supposed to start at 7 but it often takes us until 7:15-7:20 to get going. Someone reads something for the writers to derive prompts from, usually poetry. Sometimes it’s prose. It’s often thoughtful and reflective of current events. Other times, it’s rooted more in the natural or spiritual worlds. This past Tuesday someone read an excerpt from a book. The excerpt centered around one person’s childhood experience of their family’s traumatic Christmas one year. I selected a couple of poems from Poetry Foundation. Both of them were seasonal poems:

I wasn’t particularly inspired so I wrote about what I wore to work that day.

I needed three outfits today 

I woke up freezing 

The frigid air had numbed my hand 

It was stiff and swollen  

with the loss of circulation 

My first ‘fit had to be warm  

To combat the chill in my body 

And that of the brisk air  

in which I walked  

the short few blocks  

to where I earn my keep 

Bundled in my new green winter coat 

the color of spring leaves 

I decided against the hat and scarf 

Surely it wouldn’t be THAT cold 

Hands snug in new gloves 

Fingers clothed in a soft black void 

Knee high boots, wide around the calves 

Black leather with faux buckles 

That jingled with every step 

Reminiscent of glamorized pirates 

Plundering the seas 

My fingers stayed frozen 

I still felt the chill of the air 

Throughout the walk 

I should have worn the scarf  

Or at least the knit cap 

More aqua than green 

At work I traded my heavy 

Double breasted coat 

For my oversized  

Ankle length sweater 

A midnight black 

just a shade lighter than  

the void my hands had worn 

As the day wore on 

The chill wore off  

The temperature grew comfortable 

The sweater was hung 

Over the overcoat  

The lightweight pullover sweater 

Medium grey with faded black  

Flowers and leaves 

Was soft and cozy 

The long, skirt,  

as dark as my boots 

Swished and swayed 

With every step I took 

Smoothly and gently 

Brushing against my thighs 

As I moved through the 

Open office spaces 

In the midafternoon 

Without warning  

It felt as if the heat kicked on 

Suddenly I felt overly warm 

With my skin itching 

Under the soft layers 

Wishing I had on sandals 

And not the thick socks 

Cushioning my feet  

inside the boots 

I wondered why I didn’t have 

An elastic to lift my hair 

Off the back of my neck 

Stepping back outside, 

once the workday was over, 

the sky was grey and overcast. 

I was grateful 

for the overcoat 

and that I had dressed for the chill. 

lem 11/14/2023

Nanopoblano 2023 Day 15: Who I’m writing for
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This is the third prompt from the writing workshop I attended on Saturday. I’ve decided that my next “big” writing project is going to be memoir oriented with a focus on having grown up without my father and the heritage of his Mexican roots. So, this prompt helped me drill down into my purpose in wanting to write that.

Who are you writing for and what are you hoping your language does?

I am writing for myself, my children, and my grandchildren. I’m writing for anyone who reads this and feels alienated within themselves and alienated from themselves and their roots. I’m writing for those of us who feel orphaned and unmoored from this world, who struggle to strengthen their sense of identity without a sense of being rooted in familial and cultural history.

I hope that my language, that the words I write, and the thoughts I share, create a resonant sense of belonging and connectedness to more than the presence of loss, pain, trauma, and isolation. I hope that sharing these parts of myself enable those who encounter them to feel connected in ways they may not have felt previously. I hope that connection and resonance isn’t only to the expression of my experience but that it is a connection to a deeper part of themselves and their own experiences.