Day 38: New Year's Reflection

The Russian's have a saying, “As you meet the New Year, so will you spend it”. Here I am in NYC, spending this New Year's Eve with my injured friend and another good friend, at his apartment just hanging out. I am perfectly happy to be doing this, and it seems quite an appropriate way to welcome 2013. This past year I have been learning to slow down, to reflect, to prioritize close relationships, and to be patient. This New Year's Eve feels right on track as I continue this long and scenic journey in the new year.

As I reflect back on 2012, I think the biggest lesson that kept appearing in many different forms is the need to face problems head on. If I can turn at look at problems as they begin to appear, they are often small, and are always more manageable than they will be later on. Whether the problem is interpersonal conflicts, conflicting strategies, unpleasant news, or dashed dreams, it will only fester over time. Tonight I am slowing down, reflecting on 2012 with gratitude and awe, and considering my goals and wishes for 2013. Hopefully I can continue to develop a more reflective life, and also act more quickly to confront small problems in 2013.  I am also working to let go of the limitations I subconsciously place on myself and my dreams, among other things. What are you trying to create in your life in the new year? Is there anything you are letting go of from the year that's just passed?

Day 36 & 37: Emergency Preparedness

Last night's blog post was derailed by an emergency, with my good friend falling on wet stairs and losing his two front teeth! This involved a lot of blood, the emergency room, and very little sleep last night. Luckily, he will be fine and it could have been much worse, but this was still a fairly significant injury. Needless to say, this was not how I had expected to spend my night. I was mostly calm, helpful, and not trying to fight the fact that the night was so unpredictably unpleasant for my good friend and myself. This reaction was in sharp contrast to an experience from earlier in the day involving the New York City subway system, which was the blog post I had planned to write last night before my friend's accident. I had been heading to his apartment in the afternoon and had my travel plans altered by a closed subway line. This unexpected inconvenience meant I had to take three subway lines instead of two, and took me an extra half an hour to get to my friend's apartment. Unlike the true emergency later in the night, this slight inconvenience left me feeling extremely agitated, frustrated, and stressed. Even though I knew that it was not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, my level of agitation felt disproportionate to this minor change in my plans.

I'm great to have along if you get into an emergency situation, but if you are stuck in traffic or lost I tend to have a bad attitude. This left me wondering why I react so differently to these two types situations. Why did I feel so much more negatively toward the slightly bad experience of a closed subway line rather than to the legitimately scary one of a serious accident? I like to plan everything ahead and make great logistical plans, so when they go awry, I get very frustrated. However, in a true emergency I feel calm and focused because there is a problem to be solved and I can't indulge in self-pity or wishing things were different, I just have to act.

Day 35: A Good Life

My grandparents as newlyweds at a New Years Eve party, 1945

Going through my grandmother's belongings as we pack up the apartment she lived in for the last 27 years of her life, I am contemplating what it means to lead a good life. My grandmother was well-loved by her neighbors, friends, and family. She cared for everyone around her, looked out for people, and was a lot of fun to be around. Many people attended her funeral, came to visit when we sat shiva during the mourning period, or sent cards with fond memories of my grandmother. As we go through her apartment, I am finding the many mementos she collected that had meaning for her including playbills from the broadway shows and operas she attended, matchbooks from hundreds of meaningful events over the years, and thousands of photos of her family. From these mementos, it is clear that art, celebrations, and family were the most important things in her life.

Personally, I have measured the quality of my life primarily through external achievements. And yet, in looking at my grandmother's life, these are not the means by which she lived a good life. The meaning of her life lay in the deep relationships she maintained with friends and family, and in the way she took care of her neighbors. These are character traits of hers that I emulate. As I learn to slow down, live more in the present, and experience my emotions more fully, I hope that my life will contain many of the same qualities as hers did.

Day 34: Secrecy vs. Privacy

The private entrance to Brookfield House, Banbridge (2) by Albert Bridge 

Living wholeheartedly means accepting who I am, including those things I don't particularly like about myself. As I work on self-acceptance, I have come to believe that secrecy is inherently an expression of denial or dissociation, and cannot accompany true acceptance of who I am. Even if I ultimately wish to change something, the first step is to accept what already is. But, is there a distinction between secrecy and privacy? If I don't want someone to know something about me or my experiences, is that always a bad thing? What if it's only particular people that I don't want to know particular things? I think that any time I don't want someone to know a particular piece of information about me, it is worth analyzing the motivation for this desire. Am I ashamed? Am I trying to avoid a particular reaction? Does it feel too emotionally charged to handle at the moment? Am I afraid of material consequences such as losing a job or promotion, losing a friend, or putting someone else in danger? If it is a judgment that I am avoiding, I believe it falls into the secrecy category. If it is simply not someone's business, then I think it might just be an issue of privacy. 

Sometimes, however, it is unclear why I do not want to reveal something - I am confident that the person will not judge me and they do not hold any power over my life. In these cases, I think the motivation is one of creating distance, or preventing a certain level of intimacy. Is this secrecy? Privacy? Something else entirely? I have always been a very private person, but is this just a way to avoid true intimacy? If someone knows you fully, then you are vulnerable to them. They have the power to hurt you. By keeping my distance from people, I can protect myself from this potential. I do reveal very private things about my life through my poetry, hip hop lyrics, and this blog. And yet, there is a builtiin distance to written communication. Perhaps that's why I like it so much. I just have to keep reminding myself, small steps and small actions will lead to big changes eventually.

Day 33: Small Steps

This has been an intense day. Going through my grandmother's apartment, packing up her things, reliving great memories, and mourning the loss of her life with my family is surreal. And yet I feel mostly numb. I do feel sad, but it's a far away kind of a feeling. It's hard to bring the sadness to the forefront of my awareness. Even as I struggle to do so, I can see certain changes compared to how I would have experienced this a month ago, before I started rewiring my brain. I was able to engage each family member in a discussion of how they were feeling. This may not sound significant if your family is one that acknowledges feelings in general, but in my family this was extremely noteworthy. I received more logical answers than visceral responses from everyone, but my question was answered, and I learned something new and intimate about various family members in the process. I keep reminding myself that change is gradual, that every small step is integral to the process of transformation.

I have been reading an interesting book about kaizen, a Japanese method of change that involves continuous improvement through extremely small daily steps. Kaizen involves asking small questions, taking small steps, solving small problems, giving yourself small rewards, and recognizing small improvements. This fits very well with the process I designed to rewire my brain, and also involves a lot of patience, which I have been cultivating slowly. Would you like to go on a slow walk with me today?

Day 32: Rest

All of this self-reflection can be exhausting. I feel like there are a million internal eyeballs analyzing everything I'm doing, thinking, feeling, saying, not saying, etc. This is definitely revealing a lot to me about own internal workings, but damn is it tiring!

Today being a very popular holiday, well someone eles's cultural holiday anyway...and so I shall rest.

So enjoy whatever it is you are doing today, and I will see you again tomorrow, dear reader.

Merry Non-Denominational Winter Holiday to all.

Day 31: Visions

Where is the line between visionary thinking and obsessing about the future, or wanting to please the ego in some way? To be a visionary, you have to see something this is not yet there, and then materialize it. For me, this can take the form of a new piece of art, a new event, a new community. Visioning involves a focus on the future, rather than the present moment. And while my life would certainly be simpler without visions, I do not want to leave this type of thinking behind as I become more centered in the present moment. And yet, there are many steps along the process from vision to reality that are unpleasant, or in service to the greater idea rather than the present moment. How do these fit in with a new type of mindful presence I am working to develop? Additionally, not all visions are inspired. Some are simply the ego striving to be seen, to be recognized. I have experienced both ego-based visions, and those that seem more divinely inspired. At the moment, I am trying to distinguish more clearly between the two. For guidance on this question, I turn to one of my favorite poets, the 13th century Sufi mystic Rumi.

Moving Water

When  you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.

When actions come from another section, the feeling disappears.  

Don't let others lead you.  They may be blind or, worse, vultures.

Reach for the rope of God.  And what is that?  Putting aside self-will.

Because of willfulness people sit in jail, the trapped bird's wings are tied,

fish sizzle in the skillet.

... 

Don't insist on going where you think you want to go.  Ask the way to the spring.  

Your living pieces will form a harmony...

  

From The Soul of Rumi. Translated by Coleman Barks. 

Day 30: Dissociation

I have to move in January, something I am not looking forward to at all. In fact, I have been avoiding even starting the process. Nothing has been put in a box, taken off the walls, or given away. It hasn't felt like it was really happening. My resistance to accepting the fact that I am moving in a week has kept me from acting, kept me from addressing this reality at all.  This turning away from reality took place at such a deep level, that I was not even aware that I was avoiding the issue - it was as if it truly did not exist. This is just one manifestation of a significant, long-standing challenge: how to accept "negative" realities. My first and strongest inclination is to deny the existence of truths I do not like. This is something I learned in my family and in the larger culture, where we are taught "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all". This seemingly polite action actually requires lying or evading the truth, dissociation and suppression. How can this be the way that one "should" act?  And yet, it is so ingrained in me that I am often not aware that it is happening at all. For example, I didn't even realize how upset I am that I have to move until yesterday, 8 days before I have to leave my apartment.

The biggest change that I have noticed from the first month of rewiring my brain is that I notice my unconscious tendencies more easily. However I am still just observing these reactions, while mostly still acting in what were previously unconscious ways. I do believe (hope) that this is the first step in building new neural pathways that will eventually help me to act differently. In this particular instance, the new reaction I would like to have is to feel the loss of having to move out of the best apartment that I've ever lived in earlier, and to reach out for help packing up when I know I'm going to want to avoid it. Now I'm working to develop the neural pathways to make this response more likely the next time around. In the meantime, I will be shoving everything into boxes and begging my LA friends to help schlep my stuff to my new place next week. Please text me if you're eager to help me move!

Day 29: Time

Astronomical Clock photo by Anthony Dodd

Impatience is a trait I've struggled with for many years. Partially this is a control issue - I want things to happen the way I think they should, including at the time I think they should. It is also related to my strong sense that time is fleeting, that there is never enough time to do everything I want to do, and that I need to "use" my time as wisely and strategically as possible. I have felt this way since I was a child, when I would strategize about how to get my homework done as efficiently as possible, mostly during the school day. This obsession with managing my time gives me a false but reassuring sense of control and power over different situations. While this has been helpful in terms of minimizing my anxiety, it is also very stressful over time. It is incredibly difficult to relax and be present in the moment when I am attempting to do everything as quickly as possible. From simple tasks like sweeping or doing the dishes, to complex tasks like organizing an event or fundraising for a film project, I rarely enjoy the process because I am in a rush.

The practice of mindfulness is a direct challenge to this, a structured way to slow down and be still and reflect. This is a major challenge for me, and my impatience becomes glaringly apparent as I struggle to sit still for 10 minutes without looking at the time, or just willing it to be over. Even as I see the benefits of having a mindfulness practice, it is hard to convince myself that it is a good use of my time. The concept of using time is one that I need to further address, however for now I am simply observing my desire to control time, and tendency to rush around non-stop. What am I running from? What am I running toward?

Day 28: Motivation

Photo is Into the trees... by Petr Jan Juračka

As I become more aware of myself in each moment - actions, feelings, thoughts, physical sensations - I am noticing many habits or actions that I can't explain. Why am I extremely motivated to do certain tasks or habits on some days, and not at all motivated other days? What is willpower and how does it relate to motivation? How much of the vacillation in my motivation is internal vs. external?  To start observing so many effects and not to be able to identify the causes feels frustrating. I think this is why human beings seem so drawn to easy answers in general. Not knowing feels very jarring, disconcerting, dangerous. And yet, not knowing, or beginner's mind, is actually the most effective place from which to learn.

There is also an element of impatience here, of wanting solutions now rather than waiting for things to develop over time. I am particularly aware of my impatience during the winter, because it is such a natural time of hibernation and slowing down. And yet, if I had my druthers, everything would continue at a frenetic pace all the time; even my realizations and self-actualization would be sped up, almost instantaneous. Trying to live more in the present moment has helped alleviate this impatience to some extent, because more of my energy is focused on now than on some anticipated future. However, I still want quick and clear answers that explain my actions and reactions, habits and patterns, the causes and effects of my experiences. Taking more time to reflect is changing this slowly and gradually, and yet I'm impatient to become patient. Go figure...

Day 27: Community

Trying to create change alone is incredibly daunting, and may actually be impossible. While my personal transformation is largely undertaken internally, having a community of people with whom to go through this process of transformation is invaluable for me. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, some of the personal transformations I am working on involve communication, intimacy, and vulnerability. While these are internal challenges to some extent, they are largely about how I interface with the rest of the world. Therefore, having supportive, open, curious people around helps me to grow in these areas. Additionally, watching others engaged in their own processes of transformation is incredibly inspiring, enlightening, and encouraging. I gain new ideas from observing how other people approach their own transformations, and also get helpful reflections on what they are observing in me.

Marking the winter solstice in the community where I live today, I felt so grounded, so held, so appreciated. These powerfully affirming emotions allow me the space to explore, to challenge myself, and to take risks that lead to growth. I don't know how this brain rewiring would be altered if I did not have this community around me, but I do feel grateful for it in these dark days of soul searching. There are people willing to help, to keep me on track, to keep me well rested and fed and seen. It has been challenging to accept this help in some ways, but I know that what goes around comes around, and I hope to be able to help support them in many ways as well. Feeling interdependent makes me feel vulnerable, even though it is actually a source of strength. I am working to transform this capitalist distortion inside myself, and am grateful to see the value of interdependence enacted by living in an intentional community.

Day 26: Distractions

Time seems to be flying by in a weird way at the moment. Even though I am sticking to the mindfulness practices of this rewiring process, I seem to be very easily distracted the rest of the time. I am suddenly interested in random activities that haven't commanded my attention for months. I can't sit still and read any of the books I have in front of me. Every time I look at the clock, hours have disappeared. I think this is a coping mechanism of my subconscious, to avoid processing my grandmother's death. In my  conscious mind, I want to go through the mourning process, and yet I seem to be creating many distractions for myself at the same time. Suddenly I feel compelled to spend time with acquaintances I haven't talked to in months, or attend events I would normally turn down. I don't think that it is because I need these people or activities for my healing process, but rather that I am using them as a way to avoid the process. Does this mean I am in the denial stage of grief? How do I override these impulses that are currently directing me? Is this an internal battle between conscious and unconscious parts of myself? How do I enhance communication between these parts? Which activities are serving as distractions and which ones are me taking a break from processing my emotions to simply rest, relax, or enjoy myself?

Day 25: Death and Rebirth

In preparation for rewiring my brain, I learned a lot about the process of change. The change cycle begins with death and rebirth, a process where the old self is no longer operating as it once did, and the new self must slowly emerge over time. Often this means a shift in identity, such as from child to adult, straight to queer, student to graduate, etc. During the stage of death and rebirth I often feel uprooted, without anchor. I believe our society as a whole is experiencing this part of the change cycle at the moment. Old institutions such as public education and the economy are not functioning as they once did, but new ones have not yet developed to replace them. I think this cultural experience has led many people to personal journeys of transformation, because the old models for how to live aren't working.

While all this change makes for an unpredictable time of upheaval, I hold out hope for a society-wide transformation. And yet sometimes I just want to take a break from living, to pause and simply not deal with anything for a while. Of course, if I actually had the ability to do so, I might never get back out of that state again; inertia is a powerful force. That is part of why I developed such a structured process to rewire my brain, because the old neural pathways are still well-maintained and easily accessible. For instance, even as the things I wish for begin to come through, I am resisting them. It's like taking medicine that I know will make me feel much better but that tastes bad. I want and need the changes I am asking for, but at the same time feel repelled by the challenge of actually changing. Even metaphorical death is extremely scary, even when I know that it leads to new life. I am grateful to have people with whom to travel on this journey, friends who can help walk with me through the valley of the shadow of death and come out on the other side. Or at least I sure hope this all leads out to the other side somewhere...

Day 24: Casual Realness

How do you determine how much to you share with strangers in a casual conversation? I have been in situations where someone was over-sharing in a way that felt very uncomfortable, but I have also been in conversations where I've felt an instant and deep connection with someone, where we were able to share much more than strangers normally do in casual conversations. These extreme ends of the spectrum can be fairly easy notice while I am experiencing them, however there are many more nuanced interactions that have me puzzled. When interacting with a stranger, I have very little information by which to evaluate the experience. Body language and the energy that someone projects are the major clues I rely on to interpret a particular interaction. Was that a meaningful conversation to the other person? Were they being their authentic selves? Was I? I have always thought that I had a pretty good understanding of what other people experienced in social interactions. And yet, now that I am getting to know more about different peoples' internal processes, I am starting to doubt this knowledge. As it turns out, I often do not have an accurate understanding of friends' emotional experiences. If I am this inaccurate when interpreting the feelings of people I know, then it seems quite likely that I am incorrect with strangers.

Where does this leave me in terms of how much to share with strangers? I wish to create meaningful connections with folks who are open and receptive and dynamic, but am also concerned with guarding my energy from leeches. Living in a big city, almost everybody has their guard up in new interactions, as do I. How can I break through these barriers in those moments when it is possible to do so? How can I still feel protected when it is not the right person or place for such intimate experiences? Is casual realness possible?

Day 23: My over-scheduled life

I have been super busy all weekend. This was partly due to necessity, but mostly by self-determined over-scheduling. This is a common problem for me, one that I have been working on for at least two or three years already. Keeping extremely busy is a coping mechanism that I picked up as a child, and have been using religiously ever since. Being busy keeps me from having to experience my feelings, because there is always some sort of activity to distract me from my emotions or to keep the silence away. This is one of the more difficult coping mechanisms to address, because it has given me many fantastic experiences, opportunities, and adventures. At the same time, I know that I have used busyness as a way to avoid important internal work, quiet work, less glamorous and less exciting self-care. Unlike some of my obviously unhealthy strategies for avoiding my emotions, this one feels complicated. As I begin to redefine productivity and reexamine my values around work and achievement, I am conflicted about my general busyness. Yesterday, for example, all of my plans were social and meaningful, and yet it felt like too much. Today, my plans were mostly work related, with some exercise and family time as well. All of these activities fit into my general values and interests, and yet I can feel that I didn't have a restful or rejuvenating weekend.

Compared to where I was two years ago, when I first started addressing my tendency to over-schedule, I am shocked at how far I have come. I used to work up to bedtime nearly every night, not on paid work but on my pet projects. Because most of my over scheduling fits into my values and interests - largely art projects, activist projects, or community building endeavors - I am quite torn about where to draw the line for myself. These are all activities that help me to feel whole and joyful, and yet it can still be too much. I constantly have a To Do list longer than I can possibly complete, and I always have more interests than I can pursue. Sometimes this feels incredibly frustrating, and I feel obsessed with spending every waking moment strategically, so that I can cram as much into each day as possible. And yet I know that this diminishes that quality of each experience, leaves me feeling harried, and can prevent me from fully experiencing my emotions. If anyone out there has a similar challenge, I'd love to hear from you. How do you determine when to say no to an enticing or exciting event or project? How has your thinking on this evolved over time?

Day 22: Vulnerable Realness

The "winter holiday season" is a very strange time of year, made especially so by my efforts toward authenticity. Gifts are advertised to us as a symbol that will prove the depth of our love for another person. We are told that we can spend money instead of spending time, creating the appearance of love without those pesky, vulnerable loving feelings getting involved. We are inundated with cultural stories about how families interact, largely unhealthy examples of disconnection, bickering, and manipulation. As I forge a path toward building and maintaining more meaningful relationships, I am leaving these cultural stories behind, learning the stories of other families, of other communities that communicate their love for one another clearly and frequently. Being open and honest increases my vulnerability, deepening my relationship, creating greater intimacy, freeing me from shadows, and lightening the load. And yet each time I must convince myself to take the risk, be vulnerable, extend communication. When will open and clear communication seem normal to me?

I feel so grateful to have the opportunity to continue deepening my relationships, that I have a stable and significant base of connection from which to build. Now I am beginning to reconsider my tendency to compartmentalize my relationships. I have specific types of relationships with particular categories of people in my life, creating very specific expectations about how much I would share with someone, or how deeply "personal" our relationship might be. Why has this felt necessary? Which parts of me am I afraid to share with strangers? Which parts am I afraid to share with those close to me?

Day 21: Temples in my Mind

This is an excerpt from the poem I wrote about the structures in my mind that I must let go of in order to transform. In the poem, I use the metaphor of destroying temples where I worship the false gods of perfection, control, and hierarchy.

The Temple of Perfection

A life of “perfect” paths, no freedom for mistakes.

No missteps ever taken means the path’s not mine to make.

This temple rose before me, rose within me, rose again.

Obsessed with the future, how can now begin?

Letting go of expectations, cast adrift I’m somehow free.

Must accept my imperfections, my humanity.

Stopped fighting against nature, against the divine.

I kept losing battles that were only in my mind.

So goodbye to perfection, to a life I cannot lead.

Goodbye to the idea that I cannot be me.

This poison is infectious, and I’m not immune,

This Temple may return, the Temple of Doom.

Transition for me is just a state of mind.

A constant evolution, like a flowing rhyme.

Don’t know where I’d be without the ebb and flow.

High on life, but then I’m feeling low.

My temples rose before me, contained me, detained me.

My temples rise within me, define me, confine me.

So I mourn their destruction while I celebrate.

Though letting go is painful it can liberate.

So now I’m here declaring that I’m letting go.

Not clinging to the thought of being in control.

The Temple of Control

Control is an illusion, a delusion, mass confusion.

Mystery is the truth, and what a great one, the solution.

God is just the word so we remember this fact.

The universe is bigger than our minds can grasp.

I can’t control the path before me, bring back Temples now destroyed.

A relief and yet I’m mourning, when it should be enjoyed.

I’m mourning their destruction like a life I never lived.

Perfection, control, are these truly to be missed?

Losing pride I found my spirit, losing sight, my third eye glows.

Temples destroyed by higher powers, this life is stranger than I know.

Conflicting contradictions, letting go of ancient rancor.

Becoming more human, I lost my wheel and found my anchor.

Will we ever have our Temples, can we have them and be free?

The sacred’s in the spaces, in the changes, in me.

Day 20: Enough

I don't feel like writing a blog post today. And yet, I committed to myself that I would post something each of the 90 days that I am rewiring my brain (see Day 1). This left me wondering - how do I determine when to forge ahead even though something is hard and I want to take a break. Sometimes, this feeling of not wanting to keep my commitment should be honored, such as when I truly need to rest or move more slowly for a while. Other times, my reluctance is a symptom of resisting change, or avoiding confronting myself in some way.  So here I am, writing this blog post that I don't want to write. In the 20 days of this project so far, this is the third time that I have really not felt like writing a blog post. The other two days, I took it a bit easy by posting photos of quotes on my walls (see Day 8), and writing two stanzas of poetry (see Day 12). Today, I am writing about the fact that I don't want to write. In this way, I think I am finding a compromise. I acknowledged my feeling of resistance by writing shorter blog posts, while also honoring my commitment to myself by still writing something. As I continue this process of becoming more fully connected to my deeper self, I hope that it will become easier to determine when to push through my resistance, and when to pull back and rest for a while.

Day 19: Inconvenient Truths

I have always bucked the rules, but have tended to do so in subtle ways, appearing to fit in while simultaneously ignoring the official rules of my surroundings (whether that be school policies, federal laws, or cultural norms). I found this to be the easiest way to get what I wanted; something I thought of as a reasonable shortcut. I followed my own sense of right and wrong, but ignored the outside world’s version of morality by simply going around those rules that did not particularly suit me. This was a largely successful strategy for many years. Being so dissociated from my emotions, it wasn’t hard to do.

Now that I am endeavoring to be wholly true to myself, to be present in every moment, the "harmless" lies feel significant. They feel like a betrayal of my true self, a denial of what is. As I strive to be a truth teller, my relationships have become significantly more intimate. And yet the walls with some people have remained as high as ever. I don’t know if there is anything I can do to change this, or perhaps it is simply a matter of time. Either way, I am feeling lighter, happier, and more joyful, even when the truth is ugly or embarrassing or painful. As I change, those around me change. We are all interconnected, and transformation is a communal process in many ways. 

Day 18: Strangers with Emotions

My grandmother's funeral was yesterday. Following the Jewish tradition, my family is now spending seven days sitting shiva, a period of mourning where friends, relatives, neighbors, and members of my grandmother's synagogue come visit us and sit with us during the day and pray the mourner's kaddish with us each evening. These visitors are largely strangers to us because my grandmother lived across the country from the rest of my immediate family. Although I am slowly becoming more comfortable experiencing my emotions in general, this does not extend to sharing them openly with strangers at the moment. And while these strangers are very nice and well-meaning, they are also mostly uncomfortable witnessing our grief. This presents a real challenge. How can I be present and not suppress my emotions, while also spending hours each day around people with whom I do not feel comfortable experiencing intense and painful emotions? In general, I tend to retreat into myself when I am dealing with difficult situations, reaching out to close friends and shutting others out until I have dealt with my emotions on my own. Is this a symptom of my disconnection from my heart, or is this simply the way that I function best? Living in a society that is so head-centered, it is hard to tell whether this is my true self expressing itself, or simply the technique I was forced to develop as a young child to function successfully in my culture. Starting in elementary school, students are discouraged from expressing any "negative" emotions in class, discouraged from being present in their own experiences. As I continue to interrogate the assumptions and automatic reactions that I have carried with me through my 29 years of life thus far, I am curious to see whether this tendency to process emotions privately will shift over time. And if it does, how will strangers react? Is there a way to express painful emotions publicly without alienating well-meaning people around me who are not equipped to witness intense emotions without needing to fix or judge them?

Day 17: Continuing

Coping with my grief over my grandmother's death has come at an interesting time in this blog. The brain rewiring process I am currently engaging in was feeling very helpful and effective in my day-to-day life (see Day 6: Early Results) but I didn't know how I would feel about it at such a challenging time. I didn't know if I would be able to keep up any of my self-care practice, any of my mindfulness practice, or this blog during this time. And yet, I find myself especially committed to this process right now.  Checking in with myself, taking time to get quiet and meditate, and creating new positive thoughts seems to be great medicine at the moment. As it turns out, the emotional strain of this experience is actually accentuating the work I have been doing to rewire my brain. Although I am still struggling in some ways to connect with my family as we each experience our grief in our own ways, I am able to stay present rather than running away from the intensity of my sadness as much as I normally would. It is certainly not a 180 degree change, but there is a noticeable shift in my willingness to acknowledge and express my emotions during this time. The hardest part is finding any time or place to be quiet and alone, but I am managing to find small moments here and there. I am curious to see how this process will continue to affect me as the grief settles in a little more and feels less surreal; as her death feels more final, and the full weight of this loss becomes comprehensible to me. At the moment I am still in a bit of shock, not because it was a suprise (she was 92 after all) but because I simply wish it were not true.

Day 16: RIP Lilo Schaefer 1920-2012

RIP Lilo Schaefer, September 10 1920 - December 9 2012

This photo is of my grandma at 7 years old, 1927 in Germany. She passed away late last night, peacefully in her sleep, after 92 years of whole-hearted living.  From eight years-old to fourteen, I used to spend my summers with my grandmother. I feel so lucky to have had those summers with her, just the two of us. I played cards, scrabble, and rummy for hours on end with her and her friends. Even at eight years-old, Grandma Lilo and her friends made me feel like I was welcome, interesting, worth talking to. She always made me feel loved, and supported me in everything I did. My grandmother was 85 years-old when I transitioned, and while she went through a slow transformation of her own during my process, she was always accepting and open to hearing what I was going through, and willing to actively work on calling me by my new name and male pronouns. She just wanted to know if I was happy, and when I said that I was, she said that was all she needed to know.
Grandma Lilo will continue to inspire me for the rest of my life. Her ability to continue changing as a person, throughout her entire life, is something I aspire to in my own life. She was open-minded, intellectually curious, able to connect with everyone around her, and loving. She survived the holocaust and still loved with her whole heart after seeing such horrific atrocities. Her death is another important reminder to make the most of every moment, that life is fleeting, and that connecting with loved ones is the most important thing in life. I am so grateful to have had her in my life for so long, and to still have my parents, aunt and uncle, and brother.