meditation rocks

Hello lovely readers!

So, as you saw from the last few posts, we've been struggling hard with the girl, trying to figure out the best thing to do, which is hard when there's a whirlwind. To be honest, the weekend was very hard for me to be home all the time because the hub was out doing soccer stuff, and even after work yesterday, I felt jumpy, nervous, and afraid to go home. I was worrying constantly about what I was going to find there. Would she be good? Would she be in a bad mood? Would I have to discipline her and reap the consequences? Would I get punched or kicked or called nasty names?

I really felt I needed some help. I do meditations each night and decided to find something to help me. My idea was that I needed some kind of self-protection, but still a way to keep my heart open so that I could block the bad things, but not shut myself off completely so that the good things wouldn't go in either. I found a meditation by Judith Orloff called "Angel protection". In the meditation she lets the listener define "Angels" as they wish -- if someone is religious, then they could use familiar biblical depictions, if someone is not, they could imagine any kind of divine presences or angels as ancestors, which is what I chose to do. Some things she said really resonated with me during the meditation and I truly truly needed to hear them; she said, "You are not alone. You have never been alone. These angels have been with you from when you were born and they will be with you your whole life and until you pass on to the next plane of existence." When I heard this, I felt a whole shift because this was really at the core of everything for me.

When I was about the girl's age (12), I was bullied severely at school. No one was available to help me at that time, and I clearly remember thinking to myself , "No one is there for me. I can never rely on anyone else. I have to take care of myself." This was always behind my ambition -- to fiercely guard my independence so that I can't be hurt so badly again. And although my husband is fantastic and I have many friends, I couldn't always trust that they will always be there for me.

So, when I heard Judith's words, I felt my heart swell, tears streamed down my face, and I truly felt that I wasn't, and never had been as alone as I'd always thought,  although I just couldn't see it. My husband, for one, is completely there for me, as are my friends and family.

This shift has already had a positive consequence on the family. By feeling this way, by feeling helped, I could let go of some of the negative emotions and start feeling and acting positive, honestly positive, again. Lately, the girl's been coming in demanding to sleep in my bed, but I could only offer her half my side because I was leaving the other half of the bed free for the husband. And I honestly also didn't want her in my bed because I wanted to have one place in the house to myself. She would end up kicking me to make me move over and when I wouldn't, she'd start saying nasty things and leave. So, I talked to the husband and he thought it was a good sign that she wanted to sleep in my room and that he would sleep somewhere else in the house (he can sleep anywhere, any time and in any position, so I don't need to feel guilty).

Last night, when she came in, I patted his side of the bed and said, "Come on in". In the dark, she was talking to herself -- usually, I'd get annoyed and say something like, "If you're going to make noise, go back to your room", but instead I stayed quiet and listened to her. She was conjuring up some wild scenario, talking quickly, and doing different voices and I couldn't stop myself from laughing, tired as I was. Instead of thinking, "She's noisy", I thought, "She's really happy!" Nothing bad happened.

After she fell asleep, I went downstairs to tell the husband what had happened, especially about the funny stories she was telling. He said, "It's part of her mental disorder," acknowledging that she was very smart and creative when she did that.  I said, "I think people are starting to think of those things as gifts rather than handicaps; why don't we think of it that way, too? I'm going to think of it that way."

This morning, she was calm and cheerful. She told jokes at the table. She didn't sit with one foot on the chair and her knee up, which the husband is always telling her off about; she didn't whine or fight. She told funny jokes, ate her breakfast, packed up her stuff and went to school. Didn't brush her teeth, though. But baby steps, baby steps.